LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Deceived C/l&V-^ ..,8 
 ^Accessions No. $y D 31. Class No. 
 
A SONG OF LIFE 
 
SONG OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET WARNER MORLEY 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR 
 AND ROBERT FORSYTH 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 
 1894 
 
(JOPYRIGHT 
 BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO. 
 
 A.D. l8oi 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FLOWERS 9 
 
 FISHES 43 
 
 FROGS 63 
 
 BIRDS 71 
 
 THE END AND THE BEGINNING .... 87 
 
 THE WORLD'S CRADLE 105 
 
A 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 FLOWERS. 
 
 A A TE all love flowers. Most of 
 
 us love them as we love jewels" 
 and sunshine and color ; they gratify 
 our love of beauty and by their pres^ 
 ence make us happier. But some_ 
 have a deeper reason for lovJing them; 
 to them ^j} the flower^* are one 
 sion of that/f&e of .which 
 man is but / 
 
io A Song of Life. 
 
 another expression. They do not think 
 of man as something apart by himself, 
 but rather as a part of the universal 
 life which the plants and birds and all 
 living creatures share with him. Their 
 eyes and hearts are open to the sister life 
 in the world about them, and they look at 
 the flowers, not only with pleasure, but 
 with the love which recognizes in them a 
 sweet though simple existence like our 
 own. Most of us ignore the tie which 
 binds us to the plant as well as to our 
 human brother. In this respect we are 
 like him of whom it was said, ' 
 
 " A primrose by the river brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 And yet the primrose is something more 
 than a bit of yellow on a green background ; 
 it has life, and in many important respects 
 life in the plants is the same as life in us. 
 That which is necessary to our existence 
 
Flowers. 1 1 
 
 
 
 is also necessary to theirs. But not all of 
 us have stopped to think about this. We 
 pride ourselves upon possessing what we 
 call the breath of life. We consider our- 
 selves vastly superior to the humble plant 
 in this respect. We show in our litera- 
 ture, in our conversation, and in many 
 other ways, how highly we esteem our 
 power to breathe. But the plants breathe 
 too. They do not boast about it, but 
 they do it. All know that the air is 
 composed of a mixture of oxygen and 
 nitrogen gases, with, more or less watery 
 vapor and a very little carbonic acid gas, 
 and that oxygen is necessary to life, while 
 nitrogen, which forms four fifths of the 
 atmosphere, merely serves to dilute the 
 oxygen. 
 
 Animals breathe air into the lungs, the 
 lung-cells take oxygen from it and throw 
 back into it carbonic acid gas, which is an 
 impurity. Plants use air in the same 
 way, but as their lungs consist of cells 
 
12 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 which cover all their leaves, the plants 
 breathe over the whole surface of their 
 bodies. As the air bathes them, the plant- 
 cells, eager for oxygen, seize upon it and 
 compel it to leave the air and join them. 
 From them it is transferred to the other 
 tissues that need it, and the carbonic acid 
 gas set free by the chemical work going 
 on inside the plant, finds its way, by the 
 work of the cells, back into the air 
 as an impurity, the process being 
 
 the same as when we breathe. 
 
 But we too breathe over the 
 whole surface of our bodies, 
 cells in the skin haying 
 the same 
 
exchanging 
 carbonic 
 acid gas for \ 
 oxygen as have 
 
 the cells of the 
 Implants and the cells of the 
 :X_ lungs. But since the 
 lungs are specially adapted 
 for exchanging carbonic 
 
 gas for oxygen, 
 
 the greater part of that work 
 is done by them, and conse- 
 quently we think of the lungs as the only 
 breathing organs until somebody reminds 
 us that we breathe all over our bodies, 
 like plants. 
 
 And plants eat. Not such gross food 
 as we take, for they are dainty feeders 
 upon things too fine for us even to taste. 
 Down in the ground the roots creep about 
 among the rocks and soil, and drink in 
 the moisture and the gases and other 
 mineral elements there, and this food they 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 send up the stem in spite of the force 
 of gravity, whose business it is to pull 
 everything down. Thus are fed the stems 
 and leaves and flowers, for as the fluid 
 food passes along, touching every part 
 of the plant, each tissue draws to itself 
 the material it needs for building new 
 tissue or rebuilding that which is worn 
 out. In this way the plant grows. But the 
 roots do not supply all the food, for the 
 leaves feed too, taking in nourishment 
 over their whole surface, feeding gen- 
 erously wherever air and light touch 
 them. In fact iMfthe leaves absorb food 
 
 ^ v if ' ^ r\ 
 
 with as much vfc\ /^7/^! ease as they 
 
 roots take 
 food from 
 
Flowers. 
 
 the soil; the leaves take it from the air, 
 for the plant feeds upon the elements 
 which make up the air and the earth, 
 combining them in various ways, and 
 finally converting them into its own liv- 
 ing substance. In this way it grows and 
 becomes food for animals. 
 
 Its power to change mineral matter into 
 living substance is so important that with- 
 out it there could be no life on earth. The 
 plant is the chemical laboratory in which 
 is prepared the food of the world. Take 
 away the plant, leaving only animal life 
 and mineral substances, and the animal 
 life would at once die. Too far re- 
 moved from the nature of the mineral; 
 it could not come into sym- 
 pathy witK 
 
 ^~~^,.j vi v \ 
 
 IT 
 
1 6 A Song of Life. 
 
 it, it could not give life to the rock; it 
 could not transform the mineral's cold 
 matter into its own living tissue ; it would 
 starve to death. Now introduce the plant. 
 Modest yet full of power, it stands at the 
 border-land of life. On one side is the 
 lifeless mineral, on the other the helpless 
 animal. The plant, with its humble life, 
 reaches down to the mineral, touches it 
 with a living touch; and the mineral, 
 otherwise lifeless forever, responds to the 
 touch of the plant, shares its life, and 
 becomes a part of it. Thus provided 
 with abundant living material, the plant 
 yields nutriment to the life above it; so 
 that every animal, including man, is de- 
 pendent upon plant-life for its existence. 
 All animals feed upon the plant ; remotely, 
 it may be, as when one animal feeds upon 
 another, yet ultimately, the plant is the 
 source whence comes the material for the 
 animal form. The plant exists by creating 
 life ; the animal by destroying it. 
 
Flowers. 1 7 
 
 In still another way plant-life renders 
 animal-life possible. Plants consume car- 
 bonic acid gas as food. They take it 
 from the air in large quantities, and thus 
 clear, the atmosphere of a dangerous ele- 
 ment, for a small amount of carbonic acid 
 gas renders air unfit for animals to breathe. 
 The plants, therefore, live upon and con- 
 vert to a good use the waste of breathing, 
 which might otherwise accumulate in suffi- 
 cient quantities to be dangerous to the 
 higher life. But this is not all. When 
 carbonic acid gas has been taken as food 
 the plant tissues use the carbon, but the 
 oxygen, which forms a part of carbonic 
 acid gas, they reject and send back to the 
 air, thus giving to animals the oxygen, 
 which is necessary to their lives, and tak- 
 ing away the carbonic acid gas, which is 
 fatal to life. 
 
 The breathing and feeding of plants 
 are so easily confused that it may be well 
 to insist that they are two entirely different 
 
1 8 A Song of Life. 
 
 functions. Plants breathe out carbonic 
 acid gas and take in oxygen just like ani- 
 mals ; so inasmuch as they breathe they 
 render the air impure. They eat carbonic 
 acid gas and throw off oxygen as a waste, 
 so, inasmuch as they eat they purify the 
 air. The products of feeding are much 
 greater than those of breathing, very much 
 greater, so that plants are powerful puri- 
 fiers of the air and keep it fit for animals 
 to breathe. During the flowering season, 
 however, the plant is less active as a puri- 
 fying means, and in cases where there is 
 a great mass of bloom may even belong 
 to the destructive forces, vitiating more 
 air than it purifies; for, the flowers, being 
 so fragile and perfect and not obliged to 
 grow, feed little and breathe much. That 
 is why some people consider them un- 
 healthful in a sick-room, the flowers 
 breathe the air which the patient needs. 
 
 Besides breathing and feeding, plants 
 reproduce themselves. Like higher forms 
 
Flowers. 
 
 of life they issue from the egg. We 
 call the plant's egg a seed and so lose 
 sight of what it really is ; but recall for a 
 moment that the plant's seed kept warm 
 moist produces a young plant, 
 while the fish's egg kept warm 
 and moist produces a young fish, 
 and the bird's egg kept 
 warm and dry produces 
 a young bird, and 
 the true nature of 
 the seed is apparent, 
 -it is the egg of the 
 plant. 
 
 " Everything springs from the 
 egg; it is the world's cradle." 
 That is the way the wise an- 
 cients told the secret of how life 
 begins. But they told only half 
 the truth when they said nothing 
 'of the vital spark which kindles the 
 "egg to growth and adds to it a new 
 Vange of possibilities. Like them, we 
 
20 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 commonly fail of due reverence for pater- 
 nal life, and attribute the miracle of regen- 
 eration wholly to the power in the egg. 
 Walking through the fields in the autumn, 
 we wade waist-high through a patch of 
 golden-rod. As we jostle the stately 
 plumes, out pours a cloud of fine yellow 
 powder which settles upon our clothes 
 like dust. We carelessly brush it off and 
 pass on, not giving it another thought. 
 We look into the heart of the rose and 
 see there golden grains which tell 
 nothing; we watch the alder cat- 
 kins soften and tremble and 
 ^m> powder the air with a great 
 shower of i^ old-dust 
 
Flowers. 
 
 21 
 
 no question; we see the white temple of 
 the Easter lily marred by the copious yellow 
 dust which falls from its anthers; we are 
 powdered by the evening primrose. In 
 fact, in nearly every flower we know, we 
 find the pollen-powder, the dust of the 
 flowers. And we are indifferent to it, 
 seeing it all our lives, until one day we 
 ask what it is and discover to our wonder 
 that it has much to do with the life of 
 the plant, and that the seeds which are hid- 
 den in the hearts of the flowers owe their 
 development to it. There are 
 jmany things in the life of the 
 plant worth knowing, but 
 of all the wonderful facts 
 of plant-life which man 
 has discovered, nothing is 
 stranger or more 
 beautiful than 
 what is known 
 of the dust, or 
 pollen, of the plant, 
 and of its ovules, or seeds. 
 
22 A Song of Life. 
 
 Even though every one may know the 
 truth concerning the pollen and the ovules, 
 their story, like all the best stories in the 
 world, will bear telling a great many times ; 
 and this time it is one link in a chain of 
 great meaning which begins in the plant 
 and passes through all other life, until 
 it ends in man, binding all life to- 
 gether in close bonds of relationship. 
 But before going so deeply into the 
 secrets of plant-life as the story of the 
 pollen would lead us, we shall have to 
 consider a number of facts, just as one is 
 obliged to cut through a mass of fibre 
 to reach the kernel of the cocoanut. The 
 first fact shall be a seed. We will examine 
 one to set us thinking. 
 
 From the morning-glory vine we pluck 
 a ripe, brown seed-vessel. Carefully open- 
 ing it we find three little silky nests, in 
 each of which are two seeds. Very deli- 
 cately removing the outer skin from one 
 of these seeds we find inside a green 
 
Flowers. 23 
 
 core covered with a clear, jelly-like sub- 
 stance. (If the seed is hard and dry, it 
 should be soaked in warm water for a few 
 minutes before examination.) We next 
 remove all of the outer covering and 
 the jelly-like substance and spread out 
 the green core. It seems to be a tiny 
 leaf. Examined more carefully it proves 
 to be two leaves lying close together and 
 having at the point of union a tiny 
 bud-like root. In fact there is a whole 
 plant thus skilfully packed away in the little 
 hard seed. Plant the seed, and the young 
 morning-glory will issue forth. The first 
 leaves that appear above the ground are 
 different from the later, heart-shaped 
 leaves ; they are the two blunt little 
 absurdities we found in the seed, and they 
 push up to the light while the root pushes 
 down into the soil. The next leaf, how- , 
 ever, is heart-shaped, and bears no : 
 resemblance to the seed-leaves, whose duty 
 it was to be as compact and sturdy as 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 possible in order to start the plant. Being 
 now fairly started, the plant grows rapidly 
 until it is a full-sized vine and bears flow- 
 ers. Thus it would seem that in some way 
 the tiny seed held the idea of the perfected 
 plant within its walls. Open a bean pod 
 and find the seeds there, each in a soft, 
 white nest. 
 
 Take one of the beans and let it 
 be the seed we next examine, for we 
 are in no hurry and may as well be- 
 come acquainted with seeds while 
 we are in the mood for it. Again 
 removing the outer skin, which in 
 this case is leathery and white, we 
 find no jelly-like substance. The bean 
 seems split into two fleshy parts, and 
 at their point of union is a tiny sprout 
 consisting of two leaves folded close 
 together. Plant the bean and the sprout 
 grows. The two little yellow atoms of 
 leaves become large and green, and a root 
 strikes down into the ground. After a time 
 
Flowers. 
 
 r. 
 
 two fleshy parts turn green ; 
 we find they 
 
 are veined, and in fact are 
 the seed-leaves, which were packed 
 full of starch to 
 start the young 
 lant. They are larger and 
 fatter than the morning- 
 glory seed-leaves, because there 
 is no jelly-like food packed about 
 the young bean plant, and it must 
 feed upon the starch in its seed-leaves 
 until it is strong enough 
 to draw nourishment from the 
 earth. Opening a peanut 
 and/examining the meat, we find it 
 a seed. The part we eat is the 
 seed-leaves, stored with food 
 with which the plant may start 
 on its career. At the point of 
 union of the seed-leaves, the 
 young little plant may be plainly 
 seen. Looking into a squash seed 
 
we find the 
 young plant stored 
 away there, root, leaves, 
 and all. Looking into any 
 " seed we see the young 
 plant waiting for the right 
 conditions of warmth and moisture 
 to wake up and grow into 
 a plant like its parent. 
 Each plant puts itself, as it 
 were, into its seed. Forth from 
 the poppy seed springs the 
 poppy, forth from the pea seed 
 springs the pea, and forth from 
 the morning-glory seed springs the r 
 morning-glory, never any mistake * 
 or any springing of a poppy from 
 a water-melon seed or a water-melon 
 vine from a lily seed. And yet the seed 
 of a white morning-glory may bear 
 a purple blossom, and the 
 

 Flowers. 27 
 
 seed of a red verbena may bear red-and- 
 white blossoms. If we grow white flowers 
 and red flowers of the same species to- 
 gether, their seed will be apt to give us 
 flowers. Our petunia seed 
 <) will not " come true " if two or 
 ore colors are grown to- 
 gether, but the seeds of the white 
 J^ petunias will yield purple and white 
 flowers, or red and white ones. The 
 flowers will in fact be apt to be striped 
 or spotted by the colors of all the petu- 
 nias in the garden. Flowers seem to 
 have some strange influence over each 
 other which causes their seed to inherit 
 the peculiarities of neighboring plants of 
 the same species. In order to understand 
 this strange habit we will pass from the 
 seed, which has thought-matter enough to 
 to last us a lifetime, and will question 
 the pollen. But first we shall be obliged 
 carefully to examine a flower. The morn- 
 ing-glory blossom will answer the pur- 
 pose very well. Its most showy part, the 
 
28 A Song of Life. 
 
 bright-colored bell, or corolla, as it is 
 technically called, surrounds delicate inner 
 organs. The first set of these organs 
 grows fast to the bottom of the corolla, 
 and when the corolla is pulled 
 H\ awa y ^ey come too. They are 
 ythe stamens, and have a delicate 
 white filament, or stem, with a 
 powder box, or anther, at the 
 top. Each anther has two cells, 
 and these cells hold the pollen. When 
 the anther is ripe the cells split open 
 Df| and let the pollen fall out. The pollen 
 [/being the essential part of the. stamen, 
 
 ; the stamens of some kinds of flowers 
 
 .-. 
 
 have no filaments. The pollen every 
 flower must have if the plant is to bear 
 seed, but that is the only part of the 
 stamen that is absolutely necessary. 
 
 When corolla and stamens were pulled 
 away from the morning-glory, but a seem- 
 ingly unimportant part of the flower was 
 left. This central column, however, is 
 
Flowers. 29 
 
 of the greatest value, for it is the pistil, 
 and at the base of the pistil, in its thick, 
 round bottom, is the seed-case, or ovary. 
 A slender white column, the style, rises 
 from the ovary and is topped with a 
 round, ball-like stigma. The ovary 
 and stigma are the necessary parts of 
 the pistil, the style is only a passage- 
 way from one to the other, and 
 some flowers have no styles. Ovary 
 and stigma every flower must have 
 if it is to bear seed. If the morn- 
 ing-glory ovary be. cut across, six 
 little seed-like bodies are seen em- 
 bedded there. These are the ovules, and 
 would one day have been the seeds if 
 the pollen had done its duty and the 
 flower had not been disturbed. But the 
 ovule is not the seed. No ovule alone 
 could become a seed. It would seem 
 as though the plant were not content with 
 what its one life could give, as though it 
 longed to reach out and touch other life 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 \ 
 
 and have the power in that other 
 life added to what it 
 could give its seed- 
 children; and so its 
 ovules were not granted 
 life enough to unfold alone, but lay 
 passive until aroused by the magic touch 
 of other life. 
 
 This other life is the pollen. When 
 the pistil which we may consider the 
 mother-part of the plant, because it 
 cherishes the 'seed-children, or ovules 
 is ripe, the stigma is moist and sticky. 
 The grains of pollen from the . stamen, 
 which we may with justice consider 
 the father-part of the plant, fall against 
 
 ^"> 
 
 f ) } the stigma ; or the pollen from 
 neighboring plants is rubbed against 
 it by bees and other insects going 
 from flower to flower, or is blown 
 against it by the wind. When the 
 tiny pollen-grain touches the sticky 
 
Flowers. 
 
 stigma it is held fast. The pollen-grain, 
 which in most kinds of plants is so small 
 that to see its shape one needs a micro- 
 scope, is nevertheless a sac filled with oil 
 and other substances, and containing two 
 or more very small living bodies. In these 
 living bodies, strange as it may seem, is 
 the life the ovule must add to its own 
 before it can become a seed. In these 
 microscopic atoms, too, is contained the 
 whole idea of the plant that bore 
 the stamen. The idea of the 
 father-plant is there, even to the 
 color of the flowers and their ( 
 odor; but the power to live and 
 
 develop unaided into a plant is 
 not in the pollen. The two lives, 
 that of the pollen and 
 that of the ovule, must 
 unite before either 
 can fulfil its destiny. 
 
 But the pollen-grain 
 is too large to pass 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 through the stigma and work its way 
 down through the loose tissue of the style 
 to the ovary. Contact with the moist 
 stigma has, however, caused it to swell, 
 and soon one part of it is seen dipping 
 down into the stigma like the finger of a 
 glove. This part continues to lengthen, 
 forming a long tube which finds its way 
 down throughfthe style to the ovary. The 
 living essential atoms in the pollen-grain 
 slip down the lengthening tube, and 
 J> when the little tube finally enters 
 the ovary the little living bodies break 
 through the delicate wall of the. tube and 
 enter the ovule. One can see in the cut 
 how it is done in the pistil of the 
 buckwheat, which has three stigmas. 
 In other flowers the process is essen- 
 tially the same. As soon as the pollen 
 atom has joined, or to speak scientifi- 
 cally, fertilized, the ovule, a change takes 
 place. The ovule enlarges and has formed 
 within it the tiny plant we see in the 
 
Flowers. 33 
 
 seed. The ovule, in some wonderful way, 
 contains within its tiny walls the whole 
 idea of the mother-plant. Through it can 
 be transmitted any or every peculiarity of 
 the mother, if the pollen touches it to life. 
 But the pollen can also transmit any 
 peculiarity of the father-plant if the ovule 
 touches it to life. The red verbena has 
 .the red ideal in its ovule and in its pollen. 
 The white one has the white ideal. If a 
 bee, in passing from the red to the white 
 flower, should bear grains of pollen from 
 one to the other, the stigma of the white 
 flower would eagerly receive the pollen of 
 the red; and thus the seed so produced 
 would be rich in color-life, and might 
 bear a flower either red or white or both 
 red and white. 
 
 The power of life seems stronger where 
 new elements join; and for this reason 
 fertilization from another plant, or as the 
 botanists say, cross-fertilization, as a rule 
 produces stronger plants than self-fertiliza- 
 
34 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 tion ; and so keenly is this cross-fertili- 
 zation desired by the flowers that they 
 have evolved many curious devices to 
 bring it about. For instance, 
 'the plant called "Dame Rocket" 
 "ripens the pistils and stamens of 
 the same flower at different times. 
 When the pistil is ripe the anthers ^ 
 are still closed, so that 
 pistil must be fertil- 
 
 . 
 
 ized by. pollen brought by 
 insects hom^m another flower whose an- 
 thers Jflfare ripe. When the an- 
 thers are ripe and. let out 
 the pollen, the pistil 
 in that flower is past 
 its stage of activity and 
 no pollen can affect it. 
 Every one knows of the 
 ingenious contrivance of the 
 orchids to prevent self-fertilization. They 
 have but two stamens, and their pollen- 
 grains are fastened together by threads 
 
Flowers. 35 
 
 like fine spider-web, so that the whole 
 mass of pollen keeps together. The sta- 
 mens are so placed that the pollen cannot 
 fall upon its own stigma, but the honey 
 sac is so situated that when Sir Moth 
 puts his head into Madame Orchid's honey 
 pot he touches the sticky pollen masses 
 and bears them away, one attached to 
 each eye. Being fond of Orchid honey 
 he hurries off to call on another flower, 
 for where one grows more are not far off, 
 and as he finds his way to the nectar sac 
 the pollen on his eye touches the sticky 
 stigma and is left there, while he gets a 
 new supply to take to the next flower. 
 Thus he becomes the bearer of new life, 
 and peoples the woods with future orchids. 
 The pumpkin has settled the manner of 
 fertilization most emphatically. All of the 
 stamens are banished from the blossom 
 that bears the pistil, and no pistil is found 
 in the one that holds the stamens. The 
 pumpkin will be cross-fertilized or not at 
 
36 A Song of Life. 
 
 all. The begonia is sometimes still more 
 exacting, and has all the flowers upon one 
 plant staminate flowers that is, flowers 
 bearing only stamens and all upon an- 
 other plant pistillate flowers. 
 
 Some nut trees have the same habit, and 
 this is why one tree will always have nuts 
 and a companion tree never. Cut down 
 the apparently useless tree and there will 
 be no nuts on its neighbor, for half the 
 life of the nuts came from the nutless tree. 
 Maples and elms have the stamens and 
 pistils in separate flowers. The anthers 
 hang out on long thread-like filaments, 
 dressing the tree in dainty fringe, and 
 pollen is scattered in light abundance on 
 the wind, which blows it from flower 
 to flower. 
 
 The pine-tree pours such a wealth of 
 pollen into the air in trust for its cones, 
 where the seeds lie, that it is carried for 
 miles and forms a yellow scum on the 
 neighboring ponds. The grasses dust the 
 
Flowers. 
 
 37 
 
 air with every breeze that blows. Wher- 
 ever the wind is to act the part of priest 
 
 in the marriage of the flowers 
 amount of pollen is almost in- 
 credible. The bees are 
 better guardians of 
 the plant-life. Indeed 
 bees are the best 
 
 the 
 
 owes 
 its bur- 
 
 d e n of 
 
 fruit to them/^jfe : ^^ffT For unless 
 the its work 
 
 in the apple- blossom there 
 
 will be no^P Dapple, and the wind 
 is a fickle helper. The clover keeps its 
 pollen stored away where the wind can- 
 not reach it, and relies upon the bumble- 
 bee to convey it from flower to flower. 
 Unless a flower is fertilized, it will wither 
 and fall and leave no trace of its existence. 
 The ovule has seldom power to become a 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 seed unaided by the pollen, and it is for 
 the sake- of the seed that the fruit forms, 
 so we owe our apples and peaches and 
 other fruits to the pollen, as well as to 
 the ovary. 
 
 The essential organs, stamens and pis- 
 
 so wonderful 
 
 in 
 
 struct- 
 ure and 
 beautiful 
 
 are tne authors of 
 
 so $'$|!i\" many ingenious contrivances to 
 insure fertilization and the scattering of 
 seed, that one cannot look intelligently 
 into the commonest flower without being 
 filled with admiration. The thistle is 
 a revelation and the burdock a psalm. 
 The ovary of the orange is a globe of 
 nectar ; and the cherry ovary, fortunately 
 for the birds and us, is a rich, juicy 
 
Flowers. 
 
 39 
 
 pulp. The ovaries of the strawberry are 
 perched upon a pyramid which is deli- 
 cious *%*f$^ in flavor and delightful in 
 fra ^^grance. The fruit of the dan- 
 delion flies away on wings 
 ^Xof down. The stamens 
 
 the blue flag are hidden 
 xaway, and the anthers 
 le ^wintergreen open by a 
 little pore in the top of each 
 cell. The mountain laurel has a romance 
 well worth the reading. 
 
 The pollen-grains, often so small that to 
 see them requires a microscope, are of 
 strange and beautiful forms. The musk- 
 plant has them ^wV\ spherical and beau- 
 tifully T ove d.(yLj^ In the star-cucum- 
 ber they are again spherical but markedjji 
 a peculiar manner which makes them 
 different from all other pollen-grains. 
 In the hibiscus we j^V* find again spher- 
 ical pollen-grains, igttwi but covered 
 with little points, ^llpr In the mountain 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 In 
 
 laurel they are like^, several spheres 
 fastened together. In the evenA ing 
 
 primrose they are^ip/ three-sided, 
 the milk-weed they are attached 
 to each other / in masses, like those 
 of the orchid, ^y and form two pear- 
 shaped bodies. j| J| And yet, though each 
 grain of pollen fp |f is full of dormant life, 
 its life responds only to a life akin to its 
 own. The pollen of a hawthorn blossom, 
 active at once in the ovule of any other 
 hawthorn, is powerless upon the stigma of 
 a stranger plant. It cannot fertilize a lily, 
 it cannot fertilize a sweet-pea. -It can 
 continue to live only when in union with 
 its own kind ; so though the verbenas 
 will exchange colors with each other and 
 be all the better for it, they 
 not be modified by any other' 
 of flower. 
 
Flowers. 
 
 -*' 
 
 and the ovules they naturally made use 
 of their knowledge to produce modified 
 forms which should gratify their tastes 
 in ^ various ways. And thus were origi- 
 f ' - nated many rare flowers and fine 
 varieties of berries, grapes, and other 
 fruits. Plant-life, like all other life, is 
 mysterious; and the results of the 
 union of any two plants cannot be 
 foretold. The gardener having 
 one variety of grape, fine 
 in size and color but lack- 
 ing in flavor, may fer- 
 tilize its flowers with 
 pollen from another va- 
 riety, fine in flavor but 
 lacking in color and size. 
 When the vine raised 
 from the new seed bears fruit, the fruit 
 may chance to combine the good qualities 
 of both parents, or it may be so unfor- 
 tunate as to have inherited the bad quali- 
 ties of both. Man, with all his pride of 
 
4 2 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 knowledge, cannot control or even in- 
 fallibly foresee the action of life in that 
 other life, akin to but different from his, 
 the plant-life. 
 
FISHES. 
 
 IN the water as upon the land, 
 life is abundant. The things that 
 live in the sea consider it but air diluted 
 to suit their delicate organs; for the life 
 in them is governed by the same laws 
 that govern life out of the water. The 
 land animal and land plant breathe oxygen 
 diluted with nitrogen. Pure oxygen would 
 intoxicate, consume them, burn them up, 
 as effectually as if they had fallen into 
 a raging furnace. Pure air would intoxi- 
 cate, consume the creatures of the sea; 
 their oxygen must be diluted with nitro- 
 gen, and their air with water. But air, in 
 small quantities, they must have or die ; 
 
44 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 and there is air in the water which the 
 sea things breathe. The 
 
 storm is 
 
 the angel who 
 
 stirs their pool and brings 
 
 life to the inhabitants of - 
 
 the deep. The storms _: 
 and 
 
 ^bodies of 
 water, aerating 
 = them and keeping 
 them fresh and life- 
 - giving. Otherwise the 
 - oceans would be 
 great 
 
 stag- 
 nant masses of 
 death and decay which would speedily put 
 
Fishes. 45 
 
 an end to all the higher forms of life that 
 now exist. But under the storm-purified 
 waves there is carried on a life varied and 
 wonderful. One who loves this water-life 
 has thus told about his friends : - 
 
 " For warriors, lo ! we have the fish 
 known as the goby, who turns quite black 
 with rage when he beholds his prey, and 
 whose turquoise-colored eyes light up with 
 fury as he dashes to the fierce encounter. 
 We have, too, the graceful stickleback, who 
 makes his nest like a bird, waits upon his 
 mistress with all the gentle complaisance 
 of the knight-errant of old, and enters the 
 lists in his uniform of glowing scarlet 
 trimmed with white and green, or deep, 
 deep purple, to do battle for the object 
 of his affections. The stickleback adores 
 the tournament. In the heat of the con- 
 flict his gorgeous colors flash out in- 
 tensely in their brilliance. Defeated, his 
 war-paint fades into the dullest hues, or 
 only flickers changefully up in his dying 
 
46 A Song of Life. 
 
 throes, as if in death he had a dream of 
 victory. 
 
 " For ogres, we have the actiniae, who, 
 garbed in the seductive costume of the 
 gayest flowers, lie in wait for thoughtless 
 victims. Their delicate petals are a thou- 
 sand murderous arms, prepared to grasp all 
 of annelid life that may be tempted to em- 
 brace them, while every pretty crimson dot 
 conceals a poisoned barb, which they pro- 
 ject unerringly as death at passing infusoria. 
 
 "For sentimental performers, we have the 
 sea cucumber and the starfish. Some 
 of the former, when irritated, deliberately 
 commit suicide by expectorating the whole 
 of their intestines, leaving their empty 
 shells behind. Some of the latter, un- 
 der like circumstances, suddenly ex- 
 plode themselves into fragments, as 
 though filled with gunpowder, and . 
 touched off by electricity. 
 
Fisbes. 47 
 
 For beauties, we have the sea mouse, 
 clothed in silken hair, and glittering in all 
 the iridescent colors of the butterfly; we 
 have the sea slug, covered with gem-like 
 specks that may well pass muster for 
 sapphires and emeralds ; we have the min- 
 now, the dandy of his tribe, with his vest 
 of roses and his coat of olive green. 
 
 " For Jeremy Diddlers, we have the 
 hermit crab, who pilfers a whelp shell for 
 his residence; we have the nereis, who 
 attaches himself, perdu, to the crab's door- 
 way, and gourmandizes on all the food he 
 can seize as it enters; and we have the 
 cloak anemone, which insidiously mantles 
 the two, and then devours all it can ab- 
 stract from the mouths of both. To this 
 category we might add the phyllodoce, 
 who turn themselves inside out like a 
 stocking, and when the inverted stomachs 
 fill with passing pabulum, restore the 
 sated organs to their original position. 
 
 "The comic actors on this stage of life 
 
4 8 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 are too multitudinous for detail. The 
 climbing frog and climbing crab are gym- 
 <=s^ -^ \ nasts of the first order; the 
 rednose carries a natural 
 syringe, with which he 
 squirts water upon all who incon- 
 venience him ; the caddis worm 
 sports a portable domicile of sticks 
 and stones; the newt is alive. with 
 graceful evolutions, full of merry twists 
 and laughable eccentricities." 
 
 Those who have visited the 
 fish at home that is to say, 
 have stood before the glass tanks 
 of a sea aquarium and watched their 
 every-day life will gladly place 
 them close to the flowers in thought 
 and affection. 
 There goes a rounded, 
 quis ^^ itely curved 
 fellow, 
 
Fishes. 49 
 
 smaller than the palm of your hand and 
 colored like mother-of-pearl. Suspended 
 in the pure sea-water, he is worthy a place 
 among Neptune's crown jewels ; and when 
 he .moves words cannot be found to de- 
 scribe the beauty of his undulations. Near 
 him is an Oriental aristocrat, brilliant as an 
 ocean sunset, and with long, soft, float- 
 ing fins and tail like the drapery of an 
 Egyptian princess. The flowers are not 
 more brilliant in color or more varied in 
 form than are the fish in the various 
 tanks. 
 
 Many, however, are more curious than 
 beautiful, and odder forms than have come 
 out of the sea to finish their lives in the 
 aquarium never passed through an x opium- 
 eater's dream. 
 
 "You strange, astonished -looking-, 
 
 angle-faced, 
 
 Dreary -mouthed, gaping wretches 
 of the sea ! " 
 
 says Leigh Hunt. 
 
50 A Song of Life. 
 
 But the sea, the splendid, invigorating 
 salt sea, does not hold all the fishes. They 
 have gone up the streams into the land, 
 and have peopled the lakes and ponds, 
 wherever the conditions for fish-life were 
 favorable. Every one has known, as a 
 child, the minnows in the brooks, flashes 
 of silver easy to catch; and also that bit 
 of brightness in the ponds, rightly named 
 the sunfish. The catfish, too, homely and 
 ugly to deal with, because of his "horns," 
 has made a lasting impression upon most 
 country boys and girls. 
 
 Strange as the cold, unlifelike - life of 
 the fishes may seem to our different way 
 of looking at life, they are true animals; 
 and unlike the flowers, which are able 
 to exist upon air and earth, demand for 
 their A //I nourishment food which is 
 the aLw result of some other life. In 
 fact, their appetite for living 
 ^food is something to be 
 regarded with amazement 
 
Fishes. 5 T 
 
 1 consternation by creatures like 
 ourselves, unable to look at can- 
 nibalism and the eating of live 
 victims from the fish's point 
 of view. 
 
 They do not absorb nutriment over 
 the whole surface of the body, as is the 
 dainty habit of the flowers, but have a 
 distinct receptacle for their struggling 
 meals, which they pursue and capture and 
 consign to a laboratory which quickly re- 
 duces them to an elementarv form of 
 animal substance; for in the stomach of 
 the fish its food is saturated with diges- 
 tive fluids which change it into a liquid 
 material which can be dissolved and ab- 
 sorbed into the blood. The blood c 
 ries the new material to all parts ^ 
 the body, and each tissue, as this 
 liquid food hurries along, 
 takes from it the materials 
 it needs to build or rebuild; 
 so ultimately the fish disposes/ 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 of its food in the same way that the plant 
 does, only the plant-food, being already in 
 a soluble state, does not need the services 
 of a stomach. 
 
 The breathing of the fish, too, is the 
 same as that of the plant, except in the 
 smaller amount of surface which in 
 the fish serves the purpose of 
 lungs. No doubt the fish 
 takes in oxygen and casts out 
 carbonic acid gas over the whole 
 surface of its body, as does the 
 plant ; but in the fish certain cells 
 are much more active in that re- 
 spect than are any others ; and these cells 
 are situated in the gills, where the air- 
 laden water constantly bathes them. The 
 oxygen in the air is seized by these gill- 
 cells, and passed along to the tissue that 
 needs it, while the carbonic acid gas, 
 which has been formed by the chemical 
 changes going on in the animal, is sent 
 by the gill-cells out into the water. 
 
Fishes. 53 
 
 Interesting as pulling fish out of the 
 water, with a hook in their gills and death 
 in their hearts, is found to be by some, it 
 is nothing compared to the delight of 
 watching them at home, full of life, 
 familiar yet strange life, doing the every- 
 day acts of feeding and breathing that 
 we do, and moving with an inexpres- 
 sible charm, akin to that of flying 
 through the cool waters. 
 
 "The fish is swift, small -needing, 
 
 vague yet clear, 
 A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped 
 
 in round waves, 
 
 Quickened with touches of trans- 
 porting fear," 
 
 says Leigh Hunt, doing exquisite justice 
 to his now dainty subject. 
 
 And life is in the fish. Life, whatever 
 that is, resides in these creatures, which 
 are more like animated crystals than things 
 of flesh and blood. And life in them re- 
 news itself as it does in the flower. 
 
54 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 In the Wisconsin lakes live numbers of 
 black bass. They are not so handsome as 
 the scup or the golden perch, but are easy 
 to watch, and are full of affection for their 
 offspring. Early in the spring, inside the 
 female bass, as at the right season is true 
 of all female fish, there lay two long, broad 
 bags of tiny eggs, one in each side of the 
 body. During the winter, both eggs and 
 bags were so small that they were scarcely 
 noticeable; but as spring came, and the sun 
 warmed and brightened the j water, and on 
 all sides joy in the nev\ 
 year broke forth, lo ! life 
 wo.nderful awakened in 
 well, their eggs be 
 
 grow. TheyW 
 ' th all other 1 * 1 
 life, 
 both 
 
 life of the 
 new and 
 
Fishes. 55 
 
 plant and animal, responded joyfully to the 
 warm caress of spring. In the swamps 
 the willow-stems grew crimson and gold, 
 showers of catkins swung from the alders, 
 and the silver "pussies" peeped from their 
 nut-brown coats. All over the fields the 
 buds grew large upon the trees and the 
 dry twigs changed and looked alive, as a 
 delicate indefinable color crept over them. 
 Not a leaf to be seen, yet all Nature glowed 
 in anticipation of the joyous life soon 
 to unfold. And everywhere the fish, too, 
 leaped for joy, and their eggs grew. In 
 the Northern lakes the bass, with number- 
 less fresh-water companions, felt the stir- 
 ring of new life. Everywhere in the ponds 
 the little fish were filled with the joy of 
 existence. At the great river mouths, 
 where icy water sweeps from the regions 
 of snow out into the open sea, the salmon 
 leaped up the cold current, eager for the 
 fresh-water pools, where their offspring 
 were to come to a life of their own. Out 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 in the Gulf Stream the young eggs of the 
 skate took shape and became the purses 
 with clinging tendrils to anchor the 
 quaint cradle with its baby to the 
 weeds at the bottom of the sea. 
 Everywhere in the sea, the rivers, 
 the lakes, and little ponds the 
 fish had felt the stirring of life and 
 the eggs grew. They grew until, in 
 the ordinary fish, they filled a large 
 part of the body cavity. The sac which 
 holds these flower-seeds of the deep is the 
 ovary, and the eggs themselves the ova. 
 The eggs grow until they are ripe and 
 ready to be deposited in the water. But 
 these flower-seeds, these ova, are in them- 
 selves incomplete; they have not enough 
 of life to perfect the future 
 fish ; they, like the true flow- 
 need the touch of other life, 
 the adding of new power to their 
 own possibilities. And this life,-like that in 
 the pollen of the flowers, grows as the eggs 
 
Fishes. 
 
 57 
 
 grow, that it may be ready, 
 when the time comes, to join 
 f ] them. As spring draws near, 
 f I A/i male fish, too, feels the mys- 
 |/tery of life stirring within him. 
 He also has sacs like the egg sacs, 
 but they are filled with the other half 
 of the egg-life, the pollen, as we should 
 call it if it were a flower, the fertiliz- 
 ing fluid since it is a fish. This fer- 
 tilizing fluid contains numberless minute 
 living bodies, transparent as glass, delicately 
 formed, full of motion and beautiful to 
 look at, though they are so small as to 
 be invisible except through the microscope. 
 During the winter these sacs, like the 
 ovaries, were small; but they grew with 
 the spring, and the owner of them was 
 filled with the joy of new life that moved 
 in him as well as in the buds and twigs. 
 And in the Northern lakes a time came 
 when the bass prepared nests for their 
 young. Two by two they swam away 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 to a quiet place in the clear water; and 
 each pair having selected a smooth spot 
 on the bottom of the pond, they carefully 
 fanned away all small sticks and other 
 rubbish with their fins, and in 
 their mouths carried away the little 
 stones^ until each pair had formed upon 
 the dark bottom of the pond a- round 
 ^ ^Bfcl white floor, as clean as though 
 it had been swept. Into these 
 nests the eggs were deposited. As soon as 
 they were laid in the sand by the mother, 
 the* other fish poured over them the fertiliz- 
 ing fluid; and when the tiny living par- 
 ticles of this wonderful fluid had touched 
 the eggs, lo ! the eggs became living be- 
 ings. The new presence aroused them from 
 inactivity. They began to grow, and were 
 in time transformed into myriads of 
 little bass. And thus do the eggs 
 and fertilizing principle of all 
 fish join to produce new life. 
 To the young fish come 
 
Fishes. 
 
 59 
 
 not only the possibilities from its mother's 
 life, but also the possibilities from its 
 father's life. In the tiny egg was con- 
 tained the whole idea of the mother fish. 
 In the tiny living atom in the fertilizing 
 principle was contained the whole idea of 
 the father fish. The young fish has thus 
 much opportunity for variety, but the 
 power to vary is confined within certain 
 strict limits. The young bass may be un- 
 like any other bass, but he must possess 
 the characteristics which distinguish the 
 bass family. He may be himself, 
 must keep within the limits of 
 basshood; he cannot share the 
 characteristics of the eel or cod 
 or any other species of fish. 
 Like the pollen, which can fertil 
 only its own kind, the fishj can fertilize 
 only the eggs of its Jl own specie^ 
 Each fish is true to^CTk his kind, 
 and if some profligate fj3S3j\ were to be 
 untrue to his raceAi\Jl\he would 
 
6o A Song of Life. 
 
 but waste his vital power, for no egg 
 will grow if fertilized by an alien. Eel 
 and bass cannot mingle, nor can cod and 
 pike. He who stocks his pond with trout 
 is quite sure as to what the result will be. 
 
 Having laid and fertilized the eggs, the 
 parent bass do not, as many fish do, desert 
 their offspring. They swim about the nest, 
 or hover over it, until the young are 
 hatched and grown large enough to care 
 for themselves. It is an edifying sight to 
 see the parent fish surrounded by a black 
 cloud of tiny creatures to whom he teaches 
 the art of getting a living. 
 
 Fish are as prolific as flowers. Some- 
 times millions of eggs come from one 
 ovary. One pair of shad and their offspring 
 could fill the Atlantic ocean from^3fe brim 
 to brim in a few years, if none $ were 
 destroyed. But many^^ #5s*jisb 
 are cannibals, and into 
 their ever-ready stom- 
 achs the superfluous life 
 
Fishes. 
 
 61 
 
 is received, and many little fish are thus 
 converted into material for one big fish. 
 
 One cannot help wondering what would 
 happen if the big fish thus nourished were 
 to assimilate the feelings as well as the 
 bodies of the little fish so heartlessly 
 consumed. 
 
FROGS. 
 
 COMEWHAT higher than the fish 
 in the scale of life is the frog. Al- 
 though he begins life as a fish, and 
 in the tadpole state breathes by gills, 
 he soon discards the water-diluted air 
 of the pond, and with perfect lungs/ 
 boldly inhales the pure air of the 
 upper world. His life as a tad- \ 
 pole, although so fish-like, is much ^^ in- 
 ferior to true fish life ; tor though the fish 
 has not the perfect lung, he has a modifi- 
 cation of it which he , fills 
 
6 4 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 with air, not for breathing purposes, but 
 as an air-sac to make him float like a 
 bubble in the water. Will he rise to the 
 surface? he inflates the air-bladder. Will 
 * he sink to the bottom ? he compresses the 
 air-bladder. But in the frog the air-blad- 
 \ der changes into the lungs, and is never 
 the delicate balloon which floats the fish 
 in aqueous space. When the frog's lungs 
 are perfected, his gills close and he for- 
 ever abandons fish-life, though being 
 a cold-blooded creature he needs 
 comparatively little air, and delights to 
 return to his childhood's home 'in the 
 bottom of the pond. But although he 
 can stay under water for a long time, 
 he is obliged to hold his breath while 
 there, and when he would breathe must 
 come to the surface^ so - It * 
 
 possible to drown 
 holding him under water. 
 
 As a feeder the 
 relies upon animal life, which e^l \ex- 
 
Frogs. 
 
 pertly seizes with a tongue fastened by the 
 wrong end, as compared with our tongues. 
 He is a certain marksman, and when he 
 aims at an insect the chances are that the 
 insect will enter his stomach and be there 
 speedily changed into a new form of ani- 
 mal life. 
 
 Although from the moment the gills 
 disappear the frog is a true land animal 
 he is obliged, on account of the fish-like 
 character of his young, to lay his eggs in 
 the water. For this purpose the frogs 
 enter the pools in early spring. The sur- 
 face of every country pond swarms with 
 the bright-eyed little creatures. They have 
 from a .. .^ s ~~->> ^ 
 
66 A Song of Life. 
 
 to find the spring about them and within 
 them. Life has suddenly become abundant 
 and joyous. Their sluggish blood flows 
 faster, their hearts beat quicker ; they leap, 
 they swim, they swell out their throats 
 and call to each other in various keys. 
 The toads are with them, and the pretty 
 tree-frogs that change their color to suit 
 their emotions. And all are rapturously 
 screaming. Their voices are not musical, 
 according to man's standard, but seem to 
 afford great satisfaction to the performers 
 in the shrill orchestra of the swamps, who 
 thus give vent to the flood of 'life that 
 sweeps through them after the still, icy 
 winter. 
 
 As though the new spring-life were too 
 plentiful to find room in the frogs and 
 toads already existing, it calls for more 
 frogs and toads; and new creatures are 
 born to share the extra vitality. Like the 
 flowers and the fish, the frogs, too, give 
 forth new life. Within them, too, the 
 
Frogs. 
 
 67 
 
 miracle is performed. The tiny eggs of 
 the one wake up and begin to grow. The 
 tiny living bodies in the fertilizing princi- 
 ple of the other also wake up and begin 
 to grow. But higher life is better guard- 
 ed, because less prolific. The frog and 
 the toad lay but few eggs as compared 
 with the fish. Fish eggs may drop under 
 the stones or float away, and so escape 
 the vital touch of the fertilizing principle. 
 There are so many that numbers may be 
 lost and yet enough remain to continue 
 the family. Not so with the frog family. 
 No egg may be lost. So we find that 
 the eggs of the frog are not dropped 
 singly, like so many shot, but are bound 
 together by a colorless, transparent, jelly- 
 iL like substance, much like 
 that found in the morning- 
 glory seed, and which like 
 that supplies nourishment 
 to the young life, for 
 the tadpole feeds 
 
68 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 upon it until he is able to seek other food. 
 Moreover, instinct has taught the frog the 
 need of extreme caution in the act of fer- 
 tilization. Every egg must be fertilized. 
 As the time draws near for the dropping 
 of the few eggs into the water, the male 
 frog so places himself that the moment 
 the eggs are being laid, he pours over 
 them, one by one, as they fall into the 
 water, the fertilizing fluid. 
 
 And thus the mystery of life is again 
 repeated. The union of the living, mi- 
 croscopic bodies of 
 fertilizing principle with 
 laid egg is followed by the growth of 
 the two elements into a living creature, 
 able to eat, to breathe,- to -see, to feel. 
 In some unknown way the atom of fer- 
 tilizing principle seems to have con- 
 the whole life of the father- 
 for it can give to his sons 
 and daughters any of 
 his peculiarities, either 
 
Frogs. 69 
 
 of color, form, motion, or disposition ; and 
 the tiny egg seems to have contained the 
 whole life of the mother-frog, and can 
 give to her sons and daughters any of 
 her peculiarities ; though, as is true of all 
 inheritance, the tadpoles, as the young 
 frogs are called, share the natures of both 
 parents, inheriting some peculiarities from 
 the father and others from the mother. 
 
 But, like other life, although the frogs 
 may vary a good deal within frog limits, 
 none of them can escape their own limits 
 and enter into those of any other life. 
 Once a frog, always a frog ; and no frog- 
 egg may hope to develop into a turtle, 
 or a bird, or anything but a frog. The 
 life in the fertilizing principle of the frog 
 is sacred to frog eggs, and is lifeless in 
 contact with any other. 
 
 Our common frogs, like many of the 
 fishes, do not trouble themselves about 
 the fate of their eggs after they are care- 
 fully laid in a safe place. They trust 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 Mother Nature to see the little tadpoles 
 safely through the perils of childhood, to 
 help them change their dresses and get 
 rid of their tails, and cut, not their teeth, 
 but their arms and legs. 
 
 In Venezuela, however, there dwells a 
 frog with well developed maternal instinct. 
 The mothers have .pockets on their backs, 
 not for their own convenience, but as 
 cradles for their babies. The fathers put 
 the fertilized eggs into the pockets of 
 the k mothers ; and there they remain, well 
 guav rded, until the young are able to 
 
 care for themselves. 
 
BIRDS. 
 
 TTO talk intelligently of birds, one needs 
 to be a bird or an angel. One who 
 moves always upon the surface of the 
 earth, unable to hang suspended above it 
 for even an inch of space, cannot conceive 
 of what it is to be a bird with wings. 
 All animals, and plants too, live on air; 
 but their relation to it is commonplace, 
 ignoble, compared to the relation between 
 the birds and the air. One is tempted to 
 assert that birds are air, they are so full 
 of it. Michelet, the bird's lover, thus 
 speaks of it:- 
 
 'But this faculty, this rapid in- 
 halation or expulsion of air, . . . 
 does it proceed? From an 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 unique, unheard-of power of respiration. 
 The man who should inhale a similar 
 quantity of air at one breath would be 
 suffocated. The bird's elastic and pow- 
 erful lung quaffs it, grows full of it, 
 grows intoxicated with vigor and delight, 
 and pours it abundantly into its aerial 
 cells. Each aspiration is renewed, second 
 after second, withN^Jtegp^^ ' tremend- 
 ous rapidity. The blood, cease- 
 lessly vivified with freslyXair,/ supplies\ 
 
 cle 
 
 jnexhaust 
 ihich no 
 f being 
 
 'ith that 
 ible energy 
 
 possesses, and 
 
 ^/hich belongs only to the 
 "elements." 
 
 ,fish swims in the 
 sea, the bird swims in the 
 air, Tol|j|L propel it through space 
 it h/as a winf^Lpf rare mechanism, to 
 whjfich^/ Michemlet does honor. Speak- 
 ing of the% wing of the frigate- 
 bird, he says: 
 
Birds. 
 
 ~"S 
 
 "The instrument acts so directly 
 
 73 
 
 on the mover, the oar on 
 
 rower, and unites with him so per-"\ 
 
 fectly, that the impetuous frigate-bird *^ 
 
 swe'eps along at the rate of eighty \x 
 
 leagues an hour, five 
 
 six times 
 
 rapid 
 trains, out- 
 
 r stripping the hurricane, and with no 
 ival but the lightning." 
 And every one knows of the equally 
 marvellous vibrations of the humming- 
 bird's wings, though few understand the 
 tremendous muscular power such vibration 
 expresses. The bird is concentrated vitality. 
 In no other creature is life so like a flame. 
 He seeks in his food fuel to feed the flame, 
 and we find him eating seeds, the part 
 of the plant where most nutrition, most 
 vitality is stored ; or he takes fruits, the 
 
74 A Song of Life. 
 
 best product of the plant next to the 
 seed; or he regales himself upon insects, 
 which, next to himself, contain the fiercest 
 heat of life. He will not feed upon the 
 grass-blades, or coarser fibres of vegetable 
 life ; he takes the heart, the life of the 
 plant, for his food. 
 
 Where destined to consume decaying 
 animal matter, the bird has a power of 
 digestion as wonderful as is his power of 
 flight; and there is seemingly no limit to 
 the amount of foul nutrition the vulture 
 can convert, in the intense laboratories of 
 crop and gizzard, into the strong 'fibre of 
 his body. 
 
 The bird is so full of life that ceaseless 
 activity is the consequence, and the over- 
 plus vitality impels him to violent contests 
 with his fellow birds. The sparrow, oblivi- 
 ous to everything but the rage that ani- 
 mates him, will sometimes allow 
 himself to be caught rather than let 
 go his hold on his hated rival. The 
 
Birds. 75 
 
 little king-bird will boldly attack and per- 
 sistently worry the eagle or owl. A lion 
 is not as fierce as a humming-bird, nor as 
 ready to fight against odds. 
 
 And there is with the birds, as with all 
 other life, a time of intensest vitality, a 
 hen life, from its very fulness, 
 creates new life to succeed its de- 
 cline. As spring colors the earth, 
 birds sing aloud; their glad- 
 ness bursts forth from tree and hedge and 
 fence-top, from swamp and hillock ; it rises 
 from the earth, it falls from heaven, it 
 flies on swift bright wings. It is the life 
 which overflows from every bird, for the 
 bird which only croaks or squawks at other 
 times makes music in the spring. The 
 new life-current is so strong that not 
 even the swift wings can fully ^express 
 it; it bursts forth in tones \//' 1 of 
 transport. The vitality is sol?v /in 
 tense that the very plumage 
 glows. Even though it be" 
 
76 A Song of Life. 
 
 or black it shines with a new light, and 
 in many birds, for a brief time, flashes 
 forth in gorgeous brilliancy of color. Joy- 
 ous indeed is the life of the birds in the 
 springtime. Space is their dwelling-place 
 and color their heritage, and how dreary 
 earth would be without them! A world 
 without birds, meadows without bob-o- 
 links, hedges without thrushes, skies with- 
 out swallows, door-yards 
 without robins and blue- 
 birds, their color, motion,' 
 music, missing! 
 
 But the overflow of life in the 
 springtime has a meaning full of 
 hope for the future. New birds are to 
 be. The exuberant vitality is a dowry for 
 the next generation. The life that is, is 
 about to produce other life ; and all the 
 joyous vitality finally centres about that 
 one point. With the beautiful spring 
 awakening there awoke a new life in each 
 bird. In one the tiny egg began to grow, 
 
Birds. 77 
 
 in the other the fertilizing principle to 
 develop. 
 
 But this strange, sweet life of the bird 
 is different from all else we have con- 
 sidered. It is more like our f( ^v 
 own. There is red, hot p 
 blood; there is a highly /> 
 complicated mechanism of 
 form ; and more than all, a quick 
 intelligence, which places the bird 
 high up in the scale of animal^ life. 
 The frog's eggs were more precious than 
 those of the fish, because of the more 
 complex life of the frog and consequent 
 smaller number of eggs; the bird's eggs 
 are far more precious still. The simple 
 flower lays its countless eggs; the simple 
 fish also lays countless eggs; the less sim- 
 ple frog lays fewer eggs ; and the bird, less 
 simple yet, lays but few, often at the end 
 of the laying season having but four or 
 five. And the life in the bird's egg, how 
 complex it is; how marvellous the power 
 
78 A Song of Life. 
 
 that converts the formless substance into 
 this complicated, living creature 1 
 
 How great the planning to produce the 
 perfect bird, all from an egg and an 
 atom of fertilizing fluid! And when the 
 young bird comes, how helpless it is, un- 
 able to do aught but open its mouth for 
 food! The care of it is something prodi- 
 gious, and begins long before it leaves the 
 mother's body. The fish and frogs drop 
 their eggs into the water, where they are 
 fertilized in the simplest manner. The 
 bird builds a nest and sits upon her eggs, 
 supplying warmth from her body until the 
 young come forth. This sitting upon the 
 egg makes necessary a protection to the 
 delicate contents. Were the bird's eggs 
 jelly-like, as are those of the fish and 
 frog, they would soon be crushed and 
 destroyed; but they come forth provided 
 with a hard, firm shell of lime, porous to 
 let in the air for even the chick in the 
 egg must have air but impervious to 
 
Birds. 
 
 79 
 
 liquids. Thus they would seem to be 
 protected against life itself, against the 
 fertilizing fluid, for that cannot penetrate 
 the shell. But there is a time in the his- 
 tory of the egg when it has no shell. 
 The bird's ovaries are on either side of 
 the body, and are filled with tiny, soft 
 eggs, not so large as a pin's head. These 
 eggs grow one at a time, instead of all 
 together, as in the fish and frog. As an 
 egg grows, it becomes separated from the 
 other eggs in the ovary and slides down 
 a tube leading from the ovary to the outer 
 world ; but it has no shell. And now is 
 the time for the fertilizing fluid to do its 
 work. Instinct again provides for the new 
 life, and the male bird deposits the fertiliz- 
 ing fluid where the shelless egg lies ready 
 for it. As the egg /^//^proceeds on its 
 
 ^r /X 
 
 journey it become^^^/coated with a 
 covering of lime^^^^^^^^until the hard, 
 firm shell i>p||ife|r^loses, not 
 
 the egg 
 
 &%?g3^ 
 
 TTWTVWfcST*^ 
 
8o A Song of Life. 
 
 alone, but the vital spark of ,the fertilizing 
 fluid as well, holding these two wondrous 
 elements bound in its close embrace, until 
 they burst it asunder, and marvel of 
 marvels emerge from the formless egg- 
 mass, a bird! 
 
 One after the other the eggs grow, are 
 fertilized, receive the shell, and are laid. 
 Then comes the long and trying period \ 
 of incubation, or hatching. //The 
 bird must sit, day afterl^^^^day, upon 
 the changing eggs. C^^Scarcely a mo- 
 ment can they be left, for a chill might 
 prove fatal to the life of the forming birds. 
 To no animal can a long period of en- 
 forced rest be so trying as to a bird, with 
 its quick-flowing, hot blood, its impetu- 
 ously throbbing heart, and its love of 
 activity. Why, then, does it do this? 
 Every mother knows ; and Michelet, him- 
 self a sort of human bird, judging from 
 his tender knowledge of all that touches 
 bird-life, has told it. He is talking of 
 the egg when he says, 
 
if. Birds. 8 1 
 
 j?rV j 
 
 v " What is it ? I know not ; but 
 she knows well, yonder trembling 
 /'? MS creature who with outstretched wings 
 
 fx^embraces and matures it with her 
 warmth; she who until now the free 
 /f # 
 
 gr queen of the air, lived at her own wild 
 will, and suddenly fettered, sits motionless 
 on that mute object which one would call 
 a stone, and which as yet gives forth no 
 sign of life. . . . 
 
 " Yes/ that mother knows and sees dis- 
 tinctly by means of the penetration and 
 clairvoyance of love. Through the thick, 
 calcareous shell where your rude hand per- 
 ceives nothing, she feels by a delicate tact 
 the mysterious being which she nourishes 
 and forms. It is this feeling which sus- 
 tains her through the ^ard\ x uous labor 
 of incubation, during 
 protracted captivity. She^^jgbk CJ ^>^\( 
 sees it, delicate and /raftcharmP^, ^ 
 ing in its soft down /^T^," 
 of infancy, and she'" 
 
82 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 predicts with the vision oi hope that it 
 will be vigorous and bold, when with out- 
 spread wings, it shall eye the sun and 
 breast the storm. 
 
 "A delightful spectacle, 
 even more sublime than s3as ^Sl| delight- 
 ful. Let us be modest here. With us the 
 mother loves that which stirs in her 
 bosom, that which she touches, clasps, 
 enfolds in assured possession ; she 
 loves the reality, certain, agitated, 
 and moving, which responds to her 
 own movements. But th'is one 
 loves the future and the unknown ; 
 her heart beats solitarily, and noth- 
 ing as yet responds to its pulsa- 
 tions. Yet is not her love the less 
 intense; she devotes herself and 
 suffers unto death for her dream and 
 her faith." 
 
 What a tribute is this to the unself- 
 ish, trusting love of the birdl It would 
 
Birds. 83 
 
 seem that its power to love is as 
 great as its marvellous vitality. 
 
 All are familiar with the family life of 
 the birds ; all know of the tireless devotion 
 and jealous care of both parents during 
 the infancy of the young. All know of 
 the fearless manner in which the parent- 
 bird defends its nest, risking its own 
 life rather than desert its beloved. When 
 danger threatens, its parental love flames 
 forth with a fury that stifles every other 
 emotion. Its own safety is forgotten. It 
 forgets that it is feeble. 
 
 " But how help them ? It can do nothing 
 but remain at its post and die; it cannot 
 fly away, for its love has broken its wings." 
 
 All have watched the demure little mo- 
 ther industriously assisting her busy mate 
 in caring for the family. Bright wings 
 do hard work then. 
 
 And in the nest each 
 young bird matures 
 into a being 
 
8 4 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 like both parents and like neither. Within 
 each egg was wonderfully concealed all the 
 possibilities of the mother-bird. With- 
 
 1 . 
 
 in each microscopic 
 atom of the fer-/ 
 
 more wonerfully 
 den the 
 sibilities of 
 
 bird, his shape, his olor, hisV / 
 motions, his song were j*^there. How' 
 was that song of his re- 
 membered by a micro- 
 scopic atom and handed^^^clown to his 
 sons, so that when they stood up to 
 sing, out poured the same melody? Even 
 though the young bird were exiled, so 
 that he never heard his father's song, or 
 the song of other birds of his kind, yet 
 an hour would come when the impulse 
 
Birds. 
 
 to sing would move him, and forth would 
 burst the old strangely remembered but 
 never heard melody. 
 
 The law that ruled the flower-life and 
 the fish-life and the frog-life rules 
 also the bird-life, and indeed, all 
 other life there is on earth. A univer- 
 sal law has decreed that the flower- 
 father, the fish-father, the frog- 
 father, every father shall live again in 
 the microscopic particle of fertilizing prin- 
 ciple ; it has decreed that every mother shall 
 live again in the tiny cell we call the egg ; 
 it has decreed that these minute particles 
 shall retain the most perfect stamp of their 
 owners, be able to transmit 
 
 any power^^the owner may posses^. 
 
1 
 
 THE END 
 AND THE BEGINNING. 
 
 DURELY physical vitality reaches its climax 
 in the bird. Such intensity of life and 
 joy we find nowhere else; it throbs in 
 every atom of the hot little body, it per- 
 forms prodigious feats of flight, it escapes 
 in song so loud and long that no other 
 creature could stand an equal strain. 
 Think of the amount of air set in vibra- 
 tion by a wood-thrush or mocking-bird 
 during its prolonged solo, and then think 
 of the size of the organs that do it. Re- 
 call the form of the song-sparrow on the 
 topmost bough of some tree, head thrown 
 back, body quivering, every muscle con- 
 tracted, while a loud and prolonged melody 
 
88 A Song of Life. 
 
 pours from the atom of intense life. No 
 other creature can enter the lists of pure 
 physical life with the bird; there it is 
 without peer. 
 
 What is left for the creature who, in the 
 course of development, must surpass it? 
 The bird has reached the v 
 of physical existence, thewk 
 next form of life advances /^ <f 
 
 ./ ***. J 
 
 farther toward an ^T \>- 
 a which is more than physical. 
 jj c\ Above the bird and at the top of ( \ 
 
 1 1 **/ V 
 
 0P animal life stands the mammal, the 
 wonderful creature that feeds its 
 -young with miik manufactured 
 in its^f own body, as though it could 
 not trust to less carefully prepared or 
 more uncertain supplies to nourish the 
 new life for which it is responsible. In 
 the cow and the goat all are familiar with 
 the milk-giving animals, or mammals, as 
 they are called, and which embrace most 
 of the four-legged and the highest forms of 
 
The End and the Beginning. 89 
 
 the two-legged animals. From the great 
 elephant and fierce lion to the tiny mouse 
 and frisky squirrel we find them. In its 
 power of breathing, the mammal falls 
 short of the bird; its blood is not so hot, 
 and does not flow so fast; its food, in 
 the adult state, is less concentrated, more 
 crude than is that of most birds; and yet 
 somewhere in its creation a new note has 
 been struck, a new being has been formed 
 which is as much higher above the bird 
 as the bird is above the sluggish, stupid, 
 cold-blooded reptile. A type has appeared 
 which finds its highest expression in hu- 
 man life, for man himself is the crown of 
 the mammal. To the less intense physical 
 life is united a higher development of the 
 mind-life. 
 
 This mind-life dawns low down in the 
 animal kingdom, but not until the higher 
 mammals were reached did it give a hint 
 of the possibilities it contained, and which 
 in man were to reach such marvellous re- 
 
90 A Song of Life. 
 
 suits. The bird may stand at the summit 
 of physical life, man stands at the summit 
 of mental life. The vitality which creates 
 a great thought is more wonderful than 
 that which propels the frigate-bird through 
 the air. Man's wings are in his brain ; he 
 can outfly the wind, electricity cannot 
 girt the globe quicker than his thought. 
 The farthest star is not so far but that 
 his mind can wing its way through the 
 illimitable space and alight there. 
 
 And from his high position man gets the 
 first dim glimpses of a still higher state. 
 Having reached the summit of earthly pos- 
 sibilities he finds himself at the borderland 
 of another life. Like the plant, which is 
 joined to the lifeless mineral on one side 
 and just touches the warm animal vitality 
 on the other, he is joined to the crude 
 animal life on one side and just touches 
 the dim mystery of the spirit life on the 
 other. He catches brief glimpses of a life 
 of blinding possibilities, which cast over 
 
The End and the Beginning. 91 
 
 his prosaic, every-day life on earth a help- 
 ful glow. 
 
 And this wonderful spirit of man is 
 lodged in a body whose complexity sur- 
 passes that of all other animals. Although 
 more active, even the bird is less complex ; 
 and its wing, wonderful as it is, cannot 
 compare in structure with the hand of 
 man. The human hand alone, with its 
 delicacy of touch and its ingenious struc- 
 ture which enables it to make thousands 
 of different movements, is enough to make 
 its possessor master of the world. 
 
 We have observed how, as the creature 
 becomes more complex, its reproduction be- 
 comes a matter of greater moment. The 
 young bird-life is jealously guarded, and 
 parental love is strong in 
 bird heart. But there 
 is an ascending scale 
 of love in Naty<^ure for her 
 children; andy^V^while she 
 ingeniously -. j A protects 
 
92 A Song of Life. 
 
 her bird-life, she exhausts device in caring 
 for her noblest offspring, the mammal. 
 
 The mammalian mother is united to her 
 child by peculiar and all-powerful bonds. 
 She literally shares her life with it. Hers 
 is the perfect motherhood, and her love 
 for her child pales every other passion. 
 There are among the lower animals parents 
 that desert their young, or deliver them 
 over to the care of strangers. Among 
 birds there are species that lay their eggs 
 in other birds' nests, and take no further 
 thought of them. There is nothing like 
 this in mammalian life. In its' whole 
 range there is no mother that deserts her 
 child. The life of mother and child are 
 so intimately connected that neither can 
 exist without the other. The motherhood 
 of mammalian life is the most sacred thing 
 in physical existence. The very food of 
 the young animal is part of its mother's 
 life and is formed within her body. No 
 other food is so sufficient and so concen- 
 
The End and the Beginning. 93 
 
 trated. It is manufactured in a laboratory 
 whose secrets have never been discovered. 
 We analyze milk and know what it is made 
 of, but nowhere else in natx \ure, or 
 through artificial means, 
 can we get even the in- 
 gredients for this per- 
 fect food. No other fat 
 is like butter, no other albu- 
 minous matter is like cheese, 
 no other sugar is like sugar 
 of milk. 
 
 And what is the origin of 
 this most complex of all life?" 
 Whence springs the young mam- 
 mal? We see it for the first time 
 at its mother's side, fully formed. It is 
 feeble, but it^Js perfect. Has Nature 
 changed x"^"^ her whole plan of 
 r e p r o d u c 
 evolved 
 life from 
 
94 A Song of Life. 
 
 cast it away as inadequate to the needs of 
 the mammal? Has she through the egg 
 solved the question of reproduction for 
 plants as well as animals and at last failed 
 because her plan was not perfect enough 
 to go one step further? 
 
 To contemplate the subject before us, 
 let us go into the wild wood, far away 
 from the noise of cities. Let us go where 
 all is clean and sweet and fresh in the 
 beauty of early summer. The birds are 
 not there, for they love the more open 
 places ; but life is there in shapes as beau- 
 tiful, for between the distant tree-trunks 
 move dim forms. A magnificent pair of 
 antlers is half hidden by the leaves. A 
 slender doe daintily speeds away with a 
 speckled fawn at her side. Pretty, horn- 
 less heads and great soft eyes bear witness 
 to the presence of other members of the 
 same family, but they are so shy we seem 
 to feel rather than see them ; and to our 
 half dreaming senses the breeze and flut- 
 
The End and the Beginning. 95 
 
 tering leaves take up the song of life. 
 And this is the song they sing: 
 
 " The beautiful doe as well as her fawn, 
 the stag with his antlers, all began life as 
 a tiny, oh very tiny egg." 
 
 "O wind and leaves, you must be 
 mistaken ! " 
 
 But the wind shakes the leaves and 
 laughs aloud, and goes sweeping through 
 the forest singing this refrain: 
 
 " The egg is the source of life, the 
 wonderful egg. Within it was once 
 held the stag, as well as the doe and 
 
 ^ 
 
 the fawn. The fierce tiger 
 of the torrid zone was 
 once a harmless egg. The 
 elephant was but an idea 
 impressed upon an egg. 
 The rhinoceros with 
 cruel horn, and the hippo- 
 potamus with the cavernous 
 
 . 
 huge 
 
 VW I 
 
96 A Song of Life. 
 
 mouth were only eggs. The race-horse 
 began life as an egg. The watch-dog, 
 too, was a very little egg. The black cat 
 now stealing the egg from the hen's nest 
 was herself once an egg a hundred times 
 smaller than that she steals. Oh the egg, 
 the wonderful egg egg the egg!" 
 
 And the wind dies away, leaving us 
 much food for thought, for all that we 
 have heard is true. The mammalian egg 
 is as much a reality as is that of the fish 
 or the bird. But under ordinary circum- 
 stances it is never seen, being exceedingly 
 small and remaining during its period of 
 development a captive within the mother's 
 body. It is therefore not strange that for 
 ages the presence of this hidden mystery 
 escaped detection. All sorts of theories 
 were afloat as to the origin of the young 
 mammalian life, but that it came from an 
 egg, like all other life, was not apparent. 
 
 Nevertheless, on either side of the mam- 
 malian mother's body, just as in the fish, 
 
The End and tbe Beginning. 97 
 
 frog, and bird, lie the ovaries. The eggs 
 they contain are so small that to predict 
 a living animal, like a lamb or a calf, or 
 even a rabbit or a mouse, from one of 
 them seems absurd; and yet the whole 
 life of the animal is compressed within 
 the tiny vital spheres. The doe's egg is 
 not so large as the smallest pea. Its pos- 
 sibilities are colossal. Let us consider its 
 development. One egg, or sometimes 
 two, develops at a time. The egg, when 
 mature, leaves its companions in the ovary 
 and finds its way through a tube con- 
 nected with the ovary Into a pouch into 
 which the tube opens. Although no 
 larger than a number eight shot, within 
 this tiny egg is the possibility of becom- 
 ing a deer. But its life is not abundant 
 enough to effect the transformation alone; 
 other life must be added to it. As in the 
 
 case of the bird, the fertiliz- 
 ing principle is added to the 
 
 incomplete life eager to live / 
 
98 A Song of Life. 
 
 and grow. Two infinitely small atoms of 
 vitality join forces, and the result is the 
 complex creature we call a deer. 
 
 Slowly the new life forms; to the origi- 
 nal tiny particle of living matter must 
 be added great store of nourishment. In 
 the other eggs considered, food was stored 
 up in the egg and pure air found its way 
 through the porous egg-covering ; but here 
 is no provision in the tiny egg for either 
 food or air. This child must owe all to 
 its mother. Every particle of life must 
 proceed directly from her. Her lungs must 
 breathe the oxygen it needs. Her food 
 must furnish it material for growing. Its 
 very blood must flow from her heart ; 
 and she is, in every fibre of her loving 
 body, ready to meet the demand. Large 
 blood-vessels seek the room in which 
 the formless captive lies, and carry to it 
 blood, rich and pure. The food which 
 the mother eats serves not only for her 
 own nourishment but also for the growth 
 
The End and the Beginning. 99 
 
 and nourishment of that wonderful being, 
 her other self, that lies under her heart. 
 As the fawn grows larger, more and more 
 of the nourishment the mother takes goes 
 to its support, until, after several months 
 of this development, it is fully formed and 
 ready for its new life in the open air. 
 
 The story is only the story of the egg ( 
 told over again. In the lower animals the 
 eggs were laid and then hatched; but here J^ 
 the life is too precious to be exposed ' 
 to the dangers which would menace 
 it if it were developed in the 
 outer world, and so, safe near 
 \ the mother's heart, the little new 
 / form is perfected. And when it 
 enters the world, too feeble to do 
 \vaught but eat, its table is spread / 
 a food kings could not buy. 
 Seeds may grow for the 
 ^ birds, grain and fruit for 
 other creatures, / 
 but the food 
 
ioo A Song of Life. 
 
 of the little fawn comes only with the 
 sweet mystery of motherhood. 
 
 And what is this milk, this food 
 which gold cannot buy, but which is a 
 free gift from the mother to her child, 
 this delectable drink that springs from the 
 mysterious fountain of life? It is all that 
 the fawn is. It is bones, muscles, blood, 
 tissues, and organs of all descriptions. 
 Complex as the animal is, it contains 
 nothing which did not at first exist in 
 some form in the milk. 
 
 The doe-mother is nothing as far as 
 the development of her own life is con- 
 cerned. She is for the time obliterated, 
 merged in the life of her fawn. The 
 lime she consumes does not go to replen- 
 ish her own bones, it collects in the milk 
 to develop the bones of the fawn. The 
 albumen she extracts from her food does 
 not nourish her muscles, it is stored 
 away in the milk for the fawn; and the 
 mother loses flesh and beauty because 
 
The End and the Beginning. 101 
 
 giving the best of her life to her child. 
 And all her loyal mother's life she will 
 gladly give if her child requires it. Justly 
 man reverences motherhood. 
 
 It is unnecessary to repeat that the 
 manner of reproduction of all mammals 
 is the same. Man himself passes through 
 the wonderful transformation. The higher 
 mental powers, already begun in the lower 
 animal, find their fullest development in 
 him ; but he starts like the rest, as a form- 
 less speck of living matter. 
 
 The child is everywhere but a bud- 
 ding of the parent, a blossoming of exist- 
 ing adult life into the lovely flowers of 
 infancy. 
 
 We know the facts of renewed life ; the 
 great mystery of it we do not know. 
 The soul within the strange and beautiful 
 body is shrouded from our gaze as com- 
 pletely as it was from the gaze of our 
 forefathers. 
 
 We have outstripped them in knowledge 
 
102 A Song of Life. 
 
 of material facts; in knowledge of spirit- 
 ual ones we have not advanced one step. 
 This only is certain, that we go on and 
 on forever. Not only what we have in- 
 herited, but what we have gained by our 
 own efforts, sets its stamp upon our vital 
 forces, and vibrates through the future 
 ages. We, more than all the rest of the 
 animal creation, have knowledge. This 
 knowledge informs us that our bodies are 
 temples, sacred receptacles of a soul, and 
 are the altar-flames for future beings. 
 Knowledge enables us to care for our 
 bodies so that they may become stronger, 
 more beautiful, and more perfect than our 
 inherited bodies could have been if left to 
 A j, chance. Knowledge makes us able to 
 %A 1 / / ^ develop our minds and souls so that 
 
 '^,xjr \,'*^ i 
 
 l ^ff|^^^i they, too, may be finer and higher 
 our inheritance. And grandest 
 of all, ^~~v knowledge has taught 
 us that /\|^v every power we add 
 to , our own lives 
 
The End and the Beginning. 103 
 
 may be handed down, a richer inheritance 
 than gold, to our sons and daughters. 
 
 We know that the efforts we make are 
 tendencies stored up like the bird's song, 
 and that in some mysterious way these 
 tendencies may wake up in our beloved 
 child and through his efforts grow yet 
 stronger. We know that each new gen- 
 eration may reach greater perfection than 
 the one before it, and we know that the 
 lives which we of to-day live are the 
 stamps that impress the possibilities upon 
 the life of the future. Were man's desire 
 in proportion to his knowledge, he could 
 soon people the earth with inhabitants of 
 perfect beauty and nobility. 
 
 itnWlkVl!' 
 
O ^ C 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 '" V*,' 
 
 s 
 
 THE 
 
 o WORLD'S CRADLE. 
 
 t> 
 
 ^1 "EVERYTHING SPRINGS FROM THE EGG; ;i ^ 
 IT IS THE WORLD'S CRADLE." ' v% ^ y 
 
 
THE WORLD'S CRADLE. 
 
 AA7ITHIN the egg may lie dormant 
 the future statesman or next 
 summer's butterfly. So far as the appear- 
 ance of the egg-substance is concerned 
 there is no more reason to expect 
 the one from it than the other. ^A 
 The butterfly's cradle, to human g^p ken, 
 contains neither less nor more than 
 the man's. The finest chemical test 
 cannot point out that something in the 
 one which makes it a man, or ^*^ that 
 something in the other which 
 makes it a butterfly; they 
 are to all seeming 
 similar bits of semi- 
 fluid, animal matter. 
 
io8 A Song of Life. 
 
 The best he who is curious about the 
 life within the egg can do to understand 
 the miracle is to watch the changes that 
 occur as the egg advances from a struct- 
 ureless fluid to an organized being, to 
 watch it proceed from so simple a thing 
 as an egg appears to be into so compli- 
 cated a thing as a frog or a robin or a 
 Sir Isaac Newton. Human eyes cannot, 
 under ordinary circumstances, see these 
 changes; the wonderful eye of the micro- 
 scope must first be fixed upon them. Ob- 
 servation has, however, told every one a 
 few facts about the hen's egg which are 
 helpful in understanding the development 
 of all eggs. We know that the hen's egg 
 consists of a yelk surrounded by the soft, 
 jelly-like "white;" and if we have looked 
 carefully enough we know that the yelk 
 is held in place by a delicate wall, which 
 surrounds it and separates it from the 
 "white." When we examine other eggs 
 we find that all have a part correspond- 
 
The World's Cradle. 109 
 
 ing to the yelk, surrounded by a wall, 
 and generally a part corresponding to the 
 "white." In the yelk of the egg lies the 
 vital something which is to awaken into 
 conscious life. The "white" is merely 
 food stored up to nourish the young crea- 
 ture while it is being formed. The yelk 
 is a mixture of oil and other materials, 
 among which is a clear, jelly-like sub- 
 stance which resembles the "white" of 
 egg, and is called protoplasm. 
 
 What could appear less interesting than 
 this semi-fluid, slimy protoplasm? Yet 
 approach it reverently, for it is the one 
 great, inscrutable mystery of the physical 
 world. The Alps tower snow-clad above 
 the plains below, and man gazes at them 
 with awe. The stars shine out as they 
 follow through fixed courses night after 
 night, and year after year; and the immen- 
 sity and mystery they express fills the 
 earth-bound gazer with more than awe. 
 And when he turns to the insignificant 
 
i io A Song of Life. 
 
 atom of protoplasm at his feet, and his 
 mind suddenly opens to its meaning, be- 
 hold! it is greater than the Alps, more 
 marvellous than the stars, for in it is con- 
 tained the mystery called life. Protoplasm 
 is the only living substance. Every plant 
 and every animal which now lives, or has 
 ever lived, began life as a bit of proto- 
 plasm. It is the protoplasm which builds 
 the animal or vegetable form. It is the 
 protoplasm which is the living part of 
 every creature. 
 
 And what is this protoplasm? The 
 chemist has dared to analyze it. 'He tells 
 us it is composed of carbon, hydrogen, 
 oxygen, and nitrogen. A delusion! The 
 moment he separates it into carbon, hydro- 
 gen, oxygen, and nitrogen, it is no longer 
 protoplasm. The one essential thing 
 protoplasm is life. Separated 
 elements it no 
 
 ^"^v "" 
 
The World's Cradle. in 
 
 no longer change into a tadpole or a bird, 
 or any living being. This dead thing the 
 chemist analyzes has no more interest for 
 us than so much charcoal. The chemist 
 failed to seize upon life. As soon as he 
 began his analysis that escaped. All his 
 wonderful appliances were not wonderful 
 enough to find it; and to-day we are as 
 ignorant of the true nature of protoplasm 
 as though chemistry and biology and phil- 
 osophy, and all the other sciences, had 
 never existed. We only know that it is 
 a mysterious living substance upon which 
 every living thing depends; that unmixed 
 with other substances it is clear and jelly- 
 like, while mixed with oil and other ma- 
 terials it forms the most important part of 
 the egg-yelk, the part destined to become 
 the animal. 
 
 When protoplasm, existing alone or 
 mixed with other substances, is surround- 
 ed by a wall like the wall of the egg- 
 yelk, we call the little bag of protoplasm 
 
ii2 A Song of Life. 
 
 a cell. A cell may also exist as a bit of 
 protoplasm without a wall, and may be of 
 almost any shape. A cell is usually found 
 in combination with other cells, though it 
 may exist alone. In fact, there is a com- 
 plete animal which is no more nor less 
 than a naked cell of protoplasm. Its name 
 is moneron. It has no nerves, no heart, 
 no lungs, not even a cell-wall. And yet 
 it is a living thing, and something in it 
 makes it want to move. It has no legs 
 to go on, but its body is most convenient, 
 being a speck of protoplasm, all parts of 
 which are alike endowed with the power 
 to serve every purpose. Thus, when it 
 ^ would move, it protrudes a finger- 
 like bit of its body, like a feeler; 
 the rest of the body gradually 
 flows along until it has caught up 
 to the advanced part, or if the 
 creature is minded to go yet farther, 
 another finger-like part 
 
Tbe World's Cradle. 113 
 
 advanced like the first to tempt the main 
 part on. Being an animal, the moneron 
 must eat. This it does by enfolding its 
 body substance about the bit of matter 
 it is to consume. This body, though it 
 seems but a speck of jelly, attracts all of 
 the nutritious matter from the speck it 
 has encased, and this done, flows away 
 and leaves the rest. 
 
 The moneron would have a child. It 
 contracts through the middle, and con- 
 tinues to contract until there is no middle 
 left. The moneron has thus divided into 
 two parts, made two monera of itself, 
 though which is parent and which is 
 child is an unanswerable question. In the 
 picture we see the upper moneron putting 
 out a finger-like process to the left. Just 
 below it is a moneron dividing into two 
 monera. Next below we see the division 
 complete, and after that the monera assum- 
 ing all sorts cr ^_ of rather regular forms, 
 
ii4 A Song of Life. 
 
 somewhat more regular than usual, as they 
 are desirous of forming a pleasing decora- 
 tion of themselves. 
 
 Although the moneron is an example of 
 a single cell conducting itself as an inde- 
 pendent animal, the cell is usually only 
 one infinitesimal part of the whole animal 
 or plant. It is generally supplied with a 
 wall, and is usually very small, often so 
 small that, like the moneron, it can be 
 seen only with a microscope. The yelk 
 of the hen's egg is therefore a very large 
 cell. The tiny living bodies in the pollen 
 and in the fertilizing fluid are small cells, 
 and their shapes are often wonderful. In 
 fact the cell assumes a special form for 
 each kind of tissue, and under the micro- 
 scope may be recognized as the irregular 
 nerve cell, the spherical fat cell, the hex- 
 agonal pigment cell, or whatever it may 
 be; and with the connecting tissues in 
 which it embeds itself forms very wonder- 
 ful and beautiful combinations, in both 
 
The World's Cradle. 115 
 
 form and color. Believing that the inter- 
 est felt by many young people in the 
 beauties revealed by the microscope is 
 greater than their knowledge of micro- 
 scopic facts, the animal cells have planned 
 to place themselves in an attractive form 
 before- the readers of these pages. They 
 accordingly present themselves in their mi- 
 croscopic shapes, accommodatingly lending 
 themselves to the purposes of decoration 
 by forming groups in pretty conventional 
 designs. 
 
 We remember that the yelk of the egg 
 is composed of protoplasm, oil, and other 
 materials. The protoplasm may be mixed 
 uniformly through the yelk; or, as is the 
 case in the eggs of some animals, the 
 protoplasm may be collected in one part 
 of the yelk, the rest of the yelk being 
 composed of the oils and other materials. 
 As soon as an egg has been fertilized its 
 protoplasm suddenly wakens to the fact 
 that it is alive and has work to do. It is 
 
A Song of Life. 
 
 stirred with a desire to become a trout, 
 or a frog, or a robin, or whatever creature 
 its parent may be. But what can it do? 
 It is but a simple jelly-like speck, a liv- 
 ing speck, however, and one bent upon 
 becoming more complex; so it performs 
 a simple act, as befitting so simple a crea- 
 ture, it imitates the moneron and divides 
 into two parts. Its division, however, 
 does not make of it two creatures equally 
 simple; it remains one creature still, but 
 a less simple one. It has taken the first 
 step in the life-changes that convert an 
 egg into an animal. 
 
 This division into two parts is the 
 triumphant departure from formless matter 
 to complex life. Is not a creature com- 
 posed of two parts twice as complex 
 
 as a creature composed of 
 
The World's Cradle. 
 
 117 
 
 one? it seems to ask. Where the proto- 
 plasm is mixed uniformly through the 
 yelk, at the moment of division the whole 
 yelk divides into two parts. The proto- 
 plasm has heard a voice it must obey ; the 
 fat and other matters are so thoroughly 
 mixed with it that it cannot separate itself 
 from them, so at its moment of division 
 it carries all with it, and thus the whole 
 yelk divides into two yelks. Where, how- 
 ever, the protoplasm is collected by itself 
 in one part of the yelk, the protoplasm 
 divides into two parts, leaving a portion of 
 the yelk still unchanged. This unchanged 
 portion afterward serves for food, and is 
 absorbed into the body of the animal as 
 it grows. 
 
 The two parts formed by division of 
 \) VX the protoplasm have 
 
n8 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 rounded corners. They have become two 
 perfect cells. And in these active 
 cells we have all that is necessary to 
 make the most complicated animal in 
 the world for man himself is made of 
 cells of protoplasm. Each cell has mys- 
 teriously impressed upon it an ideal to- 
 ward which it must strive. The future 
 animal lies all unformed, a shapeless some- 
 thing which is to take a definite form. 
 Of all the forms possible to animal life, 
 but one form is possible to it, the form 
 of its parent. Its cells foresee this form, 
 and every tiny one of them disposes of 
 itself in the one way that will result in 
 that form. This they do in obedience 
 to,j a law as mysterious as the law that 
 holds the planets in their courses. 
 Fairly aroused, the cells, with food for 
 their nourishment and with right sur- 
 7 roundings, grow and form other cells, 
 until the ,. egg has fulfilled its pos- 
 sibilities and become a 
 living being. 
 
The World's Cradle. 119 
 
 At the beginning the cell seems to do 
 nothing but divide, for we are hardly sure 
 the protoplasm has divided into two parts 
 before we discover it has divided into 
 four. Each of these four cells divides ; the 
 new cells so produced divide ; and so on 
 until the original yelk mass has lost its 
 smooth, oily nature and become a much 
 firmer mass of tiny cells. These little cells 
 which we have seen formed crowd close 
 together, and finally flatten out against the 
 yelk wall, where they adhere to each other 
 by their edges and form its inside lin- /giggx 
 ing. This lining, which we must (|| }; 
 not forget was once the yelk and is 
 now a layer of cells, is called the blasto- 
 dermio membrane; and we can forgive its 
 long name when we learn that it is now 
 the body of the embryo, as the animal in 
 these early stages is called. 
 
 It is no longer a formless mass, but 
 a true living animal. Its cells have not, 
 moneron-like, divided into a number of 
 
I2O 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 separate creatures, they have formed a little 
 community in which each cell has its own 
 special work to do. The moneron cell 
 is a savage, it must do everything for 
 itself. It must, as it were, be its own 
 cook, shoemaker, tailor, hunter, and all 
 else. Consequently its life is very simple; 
 for the savage, being obliged to do every- 
 thing for himself, cannot have so much 
 as the civilized man who does one thing 
 well and quickly and exchanges it for 
 some other person's work, or who acts in 
 combination with other workers. The 
 egg-cell is highly civilized, each 
 cell having its own work to do, 
 and each cell working with 
 reference to all other cells/ 
 Thus the animal, when 
 completed, is a 
 great and 
 perfect 
 
The World's Cradle. 121 
 
 community 
 composed of more 
 individuals than the largest 
 city in the world can boast 
 of. And so well is the gov- 
 ernment of this great commu- 
 nity regulated that each cell is 
 'an expert in its own line, and is satis- 
 fied with its station in life. The skin cells 
 are satisfied to make good skin, the bone 
 cells to make good bone ; and no one ever 
 heard of the cells going on a strike, un- 
 less that is what they do when the body 
 is abused and the cells rebel, and then 
 we call it disease. 
 
 But in the embryo stage, while the cells 
 rule, and before the completed animal tries 
 to rule or overrule their good action, 
 the cells all do happily and well their 
 own work. Although the cells that flatten 
 themselves against the yelk-wall are the 
 
122 A Song of Life. 
 
 earliest form of the young animal, it is in 
 that state so immature that we no more 
 recognize in it an animal of any kind than 
 we recognize a frog in a tadpole, unless 
 we. have watched a tadpole change into 
 a frog, as we are now about to watch 
 the blastodermic membrane change into 
 an animal. 
 
 What is it to become? a fish? a frog? 
 a child? That we do not know; for 
 up to the present stage of transformation 
 fish, frog, child, or any other high form 
 of animal life must travel the same road. 
 In all alike the protoplasm must change 
 to cells and the cells must form the blas- 
 todermic membrane. Although up to a 
 certain period the first simple changes in 
 the eggs of all animals are so alike that it 
 seems as though the egg might as easily 
 become one thing as another, yet the seal 
 of the parent is somewhere set upon the 
 budding life and impels it to assume the 
 one form. Michelet, speaking of the de- 
 
The World's Cradle. 123 
 
 velopment of the young bird, has beau- 
 tifully expressed the parental prompting 
 which moulds the form in the egg of 
 every creature : 
 
 " But see how, in this divine sleep, it 
 has recognized its mother and her mag- 
 netic warmth. And it, too, begins to 
 dream. Its dream is of motion ; it imi- 
 tates, it conforms to its mother; its first 
 act, the act of an obscure love, is to re- 
 semble her." 
 
 Though the creature is now but a layer 
 of cells, yet in that simple form is some- 
 where hidden the "obscure love" which 
 prompts it to grow to the likeness of its 
 parent. And after a time the being hid- 
 den in the blastodermic membrane of each 
 egg asserts itself. It is no longer content 
 to remain in a state common to all ani- 
 mals. It begins to express its obedience 
 to the law of heredity; it is about to 
 resemble its parents. And since the blas- 
 todermic membrane is about to disclose 
 
124 A Song of Life. 
 
 itself, to show what definite creature it 
 has been meditating during these early 
 obscure changes, whether a tadpole, a 
 robin, a rabbit, it will be well for us to 
 fix our whole attention upon the blasto- 
 dermic membrane of one egg, and watch 
 it reveal its secret. We select an egg in 
 which this membrane has just formed. 
 As we watch it, it divides into two lay- 
 ers, thus providing the yelk-wall with a 
 double lining, the outer and inner layers 
 of the blastodermic membrane, and supply- 
 ing itself with two corps of workers, each 
 corps fitted to a special kind of work.* 
 Each layer is formed of cells. The cells 
 that make the outer layer (a) are small 
 and close together, and build up the 
 
 * As a matter of fact the blastodermic membrane has formed 
 still another layer between the outer and inner layers. This 
 middle layer has again divided into two layers. But as the mid- 
 dle layers are formed from the outer and inner layers and share 
 their work with them, we will not give the inner layers any atten- 
 tion, for simplicity's sake speaking only of the outer and inner 
 layers. 
 
The World's Cradle. 125 
 
 denser parts of the animal, such as skin, 
 bone, muscle. Those that make the 
 inner layer (b) are larger and looser, 
 and. build up the less dense parts 
 of the animal, such as the intestines; c 
 in the diagram is the unchanged yelk, 
 which is to form food for the embryo. 
 
 The cells build and we watch. But 
 what a disappointment is here! Our em- 
 bryo is only that of a worm ! We are 
 well acquainted with the development of 
 a certain primitive form of sea-worm, and 
 here it is. We are about to turn away 
 from the microscope through which we 
 have been gazing, when we notice that 
 one point in the outer layer of the blasto- 
 dermic membrane, that which forms the 
 outer covering to our forming worm, be- 
 gins to thicken. We see the cells at that 
 point dividing very fast and crowding 
 close together about a certain oval space, 
 until two ridges are formed which rise up 
 on each side of the space and meet over- 
 
1 
 
 i26 A Song of Life. 
 
 head, forming a hollow canal. And now 
 we know that the cells have not designed 
 a worm, for a worm has no brain, and 
 this hollow canal is the first step toward 
 what will one day be a spinal cord and 
 brain. 
 
 The cells would have stopped building, 
 and finished the creature into a worm, 
 had it not been for that parent form 
 which urged them to itself, and toward 
 which they loyally pushed. And so, blind 
 to every other form of life, the cells work 
 on, those already formed grow, and divide 
 into other cells, and these in turn grow 
 and divide, and so on and on. Each kind 
 of cell has, as we know, its own shape. 
 Each unerringly fits into its own place 
 and does its own work. 
 
 We see the tiny cells swiftly forming 
 along that line of the spinal 
 cord. We see other u * cells 
 appear ing at 
 
The World's (Cradle. 127 
 
 different places, cell joining cell, forming 
 mysterious little points and projections. 
 O cells, who tells you what to do? In 
 your dark little house how do you know, 
 each one of you, just the one form, 
 out of numberless possible forms, which 
 you are to take? How do you know just 
 the one spot which you are to occupy in 
 that confused something which is forming 
 there? O cells, tell us of the Power back 
 of you, which we value more than all 
 your work ! 
 
 But the cells silently, swiftly take their 
 places, forming a more and more compli- 
 cated-looking object, which we 
 here see as it was once seen by 
 a great man, after he had spent 
 many hours working with the mi 
 croscope, for the object we are watching 
 is so small that it is invisible without the 
 aid of the microscope. It seems meaning- 
 less at a first glance; at a, b, c, are the 
 cells which have grouped themselves to 
 
128 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 form the beginning of the spinal cord. 
 We see there a tube, the walls of which 
 are formed by cells which will one day 
 grow into the brain and spinal cord. 
 Curving around at a is what will be the 
 head, with the upper end of the spinal 
 cord enlarged into the brain. The space 
 below, d, is where the digestive canal will 
 finally be formed, and in e, below that, 
 we can readily distinguish the enlarged 
 abdomen. In fact, it requires but little 
 imagination to transform the part at a 
 into the head, to see legs budding at the 
 opposite ends of e, or wings from one 
 end and legs from the other, or fins from 
 both ends instead of legs or wings. 
 We can easily transform, in imagina- 
 tion, that primitive form into any ani- 
 mal we please to make it. And yet 
 the only thing \ its form 
 so far has \ / really 
 
The World's Cradle. 129 
 
 told us is that it is to have a spinal canal 
 and brain. We are sure, therefore, that it 
 will not be a clam or a fly or a worm; 
 and were it not for its size which tells 
 part of the secret, for our egg is too large 
 to belong to a mammal we would not 
 know to which class of back-boned ani- 
 mals it belongs, and might well hesitate 
 to give an opinion as to whether it is 
 destined to become a lizard or a kitten. 
 Meanwhile the cells, relentless as fate, are 
 building the future animal. The creature 
 they are forming passes through many 
 stages similar to those passed through by 
 the embryos of other animals, yet is its 
 destination as certain as though no other 
 creature ever travelled that road. The road 
 of development ends in the highest form 
 of animal life, even man ; yet, unless the 
 parent of this creature is man it will 
 not go to the end of the road, 
 
1 3 o 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 but will finally reach a side path leading 
 to its own parent form, and down this 
 path it must turn. To pass the entrance 
 to that pathway and go even one step 
 beyond is as impossible for it as it would 
 be for the sun to change its course. If 
 it will not enter that path it must die. 
 Its life is to be found there and there 
 only. 
 
 The cells are as loyal to their caste as 
 were the ancient Hindus. The cells of 
 the fish do not aspire to form a bird, their 
 only desire is to make a perfect fish. 
 Their highest ideal is the fish. 
 And the cells we have been 
 watching, still intent y upon, 
 
 the creat v ure 
 r they are 
 d forming, 
 
 f 
 
The World's Cradle. 131 
 
 busily grow and divide, grouping them- 
 selves about and below the embryo, until 
 they have formed a body-wall quite around 
 it Here is a side view, a, b, c re- 
 presenting the back of the embryo. 
 That which we now see is the work done 
 by the cells in the outer layer of the blas- 
 todermic membrane. These cells continue 
 to group themselves, forming muscles and 
 skin and bone; and now behold our mys- 
 terious animal with a tail! Cell after cell 
 builds itself into the forming body 
 until we are at last sure that 
 
 an animal which we can recognize is 
 coming. Here he is beyond a doubt, the 
 most interesting baby frog, or tad- 
 pole, as he prefers to be called, that 
 our eyes ever beheld; for have we 
 not seen him grow up, cell by cell, from 
 the very foundation? 
 
 But what have the cells of the inner 
 layer of the blastodermic membrane been 
 doing all this time ? Have they' forgotten 
 
132 A Song of Life. 
 
 their work? If we recall the way our 
 animal was last represented we find there 
 is a very important work still to be done; 
 for the outer layer of the blastodermic 
 membrane, which thus far has occupied 
 all our attention, has made only the outer 
 parts of the embryo. Our tadpole has a 
 back-bone and a brain, it is true; he has 
 skin, too, and muscles and eyes and ears, 
 and is a very satisfactory tadpole to look 
 at; but when he leaves the egg what is 
 to become of him without a stomach? 
 And what will he do without a heart, and 
 without lungs and kidneys and liver, and 
 all those organs necessary to an animal 
 whose food is no longer a part of him? 
 We have been so intently watching the 
 outer layer of the blastodermic membrane 
 make the outside of the embryo, that we 
 have failed to notice how the inner layer 
 was just as silently and surely forming 
 cells in exact places to form the internal 
 organs of the creature. Let us look again 
 
The World's Cradle. 133 
 
 at our tadpole, and do justice to the work 
 the inner layer has done, and we shall 
 find that he has a stomach. It has been 
 building cell by cell from the inner layer, 
 while the skin, -skeleton, and other organs 
 were building from the outer layer. 
 
 At first his stomach was so large as to 
 fill nearly the whole abdominal cavity, and 
 he had no mouth for receiving food ; and 
 if he had had one it would have availed 
 him little, for there was no opening at 
 the other end of the digestive canal for 
 the escape of food refuse. But the cells 
 were equal to this emergency, for some of 
 those in the outer layer of the blastoder- 
 mic membrane died away and left an 
 opening at either end of the digestive 
 canal, and the digestive 
 canal itself grew so long 
 from the addition of cells 
 from the inner layer of the blastodermic 
 membrane that it could not lie straight 
 but had to curl up. Moreover, cells from 
 
134 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 the inner layer of the blastodermic mem- 
 brane built themselves into a heart and 
 blood-vessels, and into the other organs 
 necessary to tadpole life; and here is our 
 tadpole, \out of his egg and swimming 
 about in 
 
 His transformation is, however, not yet 
 complete, for he is now in the fish stage. 
 He is, in reality, a fish, swimming with a 
 tail and breathing by gills. He must go 
 one step farther, get lungs and legs and 
 become a land animal. Such changes in 
 other animals take place in the egg, but 
 with the tadpole the last great transforma- 
 tion takes place after he leaves the egg. 
 The cells, still active within him, have 
 already built the beginnings of lungs and 
 legs ; and before long, as every one knows 
 
The World's Cradle. 
 
 '35 
 
 who has watched a tadpole change into a 
 frog, the legs come out, first the hind- 
 legs, then the fore-legs. At the same time 
 the tail and gills shrink away, the lungs 
 form cell by cell, until finally tail and gills 
 are quite gone, legs and lungs are fully 
 formed, and the tadpole is transformed 
 from a fish into a frog. 
 
 And now have we the secret of the 
 blastodermic membrane in the frog's egg? 
 No more than we have the secret of the 
 artist when we watch him put his crea- 
 tions on canvas. We see the work 
 done by the cells, we may even 
 see the cells at work; but why 
 one forms bone, another muscle, an- 
 other brain, or how the different cells 
 ^ change to form the different tissues, 
 
 we do not know. The outer life *# 
 
 r- ^/ '/ 
 
 of the cells we can follow; their inner ,/ 
 life is their own secret. X 
 
136 A Song of Life. 
 
 Wherever we examine the developing 
 egg we find it travelling the same high- 
 road as that travelled by the tadpole. The 
 changes in the fish's egg are so like those 
 in the frog's egg that the wonder is they 
 ever find out which they are to become. 
 In some fish eggs the blastodermic mem- 
 brane does not close closely about the 
 body of the embryo, as it does in the 
 frog, but hangs loosely in a sac which is 
 filled with the food-yelk, so that this yelk 
 is partly inside the fish and partly outside, 
 as you can see in any stream in 
 the springtime where fish eggs are 
 hatching. This yelk is gradually absorbed 
 into the body, and affords nourishment for 
 the young fish until he is able to provide 
 food for himself. This failure of the blas- 
 todermic membrane to enclose the yelk, 
 and the consequent forming of the yelk 
 sac, is common in all the higher forms of 
 egg development. 
 And now for the mystery of higher life. 
 
The World's Cradle. 137 
 
 If we watch the transformation of the 
 bird's egg, we see it first pass through 
 changes similar to those early ones passed 
 through by the eggs of the fish and the 
 frog ; and as though that were not strange 
 enough, we are filled with wonder to find 
 that the creature forming in the bird's egg 
 shows gill openings. Surely this egg ha? 
 made a mistake, and is about to develop 
 into a monstrous fish 1 But no. The cells 
 know well that this egg cannot become a 
 fish; they but do a moment's homage to 
 the humble ancestors of the bright form 
 they are about to perfect. " Once, way, 
 way back in the world's history," they 
 seem to say, " in those ancient times when 
 change was possible, there were no birds; 
 there were only fish-like creatures which 
 were like birds and like fish, and from 
 whom our pretty bird's ancestors were 
 descended ; and we would not have him, 
 in his pride of flight, forget his relation- 
 ship to these humble creatures." 
 
138 A Song of Life. 
 
 And so the cells build the old ancestral 
 fish form as a foundation for the higher 
 bird form, knowing that these gill open- 
 ings are the best beginnings for beak and 
 other bird parts; and that the cells of the 
 outer layer of the blastodermic membrane 
 can conduct the easily guided form safely 
 past the fish stage, while the inner layer 
 can as safely conduct the internal organs 
 past the fish stage, moulding the air- 
 bladder into lungs, dividing the heart into 
 four ^chambers instead of leaving it in 
 two, and attending to the numerous other 
 details that separate the structure of the 
 bird from that of the fish. Thus we see 
 how, as the egg develops, a time comes 
 when the little creature seems on the 
 verge of becoming a fish. It is more like 
 a fish than anything else. Why does it 
 not stop there and finish into a fish ? An 
 "obscure love" hurries it on, gives it 
 life and strength to pass the road down 
 which the fish must turn. Its vitality is 
 
The World's Cradle. 
 
 too great to be compressed into the limits 
 of fish life; it must go on until it finds 
 its parent. 
 
 .In anticipation of the greater work to be 
 done by the bird embryo, the bird's egg 
 was more carefully fertilized and guarded 
 than were the eggs of frog and fish. We 
 now see how much more work the egg- 
 cells must do to complete the bird. The 
 following series of pictures shows some 
 of the successive changes that appear in 
 the bird's egg. 
 
140 A Song of Life. 
 
 If the egg belongs to a creature still 
 higher in the scale of animal life than 
 do those eggs we have watched, we find 
 it going through the same changes, and 
 its embryo developing through stage after 
 stage similar to those passed through by 
 the animals below it. The mammal begins 
 life as one cell, like the lowly moneron. 
 Impressed with the desire to grow, it 
 becomes a creature like the worm. It 
 scarcely pauses at that point, however, 
 there is such a powerful impulse hurrying 
 it along the high-road of life. It passes 
 stage after stage in quick succession ; it 
 has the gill openings that belong to the 
 embryo of the fish, but it has the life of 
 the mammal, it must become a cat, a 
 horse, a dog; and so its gill openings be- 
 come the foundation of the lower jaw 
 and ear. Each embryo, intent upon its 
 own form, hastens toward the goal ; each 
 acquires by degrees the organs peculiar to 
 its kind. 
 
The World's Cradle. 141 
 
 Although all are mammals, and all are 
 built on the same general plan, the cells 
 of each know exactly where that plan is 
 to be modified. The cells of the rabbit 
 never fail to make long hind legs, and 
 teeth suitable for gnawing. The cells of 
 the dog never fail to make teeth sharp 
 and strong, and of the peculiar shape and 
 size that characterize flesh-eating animals. 
 More than this, every cell in the rabbit is 
 a rabbit cell, and every cell in the dog is 
 a dog cell, each kind making hide, hair, 
 form, intellect, everything about its own 
 animal characteristic of rabbit or dog, and 
 different from every other animal. 
 
 And the human being, too, begins life 
 as a single cell. He, too, passes through 
 stage after stage of animal life, owning a 
 far-away relationship to the simple crea- 
 tures he so far outstrips. Gill openings 
 
 convict him, too, of kinship with the 
 fishes; and he passes through 
 a stage where, from one 
 
142 A Song of Life. 
 
 point of view, he looks absurdly like the 
 embryo of a fish. But the strong wave 
 of life bears him speedily past that point, 
 and carries him toward the plane of the 
 mammal. And for a time we find him in 
 a very unsatisfactory state, neither bird nor 
 yet beast; though with his undeveloped 
 heart and budding extremities he more 
 resembles the young bird than any other 
 animal. On he sweeps to the true mam- 
 malian form, and there passes through a 
 stage which all mammals share with him. 
 Here he cannot be distinguished from an 
 embryo pig or dog. But he does not 
 long continue to so closely resemble these 
 lower forms ; his cells work away in a dis- 
 tinctly human direction, so that from 
 being indistinguishable from a dog he 
 becomes indistinguishable from an 
 
 ape ; but even here the cells ne\ver 
 make a ,^L mistake, 
 
 / 
 
The Worlds Cradle. 143 
 
 never grow confused and finish him into 
 an ape, but keep steadily at work until he 
 is built into a human being. 
 
 When his form is sufficiently developed, 
 he, like other mammals, is born. This 
 does not mean that his cells have accom- 
 plished their work. Far from it, his 
 cells are as busy as ever. They fasten 
 upon the milk he drinks and form it into 
 themselves; the muscle cells turn it into 
 muscle, the bone cells into bone, the 
 brain cells into brain. Later, when he 
 eats solid food, the cells seize upon that. 
 His blood carries his food in a dissolved 
 
 state, djissol ved by the work of certain 
 cells, all over his body. It 
 DWS everywhere, touch- 
 ing every spot ; and as it flows 
 
 seize/ upon whatever 
 they want, 
 
144 A Song of Life. 
 
 to make new tissue or replace that which 
 is worn out. 
 
 Thus the body is dependent upon the 
 cells as long as it lives. When the cells 
 cease their work the body is dead. The 
 cells are dependent upon the food they 
 get for the kind of work they can do. 
 At first milk supplies all that is needful; 
 then comes a more varied diet, vegeta- 
 bles, fruits, grains, and meats being taxed 
 to supply the never-ceasing cry of the 
 cells for food. Nerve cells in the mouth 
 and nose test 'this food and decide upon 
 its merit. 
 
 But these nerve cells are better pleased 
 with some things than others; the nerve 
 of taste rejoices in sugar and certain com- 
 binations of flour and butter called pastry, 
 and certain stimulating spices. To a lim- 
 ited extent such food is proper; but be- 
 cause it "tastes good" the ignorant feeder 
 eats it to the exclusion of other foods 
 which are more digestible, and finally 
 
The 14/orld's Cradle. 145 
 
 the cells of the stomach, overworked and 
 weak, refuse to dispose of the indigestible 
 stuff. Although warned by the uncom- 
 fortable feeling caused by the rebellious 
 cells, the victim sometimes continues to 
 transgress. 
 
 What is the result? The cells refuse to 
 do their work ; they grow sullen and irri- 
 table ; and the food in an undigested state 
 is turned out of the stomach. The blood 
 cannot get the materials that it needs for 
 this ill-prepared food, and of course the 
 cells cannot get what they need from the 
 blood. Some of the cells starve to death ; 
 others do their best, but the tissue they 
 build is weak and flabby. Others again, 
 not able to build what they wish, take the 
 poor material and build another kind of 
 tissue, which being unnatural, does all 
 sorts of mischief in the body. All of the 
 cells are discontented and sick, and allow 
 the germs of foul diseases to lodge in 
 their midst, if such germs appear and 
 
 10 
 
146 A Song of Life. 
 
 ask admission. The brain cells, being 
 poorly nourished, are irritable, and cause 
 all sorts of suffering in the way of head- 
 ache and nervousness to the victim. The 
 skin cells do not trouble to build up good 
 skin ; but when the old falls off, there is a 
 bare and sore spot underneath. 
 
 Everything seems out of order, and the 
 victim of this careless treatment of the 
 cells is told by the doctor that he has 
 dyspepsia; and he thinks dyspepsia is a 
 stomach trouble, when it is really the star- 
 ^vation of the cells all over his body. The 
 cells, like the people they are a part of, 
 form habits. When the stomach cells have 
 formed a habit of not performing the 
 work of digestion, this habit grows upon 
 them; so while the young person may 
 not suffer seriously from a careless habit 
 of eating, he is laying up terrible trouble 
 for future years. 
 
 The use of tobacco has a curious effect 
 upon the cells of the body. The nerve 
 
The World's Cradle. 147 
 
 cells feel it first. When tobacco is first 
 smoked to excess the cells resent it with 
 all their might. The stomach cells often 
 become violent and force the contents of 
 the stomach out through the mouth, but 
 after a while the cells become demoralized ; 
 the overdoses of tobacco deaden them and 
 thus relieve the discomfort at first caused. 
 This is probably the reason they seem 
 to crave it. They want the thing that 
 poisoned them to poison them more, and 
 so deaden their discomfort. 
 
 Tobacco is very irritating to some cells, 
 while it is soothing, or deadening, to 
 others; and so, when used to excess, it 
 sometimes causes incurable ulcers in throat 
 and mouth. The cells, finding that they 
 cannot make good mucous membrane in 
 the presence of tobacco poison, make pus 
 cells instead. The senses grow less acute 
 under the influence of tobacco, until those 
 of taste and smell are dull, and the victim 
 can no longer enjoy the odor of the but- 
 
148 A Song of Life. 
 
 tercups and daisies when he walks in the 
 fields, and probably comes to prefer the 
 stale tobacco odor which he constantly 
 carries about with him to anything the 
 sweet fields can offer. 
 
 The cells of the body are very sympa- 
 thetic, as we thus see. Ready to do good 
 work if properly treated, they are very apt 
 to unite against oppression if ill-treated ; 
 so that harm done to even a few cells 
 will often affect the whole body. Of all 
 the abuses to which the cells are subjected 
 none is more harmful than the habit some 
 people contract of poisoning them with 
 alcohol. At first the alcohol stimulates cer- 
 tain nerve cells, and this causes a feeling 
 of pleasure. But if the alcohol has been 
 taken in excess the pleasurable feeling 
 soon passes, and then the cells are weak 
 and weary. Whenever they are thus over- 
 excited an abnormal action is set up. 
 Like the cells irritated by tobacco, those 
 poisoned by alcohol crave more of the 
 
The World's Cradle. 149 
 
 poison to make them forget their discom- 
 fort; so the victim is led on by slow but 
 fatal steps until his cells are thoroughly 
 demoralized and will do nothing right. 
 The stomach cells refuse to act, the food 
 is not properly digested, and after a time 
 the inside of the stomach becomes cov- 
 ered with sores. The cells that ought to 
 make liver go to making fat instead. In 
 fact, the cells all over the body seem to 
 have lost all moral rectitude, and instead 
 of building up sound tissue, take a drunk- 
 en delight in converting the alcohol-satu- 
 rated blood that comes to them into all 
 sorts of abnormal tissue; until finally the 
 victim dies of some terrible disease with 
 which his wine or beer drinking had ap- 
 parently nothing to do, but which was 
 really at the bottom of the whole trouble. 
 And what do we mean by dying? 
 What is this thing named death ? What 
 becomes of the body when it is buried; 
 of the flower when it falls; of the plant 
 
150 
 
 A Song of Life. 
 
 when 
 
 under 
 
 leaves. 
 
 that 
 
 same leaves from 
 we should 1 
 disappear. Where 
 are fluttering 
 
 it has done 
 its work? 
 Walk through 
 autumn; the dry 
 foot and we 
 Could we watch 
 year to year 
 in time they 
 they ? They 
 d full of sap, 
 
 in their old places on the trees; they 
 are breaking out into the white bloom 
 of the wild plum ; they are throbbing in 
 the heart of the wood-pigeon, and 
 painting the sky with sunset colors. 
 
 When the leaves fell it seemed a mis- 7 
 fortune, and those who used concerning 
 them the dread word death did not know 
 that they had but completed one beautiful 
 form of life, and become free to enter 
 into another. The carbon, hydrogen, 
 oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements 
 that had been so long bound into 
 
The World's Cradle. 
 
 plant protoplasm let go, each one, its hold 
 its neighbor, the oldjxmd was dis- 
 
 freed ele- 
 formed new 
 combi- 
 nations. 
 
 Our leaf is now 
 a quantity of 
 water, ammonia, dif- 
 ferent forms of lime, magnesia, 
 potash, soda, acids of various kinds, and 
 combinations of iron, as well as many 
 other substances. Behold our leaf returned 
 to the mineral kingdom. Though not 
 wholly. Certain of its elements enter at 
 once into lowly forms of vegetable life, 
 which are lying ready to seize upon them 
 and develop waiting spores into growing 
 life; and still others find their way at 
 once into the animal life. 
 
 The leaf now finds itself in a myriad 
 of forms, and distributes itself through life. 
 The ammonia, the ashes, sink into the 
 
i5 2 A Song of Life. 
 
 ground, and are wooed by the rootlets of 
 the forest trees to ascend through the 
 
 branches 
 unite with 
 
 tissue in 
 
 to form next ^X year's leaves. 
 The rootlets of * the wild grape eagerly 
 seek the aid of these wandering leaf ele- 
 ments, that its branches may be clothed 
 with verdure; the wild rose would have 
 a share; the burdock, too, and the wood 
 anemone wish to attract them; the birds 
 and the insects appropriate the fruit they 
 have gone to form; their vapor, rising 
 through the air and condensing into clouds, 
 adorns the blue sky and reflects the sunset 
 hues. 
 
 And yet men talk of dead leaves, call 
 them dead because they would leave a stiff 
 triangle of wood fibre and green tissue to 
 mingle with the universe! 
 
 Thus, too, with the bird. One day it 
 
The World's Cradle. 153 
 
 lies down and rises no more, and men 
 would have us believe it is dead. The 
 spirit that bound its countless cells into 
 one harmonious whole has loosed the 
 bond; the bird's body its immortal body 
 is now free to enter other forms of life. 
 Like the cells of the fallen leaf, the cells 
 of the fallen bird dissolve, they free the 
 elements which formed them; and these 
 elements, quite unchanged by their long 
 captivity, joyously greet the change, enter 
 into new and delightful combinations, and 
 lo! our whilom bird is now a lovely bit 
 of vegetable life, the same atoms of car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sul- 
 phur which formed his protoplasm being 
 happily united into the new protoplasm of 
 the plant. Every atom of the pretty bird's 
 body is somewhere in Nature, active as 
 ever, helping the flowers to bloom, the 
 birds to sing, the bees to store up honey, 
 the deer to run, and the little mouse to 
 hide. 
 
154 A Song of Life. 
 
 We thus see that when a body dies it 
 is not destroyed, it but changes its form. 
 Its countless cells, composed of the ele- 
 ments gathered from the air and from 
 food, are now about to give up those ele- 
 ments, but not the smallest atom can be 
 lost. Each one will be but freed to seek 
 a new life according to its surroundings 
 and its nature. The all-powerful principle 
 of life but rearranges its cells to express 
 life in other ways. The spirit, having 
 clothed itself in a finite form, which for 
 a time it wore, has at length restored that 
 form to the elements from which, cell by 
 cell, it called it forth. The spirit, no 
 longer needing the cell-built body, re- 
 leases it, and the body finds its place in 
 a new form of life. 
 
 The immortal spirit, free from the cell- 
 built body, clothes itself in what un- 
 known glory! 
 
 The immortal body, free from the con- 
 trolling spirit which held it in a definite 
 
The World's Cradle. 
 
 form, is shaped into what forms of wonder 
 and beauty! 
 
 " Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Those are pearls that were his eyes 
 Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
TITTLE MARJORIES LOVE STORY. 
 
 By MARGUERITE BOUVET, Author of " Sweet 
 William." Fully illustrated by Helen Maitland Arm- 
 strong. Small 4to, $1.00. 
 
 ' Miss BOUVET'S popularity as a writer for the young was 
 at once established on the publication of her first and very 
 successful book, " Sweet William." Her 
 new book, "Little Marjorie's Love Story," 
 cannot fail to be equally popular. The un- 
 selfish love of plain, timid Little Marjorie 
 for her beautiful, gifted, imperious bro- 
 ther, and his denial of her when at the 
 zenith of his career, at a time when he 
 was carrying peace and comfort to the 
 souls of hundreds by the angel-like sweet- 
 ness of his voice, is told with that charm 
 which Miss Bouvet possesses in such a 
 singular degree. The beauty and pathos 
 of the story are touching, and the delicate 
 way in which the characteristics of the 
 one child are contrasted with those of 
 the other is as effective as the lights and 
 shadows of a picture. Pride and selfish- 
 ness never seemed more contemptible 
 than in the person of the handsome 
 Gerald, nor unselfish love and self-sacrificing sisterly devotion 
 more beautiful than in that of sweet little Marjorie. The 
 illustrator, Miss Armstrong, has told the story in picture as 
 effectively as the author has in words. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by 
 
 e/f. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers, 
 
 Cor. Wabash Ave. and Madison St., Chicago. 
 
SWEET WILLIAM. 
 
 By MARGUERITE BOUVET. With Illustrations 
 by Helen and Margaret /^^ Armstrong. 
 Small quarto, 209 pages, //*& ^ * $1.50. 
 
 THIS very at- 
 tractive little vol- 
 ume is unlike any 
 other book we can 
 think of. It takes 
 us back to mediae- 
 val times, and in- 
 troduces us to the 
 lords and ladies 
 who then inhab- 
 ited the splendid 
 castle that still 
 looks down from 
 the heights of Mount St. Michael, on the coast of Normandy. 
 It tells the pathetic story (with a happy ending) of a little boy, 
 who had he lived to-day would have been a genuine Little Lord 
 Fauntleroy, and introduces us also to a Little Lady Fauntleroy, 
 with whom we cannot help falling in love. The illustrations 
 are singularly beautiful and appropriate, and make it altogether 
 one of the most attractive juvenile books of recent years. 
 
 For sale by booksellers generally, or will be sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of the price, by 
 
 <^. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers, 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
THE STORY OF TONTY. 
 
 An Historical Romance. By MARY HARTWELL 
 CATHERWOOD, author of "The Romance of 
 Dollard," " The Lady of Fort St. John," etc. 
 Profusely Illustrated from original drawings by 
 Mr. Enoch Ward. 12mo, 224 pages, $1.25. 
 
 " THE Story of Tonty," in which Mrs. CatherwoocTs genius 
 for historical romance reaches perhaps its highest manifestation, 
 is a Western story, beginning at Montreal, tarrying at Fort 
 Frontenac, and ending at the old fort at Starved Rock, on the 
 Illinois river. It weaves the adventures of the two great ex- 
 plorers, the intrepid La Salle and his faithful lieutenant, Tonty, 
 into a tale as thrilling and romantic as the descriptive portions 
 are brilliant and vivid. It is superbly illustrated with twenty- 
 three masterly drawings by Mr. Enoch Ward. 
 
 For sale by booksellers generally, or will be sen/, post-paid, on 
 receipt of the price, by 
 
 *A. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers, 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
HORT HISTORY o* ENGLAND 
 
 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. By Miss E. S. 
 KIRKLAND, author of " A Short History of France," 
 " Speech and Manners," etc. 
 
 i2mo, cloth, price, $1.25. 
 
 IN reviewing Miss Kirkland's " Short History of France," 
 the " Nation " said Miss Kirkland had " composed it in the way 
 in which a history for young people should be written." It is 
 therefore natural that many admirers of the earlier work should 
 have urged its author to write a history of England on the same 
 plan. This seemed especially desirable to those who think that 
 no history of England adapted to the needs of young people 
 now exists. Miss Kirkland has yielded to the urgency, and this 
 book is the result ; but it was not written until after years of 
 careful preparation. 
 
 It is believed that the book will be found to be even an 
 improvement upon her admirable history of France, as the 
 experience gained in writing that volume has greatly aided Miss 
 Kirkland in preparing this. It will not be found a book for 
 adults simply put into childish language, nor will it be found full 
 of the divine right of kings nor of the unwisdom of the American 
 colonies in breaking away from the good and parental govern- 
 ment of the mother country; but it will be found very inter- 
 esting, calm, judicial, and somewhat original in its judgments, 
 thoroughly abreast with the results of recent investigations, 
 and making the effort at least to tell the entire story justly and 
 dispassionately, and with thought and language alike adapted 
 to the capacity and the needs of the young. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by 
 
 *A. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers, 
 
 Cor. Wabash Ave., and Madison St., Chicago. 
 
BSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 OCT 19 191S 
 
 JAN 2^ 1916 
 
 ST X 1925 
 
 fill 
 
 'G 9 I, 
 
 30m-l,'15