OF 81 G-55 Gibson - Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Qu 6-1 This book is DUE on last date stamped below MAY 8 ' 1924 JUM 3 1925 7992 -:- OAL. SHARP EYES A RAMBLER'S CALENDAR OF FIFTY-TWO WEEKS AMONG INSECTS, BIRDS, AND FLOWERS WM. HAMILTON GIBSON AUTHOR OF "STROLLS BY STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINI " PASTORAL DAYS " ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1898 $ \ Qr35 OF EIES SEEING" X ' ' For the blind man saith, ' 7 thing as sight '. ,, -. ,. There is the c maladie of blindnesse, and ther mental-vnaladie of blind sight .. . sooth ye are all blinde except andwe doe seek in harm there be those who see not thou, looke, who having eies of yet walk abroad in starrnge no socb real the "hjgood in in de .Verily l hey doe 'bowinge bifodness" ROUGH MY SPECTACLES many decade pa continuous special correspom ally amounting to an inquisition embracing all parts of the United States, and even tions, mainly penned by young students of Natural His- tory, who, having been deceived by some misleading spirit in my previously published pages, have sought my opinion as though consulting the oracle. These letters have embraced questions, I had almost said, upon every conceivable subject of zoology ; ques- tions which frequently would have taxed the erudition of Humboldt himself, to say nothing of an occasional inquiry which would as certainly for the moment have annihilated his equanimity. The correspondence which these letters have evoked from me if used as MS. would yield a book of no mean dimensions, and the time and labor involved therein, taken also in connection with the frequent repetition of the same queries from various widely separated locali- ties, continually suggested the idea that a popular vol- ume based upon such questions might " meet a long- felt want," as it certainly would meet a genuine need. Vlll THROUGH MY SPECTACLES Recognizing, too, the evident hunger for information concerning every-day objects in Nature, and that where one individual would write for enlightenment one hun- dred would wonder in silence and ten thousand dwell in heedless innocence, I realized that such a book might also go forth as a missionary to open the eyes of the blind, or at least quicken a desire for a fuller compre- hension of the omnipresent marvel and beauty of the commonplace. To all these considerations and conditions this volume owes its final embodiment. It is, after all, but a hint. If it shall serve as a courier, if only to open the door to lower the bars, as it were, to these " pastures new," surely it will not have been uttered in vain. Not a few of my friends will, perhaps, discover fa- miliar words in the following pages ; while others, I am assured, will herein recognize the first response of a di atory correspondent. Sharp Eyes, then, is, in brief, a cordial recommenda- tion and invitation to walk the woods and fields with me, and reap the perpetual " harvest of a quiet eye," which Nature everywhere bestows ; to witness with me the strange revelations of this wild bal masqtie' ; to laugh, to admire, to study, to ponder, to philosophize between the lines to question, and always to rejoice and give thanks ! Sharp Eyes is, moreover, a plea for the rational, con- templative country ramble. It is a messenger to that thoughtless host to whom Nature is a closed book not only unopened, but with leaves uncut to those who would take a " walk" perhaps, but to whom, it would seem, the only virtues of a walk are comprised in the quickening pulse, the expansion of lung, and the cul- tivation of brawn. To such, a walk may be an exhila- ration and a positive benefit, but scarcely the means of grace which is implied in the stroll or ramble. I would THROUGH MY SPECTACLES IX lay open a few, a very few, of these uncut pages, which I have learned by heart, that a " little may be read," even as we run. I would give at least one worthy mo- tive for a stroll for every day in the year storm or shine, summer or winter conscious that in thus seeing through my spectacles my proselytes will surely rejoice in their conversion. As to the assumptive tone of my title, I would add a few words. The term " sharp eyes " is, after all, but relative. There are degrees of sharpness of vision even as there are degrees of blindness. An eye may be " sharp " for birds but blind to botany ; keen for Indian arrow-heads and dull to entomology, but never omni- scient ; or, as Thoreau figuratively but forcibly puts it, "a man absorbed in the study of grasses tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walks." Thus, if the expression of these pages shall appear somewhat pedagogic, the critical reader will bear in mind that they were not intended for the scientist nor zoologist, nor, of course, for eyes sharper than my own in these especial fields. Prompted originally by the numerous juvenile correspondence, and prepared for the columns of a young people's journal, any inference of conscious didacticism in the author may perhaps best be met in the apology of the old Roman proverb: "Inter caecos regnat luscus" among the blind, a one-eyed man is king. Indeed, are we not all relatively blind? Is not the "sharpest eye" continually reminded of how blind it was but yesterday? Truly speaks " Fra Lippo Lippi :" " We're made so, that we love First, when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see "- an axiom which needs no emphasizing, being borne out in every one's experience. Many of these " things we X THROUGH MY SPECTACLES have not cared to see " are the subjects of the following chapters things not rare, nor seclusive, nor foreign, which are to be found in almost any of our woods, or fields, or copses, and which any wide-awake saunterer may discern with "half an eye," if 'that member be prop- erly equipped. Anticipation is an equipment, the surest talisman to discovery, and anticipation may be quick- ened either by pictorial hint or previous experience. The retina must be on the alert. A boy who has woodchucks in his eye as he crosses the farm is sure to see his wood- chuck, 'while otherwise he never had got a glimpse of him. It matters not in what particular direction the eye is educated ; the habit of observation in one field quickens the powers of perception in any other, and the results depend not upon the eye the camera but upon the spirit and inspiration behind the retina, for " there is no more power to see in the eye itself than in any other jelly;" in the words of William Blake, "we see tJirough it, not with it," even as through our spectacles. Moreover, to the average observer, if the eye is ever thus to be a means of grace it must store up its harvest while hearts are light and life is new, when eyes are bright and unbedimmed. How many a prisoner caged in city walls is living on the harvest stored in free, un- burdened youth, and which has never been replenished. "When one thinks of the Greeks," writes Ouida, " playing, praying, laboring, lecturing, dreaming, sculpt- uring, training, living everlastingly in the free wind and under the pure heavens, and then reflects that the chief issue of civilization is to pack human beings like salt- fish in a barrel, with never a sight of leaf or cloud, never a whisper of breeze or bird oh, the blessed blind men who talk of Progress! ' In the more serious pursuit of scientific study, the wilds offer limitless opportunities to the close observer, and especially to the young whose lives are spent among THROUGH MY SPECTACLES XI the hills. There is yet plenty of work for sharp eyes to do, many a "common thing" whose secret is yet undis- covered, and few "known" things that are not still a constant rebuke to our self-satisfaction. The first mead- ow you meet is a great " undiscovered country;" learned, as we thought, in its length and breadth yesterday, it is still undiscovered to-day. The life history of many of our common plants, birds, insects, and mammals yet re- mains to be truly written. The keen, alert eye of boy- hood often has opportunities and leisure for discovery denied to his elder, burdened fellow-beings, and evi- dences are not wanting to prove that even " A raw recruit, Perchance, may shoot Great Buonaparte." The facts in the following pages are almost entirely drawn from individual experience, largely gathered in boyhood, the apparently random selection being based upon a desire for the greatest variety possible within a li^fccd range of the minor flora and fauna. The dates are apportioned from careful notes, verified through a record of many years. In most cases they are not arbi- trary, being fixed at the mean period for each subject. The calendar is based upon the latitude of Connecticut, and while the dates given will, in most cases, be authen- tic for a district, covering the whole of New England and the Middle States, some adjustments will be nec- essary for Southern readers, there being at least three weeks' variance in the floral, and inferentially in the whole natural calendar, between the latitudes of Maine and Florida. Apology for the conspicuous preferment of my drag- on-fly as an emblem for cover and title-page will certainly be unnecessary to those who are familiar with this gro- tesque of the insect world. The natural symbol of om- XI 1 THROUGH MY SPECTACLES niscience, a creature of the two elements, sharp-eyed alike in both, possessed of a head which is, in fact, all eyes, have we not here an embodied and tangible " qui vtve," beside which the fabled Argus of old is a tame conception? The seat of its keen intelligence, double- domed and literally begemmed with sight, reinforced, too, with wings which convert the horizon to a present kingdom, where shall my volume look for a more apt emblem? Moreover, what reminders of red-letter days are awaked in his familiar shape visions of lush green tan- gles, of water- weeds and lily -pads, of rippling brooks and dipping oars and dancing bobbers ; placid lakes, cool forest glades, and meadows redolent with bloom. May we not accept our dragon-fly even as a courier? W. HAMILTON GIBSON, i. Washington, Conn. Spring T HE earliest blossom, the skunk-cabbage flower, visited by bees in snowy March, Revels of the sprouting maple-seeds. Peeping frogs: spring music from the swamp : Hy lodes, Hyla, and cricket -frog. Imitation of Hy lodes. Tree- toads in March. Vernal greeting from the pines. Clicking cones. Hygro- metric hocus-pocus of pine-cone. The squirrel as a botany teacher. Spiral arrangement of cone-scales. Spring blossoms: avant-courrieres among the wild flowers. Blossoms under snow. Poetical allusions. Quickening seeds. Clover infants, beech babies, and maples in swaddling-clothes. " Great oaks from little acorns grow." Masquerade of the maple-seeds. A butterfly sere- nade : musical wings of the "yellow-edge." Caterpillar swarms of Antiopa. A rosy-winged rattling locust and his agile emerald companion of the spring woods. A water-fairy: filmy opalescent sylph of the snow-pools. Birds of April. The poets' harbingers. Bird songs in onomatopoeia. The grackles" " clatterin'." The " partridge " and his mysterious "drum." Authorities at odds. Our loftiest weed. Its beautiful pith. A tall story. The hay-fever reprobate. Tenacious oak-leaves defiant of winter storms. A prehistoric pot- ter ; earthen jugs of the vase-maker wasp and their lively contents. Unfold- ing buds. Vernal tints in the bourgeoning woods. A poetical bit of mirrored truth. Winter-bud secrets. Beautiful designs in buds. The autumn dog- wood bud and its botanical lesson. A flower that is not a flower. The toad and his bagpipe. Drowsy drool of the twilight marshes. A frog-song mimic. Mimicry of toad song. A very homely singer. Southern frog music extraor- dinary. A Japanese frog trio. May-apples and false May-apples. Dr. Gray's "pigs and boys." The mandrake May-apple described. The swamp-pink apple and its mission. A poison May-apple. A blossom in masquerade; XIV CONTENTS the flower with a scarlet cloak. The well-kept secret of the flowering winter- green, or polygala ; anchor flowers underground. The dwarf ginseng and its sweet "ground-nut." Bewitched cocoons; Polyphemus and Cecropia co- coons packed full of mischief. A spurious brood; "ugly wasps" instead of beautiful moths. The witch at work. A pulpit theme. Life under a stone. "Finds" for the naturalist. A beetle with a gun: the bombardier and his shooting propensities. " Three rounds." Utility of the demonstration. The devil's coach-horse and his wonderful tail: a test for sharp eyes. The "light- ning change artist" of the bug circus; from a buzzing fly to a wingless bug in a twinkling. How it is accomplished. Butterflies as botany teach- ers. Plants classified into genera before the era of the human botanist. Re- markable botanical instincts of the black "swallow-tail." The wise Archipptts and other butterflies Pages 186 Summer ^OISON- SUMACHS and the suspected Virginia creeper. Dangerous species easily distinguished. A simple "jingle" for a talisman. " Expert " advice. The harmless and libelled Ampelopsis, or woodbine, exonerated. Awakening mummies : queer antics of burrowing chrysalids. A strange resurrection in the June woods. A glittering-winged gem; pure gold outrivalled. A gold- mine among the bind -weed leaves. Another insect gem; glowing jewels on the dog-bane leaf ; a ruby and an emerald combined. Prize packages on the hazel-bush. A clever piece of hocus-pocus; no string, pin, nor glue. A long-headed clerk and her well-kept secret. Caught in the act at last. Pre- cious bundles. The scouring -grass and its wriggling spores: what a simple pocket-microscope can show us. A squirming legion. Jumping for freedom. A pretty microscopic hygroscope. The "scouring -brush" of the Pilgrim housewives. Secret of the bright tins. A mineral frame in a vegetable stalk. A tube of flinty silex which defies nitric acid. Beautiful chemical experiment. Geological significance of the plant. "How doth the little busy bee." A complete tell-tale record of forage among the flowers. Queer fruits from the bee's "basket." Epicurean and other fodder for bee-babes; melons, tea-boxes, oranges, bombshells, and pepper-boxes. Pollen eccentricities. A pollen fly- trap in a milk-weed blossom, and a decorated victim. Butterfly-net entertain- ment; harvest of a few sweeps among the herbage. Revelations of the life that peoples the grass. Insects extraordinary. A midnight walk and its sur- prises: sleepy-heads, nightcaps, drowsy fringes, and wide-awakes among flowers and leaves. Shuttlecocks on blue -bottle steins. Dew diamonds. Glittering fountain of "horse-tail" plant. The tearful jewel-weed. Titania and the gos- samers. A little known bird-song. The yellow-winged sparrow and its grass- hopper music. The meadow grasshopper and its song. The well-kept secret of the evening primrose. The flowers by daylight, and what they can show us. Blossom -tents and tenants: the primrose's protege. The spice -bush and its big-eyed bugaboo. Mystery of that folded leaf. Rustic superstition. Musical beetles. The insect orchestra and its various instruments. A doughty fiddler. A squeaky trio on the poplar branch. Musical collars. The pretty golden-rod musician. An eccentric precentor with a double baton and a ready whip-lash. The club-mosses and their inflammable spores: a fiery explosion in the woods. Fireworks at home. "The rocket's red glare." CONTENTS XV Vagabond seeds. Gypsy weeds : the beggar-ticks, clot-burrs, and stick-seeds of the woods and road-side. A "rogue's gallery" on one's coat-sleeve. A few tramps identified. A veritable caltrop. Remarkable "spider's nest" in an old dress. ' ' Dead " spiders in a wasp-nest. The mud-dauber and her ways. The lump of mud on the rafters, and its singular contents. A hypodermic in- jection and a merciful sleep. The talking fly; his conversation and practice. Another underground flower and its little hairy peanut. Flowers for show and flowers for use ; a singular freak of a common wild vine. A bower- building caterpillar. A petal-tent among the everlasting flowers, and what it may contain: a testimony from the immortelles. Ballooning seeds. Buoyant winged fruits with all sorts of wings and parachutes. Milk-weed and thistle pompons for little girls. A botany lesson in a cobweb. The brownie dust- brushes of the silky groundsel-tree Pages 89-174 T autumn HE "fairy ring" mushroom and its compass. Fastidious growth of fungi. A queer "bumblebee" and a queer letter. A Bombus that catches "horse- flies." " Caught in the act." A test for sharp eyes. Some entomological dissertations on flies and bees for the benefit of a rustic naturalist. A carnivo- rous fly in masquerade. How to handle a wasp: the secret exposed. Wasps rolled in the fingers without danger. Popular traditions disposed of. A re- pentant experimentalist. An important "spell" which must at least be mem- orized. Wasps and wasps. A valuable and suggestive postscript. Wonders of the fungus. Spore dust. Appalling potential possibilities in a single puff- ball. Whimsical choice in toadstools and mushrooms. Moulds and mildews. Fairy parasols and mimic birds' nests. A chrysalis and a caterpillar changed into fungus plants, and a queer bundle from the Chinese apothecaries' shop. Au- tumn pipers : whistling tree-frogs, toads, and salamanders. The spring peep- ers among the trees. The brown dead leaves and their own frog. A "lizard" with the voice of a bird. A murderous burdock and its pinioned chickadee. Puzzling cocoon clusters on grass stems. Nature's "Jack-in-the-box." The "Jack" abroad, and its victim. The cocoon mystery revealed: a resurrec- tion not planned by the caterpillar, and an episode referred to pulpit philoso- phers. Witch-hazel witchery. A fusillade from ten thousand double-barrelled guns in the October copse. The gun described. The salute from the violet. Seed-showers shot from violet pods. Violet blossoms for the world in April, and others for mother earth in October. A violet freak. A bewitched willow bud: a cone which is not honestly come by. Why the willow has no right to a cone. A magician with a wonder-working sharp-pointed wand. What the chickadee knows about willow-cones. Other witchery among the twigs. A big family housed on a blackberry stem. The frost-flower. Flowers of three kinds on a common plant, only one of which is generally seen : a showy flower with petals, a flower with no petals, and a flower of ice crystal prettier than either. Birds of November. November bird songs and birds of passage. Snow-birds and buntings and "kinglets." The ash-tree and its rustling seeds. The remarkable "paddle," a prehistoric hint of the "oar" in model and timber. Association of the ash and the birch in nature and art. The Indian canoe and the arrow- head model. Among the birds' nests. Whimsical choice of building mate- rials. The vireo's "sampler" fabric; cobwebs, seeds, caterpillar- skins, hor- XVI CONTENTS net-nest, lace, horse-hair, and snake-skins. "Politician" and "preacher." A Scripture text from a "preacher's" nest. A few particular whims in build- ing material. A snake-skin specialist. The bed of snake-skins in the hollow tree. Suggestive cherry-pits in a deserted nest. Autumn's lingering wild flow- ers. November's bouquet. November's own flower. The luminous witch- hazel copse. A calendar garland of dandelions. The perennial chickweed and its winter blooms. A blossoming conservatory in a filmy ice grotto. A winter bird's -nest. A summer bird -home newly furnished as a snug winter resort. The field-m6use nursery. The most marvellous drill in the world. A horse-hair gimlet. Ichneumon fly specimens in the winter woods. How and why the drill is manipulated. A rival borer its victim. "Modern" in- ventions and patents. Infringements on prehistoric models. Winter ro- settes. Symmetrical leaf patterns under the snow. Significant arrangement of leaves '. Pages 176-243 Minter STORIES in the snow. Tell-tale records of birds and bead-eyed folk. A mouse- race and a nest in a stump. Deer-mice at home. Autograph of the wild hare. A singular discovery. How bunny writes his name. Employment for sharp eyes. The cocoon harvest. Interesting quest for a winter walk. Artful disguise of cocoons. City specimens. Some curious twigs in the winter woods. Witches' brooms. Bulby golden-rod. Curious eggs. Girdler beetle and their remarkable instinct. Hickory pruning extraordinary. The pruner's plans.- The well-named horse-chestnut; its "horse" discovered hoof, fetlock, frog, seven nails, and all. The "partridge" as a snow-walker. Bare summer feet and winter snow-shoes. Snow burrows and budding-holes. The "fairy ring" in the snow: strange snow writings of wind-blown grass - blades. January butterflies. Winter outing in the sunny barn-yard. The angle- wings. Hiber- nation of the hardy, world-wide Antiopa. A winged shower from the tulip- tree. A snow-burrowing squirrel. The provident red squirrel and his happy- go-lucky neighbor. How the gray squirrel finds his pine-cones through the deep snow. Winter grist for the birds. Weeds redeemed. Wind-blown weed-seeds on snow. A curious windrow analyzed. Those specks on the snow. The myriad bird-shaped scales of the snowy woods traced to their source. An innocent catkin with a trick of its own. Opening the door for the swarm. Living specks on snow. Snow-fleas and their history. Entomology and rustic tradition. The basket -carry ing caterpillar. Its puzzling cocoons. Baby basket-makers and their building whims. A patriotic specimen. Life in a hammock. " Pulling the hole in after him." The bag-worm at dinner. Moored for the winter. Strange superstition of a darkey. The queer little black moth. House-builders under water. Interesting dwellers in every pond and stream. Stone cottages and wooden cabins of the caddis worm. A rare mosaic tube of crystal. Water-proof cement. Various building designs. What the rock-fish knows about caddis. " Around the evening lamp." The "caddis" with which we are all too familiar. A few foreign caddis houses. The whirligig water beetle. Its mazy dance at the edge of the ice. Thoreau's observations. A winter outinsr. How Gyrinus "goes to bed." The dive to the depths, with its silvery bubble. Remarkable and unique dual powers of vision. " Sharp eyes " extraordinary Pages 247-309 Haunt of the Toad [see p. 53] Frontispiece The Great-eyed Snapping-beetle . vi The "Bull's-eye" Moth. Saturnia A March Landscape The Calla f^. The Earliest Wild Flower . Maple-seed Antics A Wintry Bit A Spring Morning . Peeping Frogs Cricket and Pick- ering Frog ........ 8 A Spring Soloist ....... 1 1 The Spring Peeper in October . .12 Clicking Pine-cones ...... 14 Jumping Cones ....... 15 A Cone in its Bed of Seeds . . . 16 Squirrel and Cone ...... 1 8 " By the snow-bank's edges cold" . 19 Anemone Nemorosa, Claytonia, and Whitlow-grass ....... 21 A Nook in the Woods Dutchman's- breeches, Rue -anemones, Liver- worts, and Early Everlasting . . 23 " Squirrel Corn " 24 A Maple-seed Masquerade ... 25 Sprouting Acorns 26 Beech Babes and Clover Infants . 28 Antiopa Butterflies 30 Musical Wing of Antiopa .... 31 Antiopa Caterpillars 3 2 The " Coral-wing " Locust ... 35 The Fairy Shrimp 37 The Crackles . . ' 38 The Brown Thrasher 39 The "Drummer" 40 The Meadow Lark 41 The Great Ragweed 43 The Small Ragweed 44 Tenacious Oak-leaves 45 A Prehistoric Vase-maker .... 46 Tail-piece 47 XV111 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Opening Buds Linden, Horse- chestnut, and Hickory .... 48 The Dogwood Flower, from Bud to Bloom 49 Puss Willows 51 t~- The Toad and his Bagpipe ... 53 Toy " Locust" 54 A Japanese Frog Trio 56 Azalea May-apple 57 May Woods 58 Mandrake May-apple 59 False May-apple 60 The "Painted-cup" 61 A. Meadow Glimpse 62 The Fringed Polygala 63 Tail-piece 64 The Ground-nut Ginseng .... 65 Edge of the Woods 66 Polyphemus Moth and Cocoons . . 67 A Bewitched Cocoon 68 A Spurious Brood frOm a Cocoon . 69 The Ichneumon at Work .... 70 The Bombardier Beetle .... 74 Among the Weeds 75 A Grassy Wood-road 76 The Devil's Coach-horse .... 78 The Crusader Beetle . . . . .79 The Asterias Butterfly 80 Butterfly Hunters 81 Asterias Caterpillar 83 Archippus Butterfly and Haunt . . 84 The Milk-weed Caterpillar ... 85 Tail-piece 86 Poison-sumach 89 Poison-ivy 91 White Berries of Poison-sumach . 93 Leaf of the Virginia Creeper ... 95 Awakening Mummies . . . . .97 Dryocampa Moth 98 Jf^ PAGE The Gold Beetl(T 99 Wild Bind-weed 100 A Country Road 101 Dog-bane 102 Dog-bane Beetle 103 Hazel Packet-roller at Work . . 104 Hazel Packets 106 The River-bank 107 Scouring-grass 109 The Stone Skeleton of the Scour- ing-grass no Scouring-grass Brush in Nasturtiums 112 Bees at Home 113 Varieties of Pollen .' 115 A Victim of Milk -weed Pollen . .116 A Grassy Road 117 Insects from the Sweep-net . . . 118 A Pocket Magnifier 120 Night-flowering Catchfly .... 121 A Midnight Walk 123 Horse-tail Plant in the Dew . .124 Blue-bottles by Day and Night . .125 Dew Diamonds of Jewel- weed . .127 A Summer Meadow 128 The Yellow-winged Sparrow . .129 Haunt of the Sparrow . . . .130 The Meadow Grasshopper . . . 131 Spice-bush with Folded Leaves . 133 Caterpillar of the Spice-bush . . 134 The Protege of the Evening Prim- rose 135 Evening Primrose 136 The Evening Primrose Moth . . 137 The Fiddling Beetle (Priomts) . .138 Musical Beetles (Saperda) . . .140 Zebra Beetle (Clytus) 141 A Titillator 142 Caterpillar of Puss Moth .... 144 ILLUSTRATIONS XIX Tail-piece 145 Club-mosses 146^ Explosive Spores of Club-moss . . 148 The Rocket's Red Glare .... 149 Seed Tramps (Bidens) . . . .150 Stick-seed Plants in the Woods . .152 Too familiar Seeds 154 A Landscape Note 155 The broken " Spider Nest ". . . 157 Web of the Yellow Argiope Spi- der 158 Mud-wasp Nests in Garret . . .159 The Carnivorous Fly 163 A Sketching Nook 164 The Wild Bean Vine 166 Wild Bean Pods, from Above and Below Ground 167 The Petal-nest of the Hunter's But- terfly 169 Winged Seeds Cat-tail and This- tle 171 Ballooning Seeds 173 Seed-tufts of the Groundsel-tree . 174 The Fairy Ring Mushroom . . .178 A Mimic Bumblebee (Laphria fly) . 181 A Country Road 182 The Brown Wasp 183 Nest of the Polifctes 184 Wasp Drones and Neuters on Gold- en-rod 185 Meadow Landscape 186 The Chestnut-burr Fungus . . . 188 Fairy Parasols 189 The Chrysalis Fungus . . . .190 A Chinese Fungus Bundle . ... 191 Autumn Landscape 193 ~T~The Tree-toad (ffyla versicolor) . 195 The Burdock as a Bird-trap . . . 197 Parasitic Cocoons on Grass-stem . 199 The Ichneumon Fly and its Victim 200 Tail-piece 201 Witch-hazel Catapults . . . .203 Jack in the Box 204 Violet Pod expelling Seeds . . . 205 Handleaf Violet ( Viola cucullata) . 206 The Wijlow-cone Gall . . . .207 The Blackberry-stem Gall ... 209 The Frost-weed. Flower and Au- tumn Crystal 210 November Birds Snow - bunting and Kinglet 214 Paddle-seeds of Ash . . . . 216 Birch and Canoe 217 Birch-leaf and Arrow-head . . .218 Bird-nest Remnants 219 A Vireo's Nest 220 The " Preacher's " Text .... 222 The Snake-skin in the Grass . .225 Witch-hazel Blossoms 226 Dandelion ........ 228 Chickweed 229 A Mouse Nest on Smilax Spray . 230 Feathers for the Nest 231 A Winter Snuggery 232 Mouse-work 233 Ichneunvon Flies (Thalessa Itina- tor) 235 The Fly on the Wing 236 The Pigeon Tremex ( Tremex co- lumlid) 237 A Pair of Pincers 239 Winter Rosette of the Evening -Primrose 240 The Rosette of the Moth Mullein . 241 Pepper-grass and English Plantain Rosettes 242 The Thistle Rosette 243 A Mouse Race 247 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 249 251 252 253 255 A Mouse Nest in old Stump The Wild Hare's Autograph Bunny's Footprint .... Winter Cocoons .... Caterpillar of Cecropia Moth Cecropia Cocoon and Emerging Moth f . . 256 Curious Winter Twigs .... 258 Spiny Rose-galls 259 The Girdler Beetle at Work . .261 A Winter Glimpse 262 Horse-chestnut Bloom .... 263 The Hoof, Fetlock, and Seven Nails 264 The Ruffed Grouse as a Snow- walker 266 Feet of Grouse in Summer and Winter 267 The " Fairy Ring" in the Snow . 269 Winter Butterflies 271 A Winter Outing 272 The Antiopa 273 The Tree-tulip .274 The Seed-shower from the Tulip- tree 275 PAGE A Snow Burrower 277 A Raid on the Red Squirrel's . 279 . 281 . 282 . 283 . 285 . 287 . 288 Hoard Winter Weeds and Winter Birds Curious Meadow-crumbs . Seed-pods of Indian Mallow Snowy Woods Birch-seed Catkins Birch Catkin-scales Magnified . Snow-fleas 289 Winter Woods 290 Tail-piece 291 A Curious Swarm from a Cocoon . 292 Baby Basket-makers 293 The Basket Moored for the Win- ter 294 The Basket-carrier at Home . . 297 The Basket-carrier Moth .... 298 Haunt of the Caddis 300 Caddis Cases 301 " Around the evening lamp " . . 302 Foreign Caddis Houses .... 303 Whirligig Beetles 305 The Beetle Diving with Bubble . 307 The Sharp-eyed Gyrinus .... 308 //O5 zt'#o #f really awake to the sights and sounds which the procession of the months offers them, find endless entertainment and instruc- tion. Yet there are great multitudes who are present at as many as threescore and ten performances, without ever really looking at the scenery, or listening to the music, or observing the chief actors. ' ' O. W. HOLMES. ** ,fe THE FIRST BLOSSOM March loth HAT is the first token of returning spring? It is now almost the ides of March. The winter still rules the landscape, and the fact may yet be emphasized by a snow-storm or a bliz- zard, for the almanac gives Boreas a few days more for mischief. But the breath of spring is in the air, even though the meadows be still white with lingering snows. Al- most any day now we may listen confidently for the fine prophetic hum of the first honey-bee. For the bees have felt the vernal prophecy, and have heard whispers of sweets and blossoms in the air. Here is a little swarm of them sipping at the dark stain of sap on the SHARP EYES trunk of a sugar -maple, while an eager brood have sought the wood -pile, crowding each other in their eager tipple from the sweet fermented exudation on the end of the white -birch log. But they are not all to be found here. Even as we watch the gathering swarm at the birch-log feast a new- comer speeds swiftly past our ear with an especially eager hum. There is no loitering at the wood-pile this time. Over the barn -yard and garden, and across the white field beyond, we can readily trace its flight until lost in the twiggy mist of the swamp beyond. Another and another follow in its trail, and if we choose to wait and watch with patience we may soon irtj witness the returning procession, each winged / forager with his saddle-bags overflowing with golden grist. What a vision of summer in those rounded yellow thighs ! Blossoms ? Blossoms? But where? The ground is covered with snow, and flaky ice incrusts the borders of the pools, and yet here is our veritable summer bee laying up its store of pollen. It is now some weeks before the wood bouquet of anem- ones and bloodroots may be sought with confidence, but the honey-bee knows where to find a pioneer blossom that is fast going to seed when these wood blooms first show their faces. Even to us who know the bee's secret, how often does he give us the hint THE FIRST BLOSSOM for the search in the bog before we had thought of a courier of spring? No matter, then, how cold or wintry the landscape, go now in early March to the wet low- lands, and get your first vernal greeting from the lowly hermit of the bog. Welcome the prophet that pierces the snow, the pioneer that lifts the bar- riers of ice to tell us of the message he has received from mother- earth, long before the wood flower hears it in the south wind, or the lisp of the bluebird tells it to the trees ! What matters it that our purple-mottled, hooded blos- som is not graced with perfume nor blest with a poetic name? What though it may not ap- pear to advantage in a button -hole? The skunk- cabbage hood is as much entitled to the name of flower as its close relative the beautiful calla, while the naturalized European bees have long welcomed it to their posy, and recognized the humble "prophet not without honor save in its own country." MAPLE-SEED REVELS March loth HAT a universal expression of joyous an- ticipation, what murmurings of gladness might we not perceive in the air during the next few weeks were our human senses sufficiently delicate and inspired ! What breathings from unfolding catkins of alder and willow, and from swelling buds every- where ! What tidings from the myriad quick- ening seeds down against the sod ! Only here and there an occasional in- dividual more conspicuous than the rest tells the story of the universal rejoicing. Here is MAPLE-SEED REVELS 5 this dancing party of maple samaras on the snowy lawn, for instance. Is this an exhibition of mere bo- tanical germination, a simple seed that has sent out its baby root into the soil, and in so doing has been obliged to take this singular position ? Is it not as truly an allegory of the universal rapture of nature in this season of new birth and awakening which is now at hand ? No ; these are not mere maple seeds that have felt the quickening power of the south wind, but a troop of happy children literally standing on their heads in glee. What thoughts are brewing in those heads, with their fur-lined caps? What deep plans for a future maple grove out there upon the lawn ? Every spring their legions repeat these same express- ive revels, and yet it is only as we chance to see them relieved against a late March or April snow that we ever know of their pretty antics here in the grass. THE SPRING PEEPERS March i]th LMOST any bright, genial day now we may listen for the first note of the spring peepers, the tiny piping frogs that wet their whistles in the lowlands, and whose shrill chorus at the water's edge will soon usher in the April twilights, and keep the stars dancing on the palpitating ripples until the dawn. What would our New England spring be without this faithful music from the bog? How many of our sweet-voiced vernal birds, the favor- ite theme of so many of our poets, might not listen with profit at the swelling throat of the little Hylodes, whose pure strains have voiced the advent of spring without the tribute of a sonnet, or even an appreci- ative quatrain- a voice in the wilderness, so far as any worthy recognition in poetic literature can show ! Truly has Burroughs said that in Europe, where this swamp music is unknown, such a chorus as that which goes up from our ponds and marshes would certainly have made an impression on the literature. There are a number of these sprightly piping frogs w and spring croakers which take to the water or rise from the mud even before the ice has melted, each successively filling with music the brief period of its nuptial season, during which the pellucid eggs are de- posited in the shallows. But the first voice that now breaks the winter silence, and gives the key-note to the choir which soon shall follow, is pretty sure to be that of the Hy lodes, whose bird -like whistle is well known to every dweller in the country, even though the iden- tity of the singer has been a life-long mystery. Perhaps this first isolated " peep " is borne to us SHARP EYES across the withered rushes or cat -tails as we skirt the borders of the swamp, or perhaps from some hollow nook in the woods, where the melting of a snow-drift has left a glassy pool among the leaves, or even from some boggy bay at the brink of the stream "pJiee y phee, p/iee, phee " ut- tered with brief pauses, and in the note E, four octaves above middle C, or there- Not that I THE SPRING PEEPERS 9 have ever stood in the bog, with a tuning-fork in hand, to test the matter scientifically, but in my frequent ef- fort to mimic the pure, shrill tone with my own inade- quate whistle, an effort which, patiently continued, has more than once evoked a lively response from a sus- picious though silent pool in the spring woods, I have discovered that no pucker of mine can quite produce the pitch of this fine water whistle of the Hylodes, or Pickering's frog. He is usually from one to three notes above me, while in the matter of quality he leaves me far behind. Thus the limit of my whistle is C, while the peep of the Pickering's frog begins at E above, as I now recall it, the crescendo being given on F. This seems to be the approximate key of the vernal song. What influence the peculiar exuberance of the season may exert on that impassioned voice I know not, but I do know that the mysterious peep which I occasionally hear from the autumn trees for our Pickering's frog is a "tree-toad" at this season never seems to possess the peculiar spring quality. I have said that he wets his whistle. Let us see. For even though we approach near enough to get a good look at the singer, it would probably be difficult to iden- tify him from the pointed nose and the two tiny bulg- ing eyes that are all he permits to be seen above the water; nor even these for long, unless we are very wary. But we are safe in assuming that we have heard the Hylodes, probably Hylodes Pickeringi ; or, if not, we have needlessly confounded him with another related singer, the cricket-frog Hylodes gryllus of the earlier naturalists, but now designated by Baird as Acris crcpi- tans, and popularly known as the " Savannah cricket." These are the two rival marsh peepers, and it is a " toss IO SHARP EYES up " which you shall chance to hear first in your late winter rambles ; and if they are ever to be satisfactorily fixed in the memory by their songs, it must be at this season, when an isolated solo is among the possibilities. In the teeming din of the April chorus their disentan- glement is a hopeless task. But the "cricket," with his shrill rattling pipe, easily plays the second whistle, and there is not the slightest reason for confounding it with that of the Hylodes. The pure, unbroken tone is from the yellow throat of the Pickering, and when once fa- miliarized will not be forgotten. All those other efforts which fail to meet that standard of purity may be cred- ited to the comical little harlequin with the pretty mot- tled tights which I have coaxed out of the water, and placed where his pert figure can be seen, side by side with his rival. Whatever confusion there may be in the vocal identity of the two frogs, there is no confounding them when seen out of the water. The Pickering Hy- lodes is yellowish in tone, more or less mottled with darker tints of the same, the depth of the color varying with different individuals. What a contrast to the " cricket," with his olive-green coat splashed with black and red, and the large black spots rimmed with white upon the sides ! In the water, with nothing visible but the tips of their noses and pro- jecting eyes, and their voices alone to recommend them, the Pickering peeper has the advantage ; but he may well take a back seat on dry land when he appeals alone to the eye. The markings of the " cricket " vary in prominence in different individuals, occasionally being almost obsolete; but they may always be found upon close examination, and are an unmistakable means of identification. THE SPRING PEEPERS II Every one who lives in the rural districts should know these two musical messengers of the spring, and with the help of the portraits I have given they may be easily indentified. Note the diminutive size, exactly given in the illustration, neither species being more than one inch, or at most one and a half inches, long in sitting posture "crickets" indeed ! Note also the peculiar disk-shaped pads at the tips of the toes of the Pickering, espe- cially of the front feet, a. peculiarity which distinguishes this genus of frogs (Hylodes) and that of the Hyla, or common tree- toad, in which latter both pairs of feet are equally equipped, a character- istic which to the naturalist tells much of the habits of his specimens, for it means that any frog so provided is built for climbing, and that most of its life is spent among bushes and trees. It has long been believed that the tree- 12 SHARP EYES toads spend the winter, like other frogs, buried in the mud at the bottom of the ponds and marshes ; but this is now discredited by many observers, who have disclosed them during the winter beneath logs, and in other places far from the water. It is true that on the first approach of spring weather they seek the pools to deposit their eggs, and this supreme function is the impulse of their universal song at this period. The Pickering frog is the champion climber of his kind, even outvying the tree -toad, or Hyla. The shrill voice from the bog is quite as likely to proceed from some perch among the tall, withered rushes as from the rippling water, while Dr. C. C. Abbott mentions having found one of the agile peepers at the top of a tulip- tree, sixty feet from the ground. THE CLICKING CONES March 24th HILE the skunk-cabbage is pierc- ing the snow in the swamp, and the maple seeds are all on end with the good news which has come to them apparently through the quickened sod, the pine-cones in the tree-tops are firing their salutes to the first spring breeze. As early as February I have heard the pitch- pine woods merry with the clicking cones, and seen the fluttering showers of winged seeds fly- ing out upon the snow. To be sure, our botanies mention no such early ripening of the cones, the second autumn after flowering being the stated season for the opening of the scales and release of the seeds. But a pitch-pine wood in any sunny day in early spring is a merry spot nevertheless. Both the Austrian and the Scotch pines, the introduced species of our city parks, are even more lively and communicative. The sharp click of the Aus- trian pine-cone may be distinctly heard two hundred feet from its source, while the hubbub which we may hear beneath a Scotch pine-tree on a warm March day sometimes amounts to a bedlam. It is a frequent pastime with me in my winter walks to gather and bring home a pocketful of these various cones with a view to witness- ing their curious antics in-doors. There is no telling just what any particular cone will do when once placed upon your par- lor mantel. They are full of individual whims, and occasionally show an exhibition very much like hocus-pocus. Here is one, for instance, from the pitch-pine. Yesterday, when gathered, it was trim and compact, without a crack upon its surface ; and now, as though bewitched in the night, it has blossomed out into a rose-like form with open flaring scales, occupying three times its former space, and is quietly resting in a bed of a hundred buff-colored filmy seeds. And there is another that has rolled half-way across the shelf, and every few moments takes a new turn in a most restless fashion. Yonder by the vase we see two of them quietly rolling over as though seeking a more comfortable posi- tion, while an impetuous specimen in their midst is evidently determined to be rid of its restless associates, for with a sharp click it clears the group at a jump and bounds out across the floor. Of course all these whims have a very simple explana- tion if we care to study the matter philosoph- ically. The cones gath- ered in early winter are usu- ally the most demonstrative, for their scales are generally intact and so closely glued to- gether at the surface that they are not likely to yield without something very like an explosion, especially in the artificial warmth of the house. The outward ten- sion of these scales during the process of drying is a truly powerful force. When one of the scales becomes detached while held in the hand, it produces a smart stinging sensation, and when that springing scale chances to be on the lower side of the cone, while the same is at rest, the force is sufficient to produce a lively leap. In the case of the rolling cones and the silent speci- men with the bed of seeds, it may be inferred that the scales had been previously rent asunder tardy ripen- ers of last autumn, perhaps, that failed to open suffi- ciently to shed their seeds. The others were doubtless 1 6 SHARP EYES once fully opened cones which had become closed again from absorption of moisture from rain or snow, for any one of these flaring open specimens will assume its orig- inal form if immersed in water, opening again gradually as the evaporation is more and more complete. The opening of the cone begins at the base, each scale over- lapping its fellows spirally in several tiers to the apex; as the scale loosens it turns outward, and the pressure of even one scale being suddenly released, a series of clicks is likely to follow, as each one sets free its neigh- bor. THE SQUIRREL'S BOTANY LESSON March 24th CHAPTER might be written upon the beautiful symmetrical arrange- ment of the pine-cone scales. They are well worth careful study. The squirrel may here teach us a beautiful lesson in bot- any. How well he knows this spiral arrangement of the scales, and the order in which nature intended they should open ! "The squirrel has the key to this conical and spiny chest of many apartments," says Thoreau. " If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch-pine cones, just try to get one open with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds from a single closed cone with the aid of a knife will be constrained to confess that the squirrel earns his dinner. 1 "The plucking and stripping of a pine-cone is a busi- ness which he and his family understand perfectly. He does not prick his fingers, nor pitch his whiskers, nor gnaw the solid cone any more than he needs to. ... He holds in his hands a solid embossed cone so hard it al- most rings to the touch of his teeth. He knows better 1.8 SHARP EYES. than to cut off the top and work his way downward, or to gnaw into the sides for three-quarters of an inch in the face of many armed [spiny] shields. He whirls it bottom upward in a twinkling, and then proceeds to cut through the thin and tender bases of the scales, and each stroke tells, laying bare at once a couple of seeds. Thus he strips it as easily as if its scales were chaff, and so rapidly, twirling it as he advances, that you cannot tell how he does it till you drive him off. and inspect his unfinished work." THE EARLIEST WILD FLOWER March jist T is now within a few hours of the 1st of April, and already the har- binger spring blossom has bloomed in the woods perhaps a week or more ago. What name shall we give it ? What is the earliest blos- som the earliest New England blos- som ? True, there is the skunk -cab- bage pioneer down in the bog, which we found some three weeks ago though only after the bees had given us the hint and already discovered it several days in advance of us and which has now seen its best days. But by common human consent this plebeian does not count, even though 2O SHARP EYES the bee has long settled the question of its qualifica- tions. It is a flower, perhaps, but not a blossom, so says the sentimental fiat. Upon what fairer shoulders, then, does its mottled mantle fall? It were a rash commentator who would approach this question idly in the face of the host of natural- ists, botanists, spring poets, and " careful observers," each with his array of facts and dates and witnesses, his unimpeachable note -book, and his especial floral favorite for the vernal honors. The question has been satisfactorily decided by each of them ; and by a wis- dom born of experience the subject is avoided in mix- ed botanical councils as one prone to incite to con- fusion if not to riot. The dogged pertinacity and unreasonableness of the brethren on this matter are past belief. I never knew a botanist or spring poet to be convinced of his error on the subject of the ear- liest flower, and yet the truth of the matter is as plain as A, B, C. I long ago settled the question absolutely and irrevocably. The authorities who differ from me are all wrong. And what an array of floral candidates they have put in the field ! There is Bryant, who voiced the claims of the " yellow violet," which he ob- served in April "blooming by the snow-bank's edges cold," and which he further apostrophizes : " Of all her train the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould." But the yellow violet has never since fulfilled the poet's confidence. Then there's the trailing arbutus, another favorite of the poet, which has so often been found in bloom at the edge of the snow or even be- \ neath it. Bryant, in his "Twenty-seventh of March," pictures it blos- soming in company with the liverwort, some days earlier in date than his yellow violet, while in his " Winter Piece " it is the " wind-flower " that heralds the spring. There are many sponsors for the Claytonia, or spring beauty, the Dutch- man's-breeches {Dicentra cucul- laria ), the rock- flower (Saxifraga Virginiensis), wild -ginger (Asarum Cana- dense), anemone (A. nemorosa\ rue-anemone, dwarf-everlasting {Antennaria plant agini folia], bloodroot, and the tiny whitlow -grass (Draba verna}. Many of them have been gathered in the snowy woods of March in New England, and some weeks earlier, of course, in more 22 SHARP EYES southerly States. The writer once found a cluster of arbutus in bloom in Connecticut in February, and has frequently gathered the rock- flower and everlasting in the last of March and early April. Burroughs has oc- casionally happened upon the Claytonia and wild -gin- ger as his first spring blossoms. Which, then, shall bear the honor as the avaut - courriere ? The fact that you discovered the arbutus on April ist in 1889, and the Claytonia a week earlier in 1890, proves nothing as to the comparative natural chronology of the two plants. There can be no prescribed dates in our floral calendar. The test, of course, must be confined to a single season. In the year 1889 the early flowers were nearly two weeks ahead of ordinary schedule time all along the line in New England, and careful records go to show that a margin of a full month is not impossible during a long period of years. No ; it is not the yellow violet, nor the Claytonia, nor the squirrel- corn, nor the arbutus, nor the bloodroot, nor the anemones that first follow the swamp -cabbage and the silver-maple tassels; and if the rock-flower, or everlasting, or whitlow-grass, or wild-ginger surprises you in your walk in the March woods, accept it as a witness that your true quest is at hand, for they have all paid homage to the hepatica "whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty ; for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar " for that "just opened eye" would doubtless have greet- ed you several days previous had you chanced this way. THE EARLIEST WILD FLOWER When I picked my arbutus in February, and when Bur- roughs and Dr. Abbott gath- ered their Claytonias the latter in ' February we could doubtless all have found our hepatica too; and I am equally confi- dent that my early March blooms of rock- flower and everlasting were never so early as to have stolen a march on the liverworts. 24 SHARP EYES If the open winter lures any wood blossom to " open its eye," it will surely be the liverwort, even as this flower occasionally anticipates the spring in ordinary winter weather. I have before me a letter from an au- thority who picked them under a foot of snow on De- cember pth, and this, too, in a winter not notably mild. Truly, then, it is upon the hepatica that the varie- gated mantle of the swamp -cabbage flower has fallen. Look at its purple- mottled leaf and be convinced. QUICKENING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS April -?th FEW weeks ago a I kindly snow upon the lawn revealed to \ us the odd pranks of the maple seeds, which ap- peared to be standing on their heads in glee upon the white car- pet. Without the snow to set them off so sharply, we never had noticed them even as now, in April, we walk the woods, bring- ing chaos and destruction upon 26 SHARP EYES whole broods of merrymakers like themselves, though scarcely as moderate in their doings. Let us look at that maple frolic once more. How has it progressed ? "On with the dance! On with the dance!" seems to have been the cry during all these weeks, until now the woods are full of their wild capers. It is no mere quiet and contained exuberance now, but a veritable bal masque, with reel and rigadoon, in which no two of the participants seem to be of the same mind in whim or costume or etiquette, while half of them have literally lost their heads, and the other half their characters, so that I fancy their own mother-tree above them would scarcely recognize the flutter- ing progeny that she sowed upon last summer's breeze. They are indeed a droll and whimsical lot, this troop beneath the maple-tree. Surely this pretty revelry is more than seeming. It is not easy to con- sider it as a mere exhibition of germinating seeds. To the poet and the philosopher it brings its most precious message. What to the botanist? Considered as mere quick- ening seeds, they offer many interest- ing facts to the student; and inasmuch as they illustrate the beautiful plan of seed- QUICKENING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS 2"J germination in general, it will repay us to learn the les- son which they teach. Here in this single group we find the baby maples in every condition of growth, from the bursting samara standing on its head against the dry leaves, through all stages of vegetation, to the tiny tree with a half-dozen or more perfect leaves. A few of the infants still re- tain their telltale winged caps, and are thus easily iden- tified ; but the group contains a number of intermediate forms between this and the leafy specimens which, but for their company, would hardly be recognized. Here in the foreground is a winged individual which has matured its root and stem, and stands alone, getting itself in position for a more ambitious spread above, while directly above it are two others which are throw- ing off their swaddling-clothes. All of these are plainly maples; but what of the three which keep them com- pany on either side, and the flapping specimens which wave their double green banners above them ? Farther on we see a tiny pair of true maple leaves appearing between these little flags ; and, farther still, the unmis- takable foliage of young maple -trees. As we look at the various forms we may very naturally ask with Gray in his botanical lesson, " Was the plantlet formed in the seed something as the chick is formed in the egg during the process of incubation, or did it exist before in the seed ready formed? To decide this question we have only to inspect a sound seed, which in this instance re- quires no microscope nor any other instrument than a sharp knife. We find within the seed the little plant- let already formed, and something else namely, a pair of leaves [strap -shaped] borne on a stemlet, all snugly coiled up within the protecting seed coat." Nor is this a condition that has just taken shape on" the ap- proach of spring. It existed pre- cisely as ' now even while these winged broods were green and grow- ing on the tree last summer. Our cradled maples could have been disclosed then as well as now. And what is true of the maple is true of seeds in general ; the young plant exists ready formed in the seed, often protected between two so-called seed leaves or cotyledons. We may see it prettily illustrated in the pea-nut or in the bean by carefully separating its halves (cotyledons), the plant- let being concealed between them, while in the point upon the outside we see the radicle ready to strike root. So it is in our maple. First the rootlet seeks the soil ; this brings our seed on end. Then the stem grows. The seed leaves now swell and burst the shell, which soon falls, leaving only an interior membrane covering the cotyledons. This, in turn, is soon ruptured and cast off, while the banners then unfurl, and the tiny pair of true maple leaves soon appear between them. QUICKENING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS 2g It is a matter of natural curiosity among the uniniti- ated why there should be this diversity between the early and later leaves of the plant. These cotyledons are not properly leaves, but storehouses of food, and their office is to nourish the infant plant until its root is sufficiently grown to absorb nourishment from the soil. It is not alone in the maple that this pretty masquer- ade is to be seen in the spring woods. The little green things among the dried leaves everywhere are full of interest. Here is the acorn with its determined, rosy, pulsing radicle, making eager head -way towards the mould, while its swelling seed leaves are bursting their bonds. The baby beeches are odd affairs, with the sweet kernel of the former nut now unfolded from its snug quarters, and transformed to its two fan-shaped green nurse leaves with the tiny beech -sprout between them. We have all heard of four- leaved, five -leaved, and many-leaved clovers, but it is, perhaps, not generally known that many of the clover tribe start out in life as one-leaved clovers, though they seem quickly to repent. I do not happen to know just which member of the clo- ver family it was that sat for the portrait I have given ; possibly the medic. But there was a whole brood of them, each with its pair of cotyledons, its experimental single leaf, that invariably shrank away, like a wayward child, as far as possible from its outraged younger broth- er that seemed berating it for its degeneracy. A BUTTERFLY SERENADE April 1 4th NSECT hunters the world over will need no introduction to the butterfly whose portrait is given above the cosmopoli- tan Vanessa Antiopa of the books, the " yellow edge " of the American boy's cabinet, the " Camberwell Beauty" of England, known to every country boy as the first butterfly that flits in the early spring, and a challenge for a chase at any time. But we must make our acquaintance with Antiopa anew, for he has evident- ly kept a secret from most of us all these years. It evidently has something more to say for itself which few of us have heard. Here is a matter for our boys to look into. A Mis- sissippi naturalist writes to our Government Entomo- logical Department : " Vanessa Antiopa has a ' voice.' I heard it in Europe, in Lorraine, from two mating An- A BUTTERFLY SERENADE 31 tiopas on a beech stem, walking around each other, and agitating their wings, with oft-repeated cries." This was new to our Government entomologist, Mr. Riley, and subsequently he received the following letter sub- stantiating the fact from an entomologist in Bedford, England : " The sound made by this butterfly, without doubt, is the ex- pression of certain emotions, be it of anger or of love ; but since it is not made by the breath we cannot, I think, consider it more than elementary voice. It may be that "'in Loraine ther notis be Full swetir than in this countrie,' for English entomologists are, I believe, generally of opinion that the sound which butterflies make is caused by their rubbing their wings together in their ardor. The Vanessa Anttopa is only a migrant to this country (Great Britain), and sel- dom seen, but it breeds in Europe and Northern Asia, commonly along wil- low bordered streams. I have a few specimens from the banks of the Po, and from one of these I have detached the fore wing. Along the lower edge of this I notice a smooth projecting vein, b, which, viewed from the direction, a, with a strong magnifier, is seen to be flattened and notched like a file for not quite half its length. This vein, when the wings are expanded, rests on another projecting vein on the hinder wing in such a manner that when the upper wing is moved the notched vein rubs over this vein, as the bow rubbed with resin works on the violin string. " Let any one now take a dried specimen of this butterfly from the cabinet, and grasping the fore wing by its front edge, rub it backward and forward over the hinder one, so that the bases ? meet, but being at the same time careful not to crumple the wings, and so produce a false sound. He will then, without fail, hear the sweet secrets of An- tiopa, which are beautiful and delicate in expression, recalling the trickle of a brooklet." Now that may be all very well for the European Antiopa, but it won't work on the American in- sect. I sometimes have fancied that I could hear a certain faint squeak from the moving wings not only of the Antiopa but also of the Semicolon butterfly a sound t\ distinct from the mere rustle of the wing. But if our insect does serenade with its wings, as stated, its method is not as above described. I don't know from experience just how the European Antiopa is built, but there is no such " file " to be found upon the wing A BUTTERFLY SERENADE 33 of the American species, at least in the twenty or more specimens that I have examined; nor can the "sweet secrets " or the " trickle of a brooklet " be coaxed out of any cabinet specimen of mine. I have several times heard of the pretty talk of this butterfly. Who shall tell us more about it? Here is a chance for my young entomologist to distinguish himself. What is this so-called "voice" of the yellow edge? Does it talk wing-fashion, after the stridulous manner of the grasshopper tribe ; or with its wings and legs together, as the locust-fiddlers do; or with its head, like some of the beetle tribe , or with its air-drum, like the cicadas? Of course some of these methods are hardly to be considered in relation to the anatomy of a butterfly; but so far as an examination of our Amer- ican insect would seem to show, any one of them is certainly as plausible as the explanation quoted, which may explain in England, but does not in America. The matter may be easily studied. The butterflies are now frequenting the tender foliage of the willows by the brook, and in a few weeks the first brood of thejr black spiny caterpillars will literally weigh down the slender branches as they strip the leaves and leave their cast-off skins fringing the twigs. Hundreds of the caterpillars may be gathered in a few moments, and the walls of your collecting- box will soon be hung closely with chrysalids, nearly all of which will have been transformed into butterflies within a period of a fortnight. There are two, or, I am led to think, even three of these caterpillar broods during the year; the butterflies from the last in autumn surviving the winter. THE CORAL-WING LOCUST April 1 4th HE conspicuous insects are few and far between at this early X season, and are mostly confined 'to the Antiopa and related Semicolon, Comma, and Red Admiral butterflies. But for two weeks past, almost any bright sunny day in the woods we may have surprised an agile bit of life that starts up, perhaps from an unseen source at our feet in the wood path, and speeds like a rosy streak across the dry leaves, its flight accompanied with a sharp rat- tle, which can be distinctly heard for two or three rods. Though you note the precise spot where the rosy gleam seems to meet the ground beyond, it will take a sharp eye to locate it definitely until its blos- soming wings once more flash in flight. " A tiger- moth ! " I exclaimed, when I first saw it, as, with eager net, I captured the prize, which proved to be only the coral -winged grasshopper, or more correctly, lo- cust. There can be no mistake as to the " voice " of THE CORAL-WING LOCUST 55 the Coral -wing, though it is not, to my mind, satisfac- torily accounted for by the naturalists. I have shown him in the act of flight as I recall him, though merely from my memory. Only the large under- wings bear the bright color, and these are folded like a fan be- neath the brown wing covers when the insect is at rest. Above him I have pictured another locust, which frequently keeps him company in the spring woods, and they are a pretty and complementary pair together, the latter being of the brightest green, and though without rattle or even rustle, as agile as a moth upon the wing, and in flight it might easily deceive a tyro entomologist. THE WATER FAIRY April 14th OW is the time to go fairy-hunting. Even earlier in the month we might have sought them, but their stay is short, and we must not miss another week, for in a few days more they will have disap- peared. How well I remember the first discovery of my fairy! It was about the middle of April, some ten years ago. The snow and freshet pools had barely dried in the woods, and while dredging in one of them for micro- scopical animalcules I brought to the surface a creature such as I had never known to exist. It was about an inch and a half in length, and of the consistency of jelly. Its broad head was decorated with two widely separated black eyes, its sides were fringed with scarlet plumy fins, and its rosy tail ended in a long fork. I quickly turned my attention to the pool, and found it swarming with these filmy bodies in all stages of growth. In its element the beautiful creature was near- ly transparent. Beneath the shadow of a floating leaf it was almost invisible, but as it emerged into sunlight the body seemed suddenly shot through with opalescence of mother-of-pearl, and was thus mainly revealed. This iridescence played continually through the diaphanous body in various tints of green and pink as the fairy THE WATER FAIRY 37 darted or glided about, and certain sunny spots in the pool were distinctly pearly lustred by their numbers. It \vas like a strangely fashioned palpitating opal dis- solving before one's eyes, and the incessant waving ac- companiment of the gliding feathery scarlet fringe by which the swimmer propelled itself was beautiful be- yond description. I brought home several specimens in a bottle for my aquarium, but they were too fragile for such treatment, and all perished in a few moments. I made a little sketch in my note-book from memory, simply to aid me in identifying my fairy. It is only a hint, but with my descriptive memoranda made at the time I had little difficulty in naming my specimen. It is the Fairy Shrimp (Branchtppus vernalis), under which title my reader may find out all about the beautiful creature. Those who live in the country should not miss a fairy- hunt during the coming week. The Bran- cliippus is a gem indeed for any aquarium. APRIL BIRDS ( HE advent of ,^jf true April days is not to be welcomed by the almanac the season when the sod gives forth its tinctured incense, when the "April showers " bring odorous responses from roots and quickening seeds; when the rocks and bark of trees and even the decaying leaves have a breath and a perfume. " It begins," says Burroughs, " when the par- tridge drums ; when the hyla peeps ; when the shad start up the rivers, and the grass greens in the spring runs; and it ends when the leaves are unfolding and the last snow-flake dissolves in mid-air." The dandelion has been accepted as the first floral "pledge of blithesome May." What is the true feather- ed pledge of April ? Authorities differ. With Emerson, "April's bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree," is of course the bluebird ; but he came in early March, or perhaps has been with us all winter. With Burroughs it is the robin, " brisk, vociferous, musical ; dotting every field and larking it in every grove. He is easily atop at this season, as the bobo- link is a month later. The tints of April are ruddy and brown the new furrow and the leafless trees and these are the tints of its dominant bird." But with me it is not the robin that is associated with the " brown furrows " and the early planting. It is his con- gener, the mocking brown thrasher, with his " plough it T plough it ! hoe it ! hoe it !" and whose first counsel is timed with those swelling dog-wood buds, whose full bloom is the " corn sign " of the New England farmer, and the accepted signal for the corn -planting. But we need not quarrel with the commentators as to the one anointed April bird. Each has his pet pro- tege, the child of fond association, for there is in truth a whole troop of "April's birds " to choose from, though the great bird choral has yet to come. Almost any genial day now we may confidently listen for the " cheerily, cheerily, cheer up ; cheerily, cheerily, cheer 40 SHARP EYES up" of the robin; the "pu- rity, purity" of the blue- bird; the "phebe," the " conkaree " of the redwing in the bog, to say nothing of many other songs which the poets have similarly translated. Every April lover will recall the "quick, quick, quick, quick" of the ) flicker in the budding woods ; the " spring o' the year," or " I see, I see you," from the meadow -lark in the distant field, or the "sweet, sweet bitter," and we know not what else, of the song-sparrow. But when it comes to the real " first pledge " of April among APRIL BIRDS the birds, I am prepared to stand by the testimony of Hosea Biglow, " First come the blackbirds, clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy congresses." The clamor of the noisy grackles in the pines is easily the most characteristic and conspicuous early bird sound in New England, and April would indeed scarce be April without T them. But there still remains another ^ April pledge from the birds, a note too * fine for the ear that is content with the blackbird's carnival, but nevertheless as faithful to the season as it is the rar- est, most subtle, and thrilling of its bird music. How vividly is it revived in that line of T row- bridge's, "The partridge beats his throbbing drum." There is no bird sound like it, this soft, murmurous tattoo of the grouse in the bare, freshening woods. It is in harmony with the first heart-throbs and ac- celerating life of exuberant awakening nature the quickening seeds, the flowing sap, the swelling buds 42 SHARP EYES "Puff! puff! puff! puff! puff! p-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r." In a paper in Harper 's Magazine I have had something to say about this drum of the partridge, but I surely cannot let this " April " pass in my natural history calendar without again referring to the bird, partic- ularly as I should thus miss a grand opportunity of sending a host of wide-awake boys on its track to learn its well-kept secret; for this mysterious "drum" has apparently never yet been seen by mortal eye. I have shown my bird as I once saw him at close range, only that his wings of course were in a whirr of mo- tion. He had his drum with him too, and the muffled roll filled the woods. Where did he keep it ? Here is the testimony of a few of the prominent witnesses who have seen him in the act. You can take your choice, and then go and find out for yourself. A host of ornithologists claim that the bird beats with its wings " the log " on which it stands. Brewer affirms that the wings beat both the log and the sides of the bird. Audubon says he strikes his sides after the manner of the rooster. [An act which the rooster never performs.] Burroughs says the drum is " its own proud breast." Wilson says the bird beats nothing but the air, and Burroughs later comes to the same opinion. Bryant thinks the same. Thoreau and Flagg and the writer assert that the wings are struck above the back if anywhere. All these authorities differ also as to the position which the bird assumes when drumming; some affirm- ing that he stands upright, as a drummer ought, others that he stoops to a horizontal position. Come, boys, which of you can give us the facts f ' RAGWEED PITH April 28th STROLLER in waste places or weedy corners, "^ either during the winter or now, before the copses are clothed in foliage, may well pause a moment among the skeleton thickets of the great ragweed, in its perfection the tallest of our weeds. One April, a few years since, I found a stalk eighteen feet four inches in height by actual meas- urement. But it ^ is not with a tape- line this time that I ask you to tarry. "Ambrosia, "the plant is called in V 44 SHARP EYES the botanies "food of the gods" "an ill-chosen name for these worthless and coarse weeds," says Dr. Asa Gray. I confess that this indictment seemed perfectly just, until I chanced to discover the contents of their dried stems. What other of the weeds can show a marrow which comes so near to immateriality as this of ragweed? A pith which I will venture to say is lighter and more buoyant than any vegetable tissue of like bulk. It seems almost to float as it falls from your hand, while its cross fracture, with its iridescent sheen, certainly brings reminders of the rainbow in the realm of the gods. THE TENACIOUS OAK- LEAVES April 28th j T is not easy to get at the secret of the oak in retaining its leaves throughout the whole calendar, for here, in late April, are seen the white and red oaks still defying the winds. Now, if the oak- leaf were constructed on the plan of the button -wood leaf, whose stem grows like a protecting cup over the bud of the following year, we could readily frame a theory; but it does noth- ing of the kind. These persistent oak-leaves are placed beneath the new buds, while those of the button -wood fell in early autumn, exposing the tender bud to the winter storms. If we examine the white- oak branch, we shall find that many of the leaves have been twisted off by the wind, leaving only a short remnant of a stem beneath the buds; and even these adhere so tenaciously as to leave a fresh green scar upon removal. They yield only as they are pushed off by the swelling bud above them. THE BROWNIE-JUGS AND THE BROWNIE April 28th LL through the winter months we might have seen our brown- ie-jugs, as large as hazel-nuts, neatly secured to various twigs in the thickets, but I have pass- ed them until I could bring the : ^\ reader face to face with the lit- tle potter that is responsible for them. He has been in hiding during the cold months, and was to be known only by his works; but now he is out again, and will soon make his first jug after the pattern that his ancestors have handed down to him ; for long before the human vase-maker fashioned his clay upon the wheel these little jugs were being turned out by Eumenes fraterna. Such is the name his historians have given him. Jugs serve a variety of uses, but none of human fash- ioning is ever used for precisely such purposes as these of Eumenes, which serve as a receptacle for treasure, a larder, and a home as well. THE BROWNIE-JUGS AND THE BROWNIE 4/ I have seen many a jug catalogued in a bric-a-brac sale that did not have nearly so interesting a history as one of these clay pots of the vase -maker wasp. It is made of sand and yellow mud. When completed, the wasp lays an egg within it, and then proceeds to pack it full of tiny green caterpillars, each of which she has paralyzed, though not killed, by a stab of her sting. The opening of the vase is then plugged up with a mud cork. Presently the egg hatches into a little grub, that feeds for the rest of its days on the living store of food. By the time the supply has run short, the grub has become a chrysalis, and soon pushes out the plug, and appears a full-grown wasp, like its parent, and it will make as pretty a jug as the one it leaves the first time it tries. UNFOLDING BUDS May 5th UR literature of nature contains nothing, it seems to me, more happy, as a tran- script of the pageant of the vernal sea- son in New England, than that quaint calendar in the provincial tongue of Hosea Biglow,* "Sunthin" in the Pastoral Line," from which the following is quoted. What mirrored truth is in this picture : "The maple crimsons to a coral reef; The saffern swarms swing off from all the willers, So plump they look like yaller caterpillars ; Then gray hoss-chestnuts' leetle hands unfold, Softer'n a baby's be at three days old." Here is another complete and exquisite touch : " Young oak leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink." * The Biglow Papers. By James Russell Lowell. UNFOLDING BUDS 49 Where is the artist who would lay his canvas beside it as a talisman to memory alone? With the begin- ning of May the woods are full of color ; there is a re- flection of autumn in the tender foliage tints; there are bursting buds and budding leaves that mist the hills with pink and white; others that mist the gray ^thicket with yellow aureole ; the shad-tree blooms and the flow- ering dog -woods hover like white entangled clouds in the distant woods. Those winter buds which we have seen for months on the bare twigs are now unfolding in endless variety, showing with what wondrous art the embryo leaves and blossoms have been packed away in their warm winter snuggeries. No two seem designed on the same plan or unfold in the same manner. The linden leaves unfold in drooping conical pendants, each sheltering the one below it. The tulip-tree has a beautiful method peculiarly its own. - iT u c^fsx' ' P2CT - "^ i g4 i&j&ft} /*} 5** > brush of hairs on each of its hind legs is packed solid with the sticky mass of yellow pow- der, and a singular record it is of the life of the little insect that carries it ! If we dislodge even the smallest fragment of it, and mois- ten it in a drop of water upon the glass of our pocket- microscope, what an assortment of curious vegetables ! Why, the grocer's or I H SHARP EYES fruiterer's display upon the sidewalk is not a circum- stance to it. There seems to be no limit to the vari- eties of rare and curious fruits which this busy bee manages to find in his visits to the flowers. Here are tiny melons and eggs and pears, prickly oranges, and decorated marbles, queer tea-boxes, bomb-shells, bricks, and odd sorts of packages of all kinds. It is true that this particular bee which we have capt- ured may have shown a partiality for some special form of fruit for this one week. Next week he will give his little ones a change, and again the week follow- ing, or with a special bill of fare, perhaps, from day to day. But at any time we are sure to find quite a vari- ety of choice foreign fruits in his basket. Indeed, are they not all foreign to most of us? I have pictured a few, and the reader can decide for himself ; and while he need scarcely expect to find this full assortment in a single field of his microscope, he is quite likely to find some of them ; and if not, is certain to see still other forms of equal strangeness and interest. Did you ever imagine for a moment what a display of rare watermelons your fair friend has sported on the tip of her nose after one close sniff of the meadow-lily? Look at the microscope slide and be convinced. In the foreground of my group there is a singular three -lobed affair which is from the enchanter's night- shade. A little to the right of this is another trian- gular shape. Who would ever suppose that this webby pollen of the twilight primrose was made up of such particles as these? The generous mountain-laurel gives us four tiny oranges in a bunch; for such is the singular atom which those jumping stamens scatter upon the soft wings of twilight moths. That curved specimen QUEER FRUITS FROM THE BEE ? S BASKET with spherical ends is blown by myriads from the blos- soms of the pine, as is also the funny pepper-box far above, though you need not expect to find either of them in our bee's basket, for the wind always takes care of these. Above this is seen a gram from the garlic flower, and the spirally grooved sphere of the musk flower is shown beyond. The prickly form which is shown at the left is the tiny explosive bomb from the big melon blossom, blowing off one of its caps and dis- charging its powdery contents; the smooth -banded prickly specimen at the centre is a similar prod- uct of another of the melon tribe the com- mon wild star cucum- ber, whose clambering vine screens many a fence by country lane or roadside. Between these melon tokens we see the pretty many- sided box which is turn- ed out by the thousands from every blossom of the blue chicory, while the square chest near by is the form of package preferred by the basella flower. The clover, the daisy, the thistle, the golden -rod, dandelion, hollyhock, phlox, trailing arbu- tus, nasturtium, have still other forms ; and, indeed, each separate flower is true to some precious whim in the shape of its pollen, and among them will be found an endless variety of forms with all manner of exterior decoration bands, checks, spots, reticulations, grooves, punctures, and other sculptured devices. I 1 6 SHARP EYES These atoms are all interesting and beautiful objects under the microscope, and to the botanist who ex- amines the bread-basket of the bee they may form a complete telltale record of the insect's round among the flowers. But this golden grist of the bees is not always an un- mixed blessing. Like its prototype in human affairs it occasionally reduces its owners to the most complete slavery. The milk-weed blossom will afford a ready il- lustration of this, and will well repay a careful exami- nation. The pollen of this flower is concealed from view, and is a veritable trap. It does not wait to be gathered, but clasps the legs of unwary insects, and often accumulates in such quantity as to prove a serious han- dicap to the flight of its victim. I have found bees thus helpless, and a careful search upon almost any cluster of milk-weed blossoms will disclose some diminutive or weak insect held prisoner by the pollen which it had not strength to remove, and thus made a helpless prey to the first prowling ant that chances its way. THE SWEEP-NET HARVEST July 2ist Y butterfly- net and pocket magnify- ing -glass are rare companions for a walk in the country. I have often had occasion to recommend these simple means of quiet entertainment on a sultry Au- gust day beneath the trees, and I would not let my summer calendar pass without again calling attention to the sprightly instructive harvest which our sweep- net may bring us. What a revealer of the teeming life that peoples the grasses ! One or two trips across this open sunny spot, with such a light sweep-net skimming the grass- tips and herbage, will bring in under your shady tree or I V 44 ^r- -& upon your study table a whole museum of living curiosities suf- ficient to beguile the entire after- noon. ^j Open the netted folds care- fully. Here are queer green jejl triangular tree-hoppers^ jJRTV looking like animated dock- seeds ; gauzy lace-winged flies with eyes like sap- phires and rainbow gleams in their transparent pale-green wings a very fairy of an insect, a delight to the eye if not to the nostril. Here a slender spanworm measures off the meshes, and now emerges a brilliant orange -colored beetle, with a black cross on its back ; and what a tribe of grasshoppers of every age \ and color, from the brown "high- elbowed grig," so generous with its molasses, to the pale-green THE SWEEP-NET HARVEST I ig tree-cricket, whose shrill song you so abruptly brought to an end with your stroke of the net ! Here, farther down, we observe a slight commotion among the an- imated chaff and grass seed, and a brilliant gem of a beetle creeps forth, green as an emerald and lit with ruby reflections, almost the brightest jewel among our native insects, and whose presence here in the net is conclusive proof that yonder plant of dog-bane must have come within the sweep of your net. The lively procession continues to emerge as you open the netted folds. Here are spiders of every shape and size and hue yellow and brown and green, round and flat and three-cornered glittering tinselled flies, perhaps a leaf -cutting bee, ants and aphides, long- legged crane-flies, aphis -lions, and jumping "snap- bugs." Even the sedimentary accumulation at the bottom of the net is now seen to be animated with insect life ; the dust of pollen and withered anthers of the grasses are alive with agile atoms tiny creeping soldier- bugs, with beaks upraised for war, feather-headed gnats, lady -birds in variety, tiny orange - colored grubs parasites from the bodies of the very grasshoppers in your net. Quick ! Turn your glass upon this frail plumy -winged moth which now creeps from the folds. And now this spry black midge ; see with what marvellous rapidity it curls upward the tip of its agile tail, and tucks its buzzing wings beneath those tiny covers on its back after each short flight among the meshes an atom of a rove- beetle, with the same dexterous trick of the devil's coach - horse, which I described and pictured a few weeks ago. Nor have I named all the surprises in store for you 120 SHARP EYES even from this one " haul " of your net, while each suc- cessive sweep is sure to bring in its sprightly novelty. Don't let the summer pass without making the ac- quaintance of the broods that dwell among the grass. WHAT THE MIDNIGHT CAN SHOW US fitly 28th ; S not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us?" asks Tho- reau, and not without reason, for even the best-informed stu- dent of daylight natural ^f*\^f history may visit his accus- tomed haunts in the dark- ness as a pilgrim in a strange land. Our summer calen- dar would indeed be incom- plete without at least one stroll in the dewy star- light, for it has a host of surprises in store for us. I have already written two essays giving my ex- periences and my surprises and discoveries in the mid- night woods and meadows, 122 SHARP EYES and in the present calendar series of papers I will pre- sent a summary of a few items of especial interest in the form of a list for ready reference in a lantern stroll, any item of which is well worth a walk in the dews. In the pretty pranks of the dew alone we may find a varied entertainment, for upon careful examination no two plants will be found to possess the same whims. The Plantain is drenched and dripping, its parallel- ribbed leaf and grooved stem feeding the roots all night long in a tiny runnel of dew. The Burdock and the Cabbage. See how the great glittering drop, '" scarce touching where it lies," chases among the deep courses of the netted veins, gathering in size as it dances, until it is precipitated either along the stem or from the edge of the leaf. Nasturtium (Tropceolwri). You will generally find the leaves all turned edge upward, and they flash with a fine frost-like sheen. Horse-tail (Equisetmn). The reader will remember the "scouring- rush" of the early settlers, described a few weeks ago, a plant with jointed hollow stems and circular fringes of articulated leaves, so common in the swamps. There are various species of the " horse-tails," some of which, like the true " scouring-rush," are al- most destitute of leafy growth, while others are densely plumed with curved and drooping whorls of slender spray. They are pretty enough by day, but in the night they are transformed to very marvels fairy fountains of glittering brilliants, each joint in the thousands of drooping leaves being set with a diamond. Taken all in all, with its antique lineage for the geologist, its cu- rious squirming spores for the microscopist, its gritty stems for the housewife, its flinty tube for the chemist, and its dewy revela- tion for the midnight poet,who shall hence- forth tread our Equi- setum underfoot in heedlessness? The Jeivel-weed. This is the dewy night's rarest treas- ure. It is indeed a jewel. Upon the ap- proach of twilight each leaf droops as if wilted, and from the notches along its edge the crystal beads begin to grow, until its border is hung full with its gems. It is Aladdin's lantern that you set among a bed of these succulent pale-green plants, for the spectacle is like dream-land. Gossamers. Both the perpendicular and the prostrate webs are beautifully dec- orated with the dew, and in the night the spiders seem to have spread the entire fields with their silk festoons, entirely un- seen by day. But Titania finds them, and strings them all with gems. In the night you cannot be certain of recognizing your best daylight friends among the flowers, for they take on all sorts of disguises in their sleep. Here are night WHAT THE MIDNIGHT CAN SHOW US 125 notes of the capers of a few plants which are well worth a visit in the dark hours: Red Clover. The two side leaflets are folded together, and the odd leaflet bowed over and slightly clasping them. White clover and many other clovers follow the same prayerful fashion. Beggar-ticks (Desinodiuvi). The three leaflets droop as if broken at their stems, * or even close against each other, back to back, below. Bush Clover (Lcspcdezd). Leaflets all turn upward, clasping the tall main stem from base to summit, a com- plete transformation from their daytime aspect. Partridge -pea (Cassia). Its feather- like leaves have turned all their leaflets edge uppermost, and, overlapping each other closely, have flattened themselves against their main stem, scarcely distinguishable from the pods. 126 SHARP EYES Melilot Clover. The three leaflets turn their edges uppermost, and two of them close face to face for the night, the other being left out in the cold. Lupine. The wheel -like leaf either closes downward against the stem at its centre, like a closed umbrella, or rises in the form of a goblet. Locust. Leaflets all droop, even pressing each other back to back below the main stem. Pig- ^veed (A marantus hybridus). All sorts of whims. Leaves turned edge uppermost by a twist in the stem,. or hug the main -stalk of the plant. Fringed Gentian. Closes its fringes. Wild Rose and Mullein. Flowers closed. Asters. In various species the purple rays curl up into all sorts of cuddles. Cranesbill. Flowers closed spirally. Blue-bottles. The pretty blue, purple, or white spread- ing stars of the daytime are now entirely gone ; each stem holding aloft a perfect shuttlecock, the petals being raised. The Ground-nut (Apios tuberosd) and Wild Bean are hardly to be recognized in their queer antics. The gar- den beans too play similar pranks. Those Lima bean poles of the garden hold a sleepy crowd. -^ The Catchfly (Silene nutans]. Its white blossoms, shown in my initial design, gleam in your lantern's rays in the garden beds. They are opening for the night moths, but you will hunt in vain for most of them in to-morrow's sunshine. Pea. The blossoms nod and partially close. Marigold. Many species close their yellow rays like a conical tent over the central disk. Balsams. Leaves all droop as if wilted. WHAT THE MIDNIGHT CAN SHOW US I2/ Poppies. Flowers closed like two clam-shells; inner petals coiled. Pus/6'}'. This conspicuous spreading " mean " weed of the daytime is hard to find, all of its broad thick leaves being turned with edges upward as it spreads on the ground. Wood-sorrel. The three leaflets droop and close back to back against the stem. There are, indeed, probably few plants which do not put on a night-cap of some sort were our eyes only sharp enough to detect it. GRASSHOPPER-MIMIC August 4th naturalist, Kirby, in describing the bird known as the " grasshopper- lark" (Alauda trivialis), claims that it has a peculiar note which closely imitates the songs of the grasshoppers or locusts upon which it feeds; the inference being that this vocal strain may be designed by the bird either as a decoy to the insect, or as a means of approaching it without exciting suspi- cion. This inference is commonly considered some- what gratuitous, even though no better reason be as- signed for the mimic song. But we have in our own August fields a grasshopper- mimic which leaves Kirby's bird far behind. So good a mimic, indeed, that little is known of its song except as it is credited to the common meadow grasshopper or one of its chirping kindred. For years during my boy- hood I heard this fine insect- like strain, and was complete- ly deceived. It is a peculiarly August song, and is in such perfect harmony with the locust and grasshopper din which takes possession of the meadows at this season the bird-songs having now almost entirely ceased that few listeners would ever imagine it to proceed from the throat of a bird. ' We all know the song of the meadow grasshopper, even if we don't happen to know the formidable book name of the singer (Orchelimum vulgar e). Our ears must be dull indeed not to have recognized the " Zip. zip, zip, z-e-e-e-e-e-c-e-e /" with the last strain consider- ably prolonged into a continual roundel sustained by thousands of tireless minstrels throughout the meadow. We may hear it anywhere in the fields almost any sun- ny summer day, but it is especially prevalent in the vegetation of the swamps. If we steal slyly upon its source, we may discern the green gauzy- winged min- strel head downward on the sedge, and with his shrill- ing taborets vibrating over his back. Perhaps, however, as we approach the sound the 130 SHARP EYES M song may suddenly cease, while a tiny brown bird flut- ters out close by, and skimming over the grass tips, disappears yonder among the herbage, whither the grass- hopper seems to have suddenly flown unseen, for the buzzing song is now heard again from the immediate neighborhood of the bird. A few lessons like this will soon fix the mimic's song in our minds, and enable us to detect it even amid the meadow din, for although a most excellent imitation, it has still a peculiar bird quality which soon distinguishes it from the wing music of the " high-elbowed grigs " in the grass, especially if we learn to identify their individual songs. This little bird ventriloquist has doubtless hood- winked many a ru- ral naturalist who thought he knew all the August bird- songs, so few and far between. We should not let another August pass without settling our score with the little fellow which the or- nithologists have named the "yellow-winged sparrow." He is about the size of the "chippy bird," and yellow wing " is rather misleading THE GRASSHOPPER-MIMIC 13! as a distinguishing feature, the yellow being confined to a small spot upon the shoulder. But, taken with its song and its brown and white striped head, our bird maybe readily identified. Hunt him up; he will give you all the " hide-and-seek " that you will want on a warm August day. THE SPICE-BUSH BUGABOO August nth HAT a droll secret has that curled leaf on the spice- bush held from most of us all these years ! A com- ical, startling secret indeed. We have passed thousands of these care- fully folded leaves on the spice and sassafras bushes summer after summer, and few of us have dreamed of the surprise it held for us, had we thought to part the folds and peep within. I am half inclined to picture only my hanging folded leaf, with- out giving a hint of the queer welcome we may get from the interior. But even to those of us who know just what to ex- pect, is it not always the same droll surprise? How impossible is it for us to pass the spice -bush without exchanging a greeting or two with its sly tenants ! I remember an incident in early boyhood which well illustrates the peculiar effect which a first discovery of the spice - bush bugaboo usually excites, and which proves also how complete is its concealment. I had gathered a number of the folded leaves from a spice- bush growing near the front fence of a farm - house. THE SPICE-BUSH BUGABOO 133 The farmer, a venerable " old inhabitant," came from his door- way to see what I was after, well knowing from experience that I was looking for "bugs" of some sort. When he had approached close to my elbow I suddenly opened one of the leaves. Had it contained a viper he could hardly have ap- peared more excited. "Be conscience' sakes!" he exclaimed, starting backward with affright. " I never see sech a beast. Ef I'd 'a' known I hed sech wild-looking pizen critters around my door-yard, I'd 'a' been scar'd to go out o' nights. Wut be they?" he continued, pausing a safe distance up the path ; " a kind o' snake er grub, I s'pose." " It is only a cater- 5 pillar." "Waal, naow, wut '11 he make? I s'pose you know. I sh'd s'pect ^ suthin' per tickler out o' critters thet start aout like thet. Like nuff you'll git an aowl er suthin' aout on't. Ugh !" " Oh, there's nothing to get scared about," I replied, smoothing one of the cater- pillars. "Ugh! I wouldn't tech the 134 SHARP EYES critter fer a nine-dollar bill !" he exclaimed, as he start- ed with a shudder that fairly electrified his aged being, and almost ran back to his cottage door. To the feminine entomologist the first introduction to the spice - bush caterpillar is usually quite as demor- alizing. That blank, unwinking stare of the two big black eyes is quite threatening, until we discover that it is all a bugaboo that they are mere freaks of ornament on the body of the caterpillar, and not actual eyes. This caterpillar when full grown is nearly two inches in length. Its body is of a bright green with small blue spots, and during the last week of its growth it changes to a rich yellow color. The eye spots are black sur- rounded with buff; and upon a little prov- ocation the head becomes further orna- mented with a pair of orange-colored horns, with the same malodorous peculiarities which we noted a few weeks ago in the " parsley caterpillar," to which this spice- specimen is closely allied. The " yellow " stage of the caterpillar indicates that its period of transformation is close at hand. Selecting a suitable situation, either horizontal or perpendicular, it spins a tiny tuft of silk, into which it entangles its hindmost pair of feet, after which it forms a V-shaped loop about the front portion of its body, and hangs thus suspended, soon changing to a chrysalis of a pale wood- color. These chrysalides commonly survive the winter, and in the following June the beautiful "blue swallow- tail " (Papilio Troihis) will emerge, and may be seen sug- gestively fluttering and poising about the spice and sas- safras bushes. i & THE EVENING PRIMROSE BY DAYLIGHT August nth AN we really claim to know our evening primrose? Night after night, for weeks, its pale blooms have opened, and shed abroad their sweet perfume in the darkness in every glen and by every road -side; and yet how few of us have ever stopped to witness that beautiful impatience of the swelling bud, the eager bursting of its bounds, and the magic unfolding of the crinkly yellow petals ? But it is not to the primrose of the twilight, nor the opening bud nor fresh - perfumed flower, that I would now invite attention. The sunset primrose we all know ; it speaks for itself ; but how few of us have the slightest interest in those faded blooms of noon-day hanging like a chime of bells on the drooping stems ! For twenty- four hours they may be seen hanging there, and perhaps for half that time who has guessed their pretty mystery? , Go out now in the hot, sunny noon-time, and stroll among your withered primroses, and ^i learn your lesson in humility. Is this a mere withered, use- jO* -^iy* I GSS blossom that droops upon its stem ? Is it not rather the prettiest luminous fairy tent that ever sheltered a day-dream? Last night, when its four green sepals burst from their cone, and sprang backward to release their bright, glossy petals, a small moth quickly caught the signal, and settled in quivering contentment, sipping at its throat. Its wings were of the purest rose -pink, bordered with yellow. THE EVENING PRIMROSE BY DAYLIGHT I3/ All through the night it fluttered among the fresh opening flowers, one of a countless host of feathery noc- turnal moths and " millers." But as the sunrise has sto- len upon these primroses, the fickle broods have all for- gotten the flowers, and dispersed afar. "All," did I say? Oh no ; not all. Let us turn to our withered blossoms, and, one by one, look within their bells. Here is one that falls even at our approach, plainly the blossom of night before last. We will turn our attention only to last night's flowers. Here is a bell that appears to have an extra petal folded within its throat ; and upon open- ing the folds, we disclose our faithful nursling with pink and yellow wings ; the earliest twilight sipper, that even on the approach of dawn is loth to leave the flower, and creeps into the wilting bloom, where it remains concealed through the following day, and doubtless occasionally falls with it to the ground. In the color of its markings we find an outward ex- pression of its beautiful sympathy, the yellow margins of the wings which protrude from the flower being quite primrose-like, and the pink being reflected in the rosy. hue which the wilting primrose petals so often assume, especially at the throat. These pretty moths are by no means rare. A careful search is quite certain to disclose a number of them. I once found three upon the same plant. Look, then, to your daylight primrose. BEETLE MUSICIANS ^jf^' & Atigust 1 8th 1^0,;;;? HERE is quite a variety of music to be heard in the great sym- phony of insect sounds which fills the summer noon. We all know the cres- cendo of the cicada, or harvest-fly, \\hizzing its tim- brel in the trees, and the jsp buzzing " zip, zip, ,./-, f zip, zee-c-e-c " of the meadow grass- hopper (Orcheli- mum vulgare) everywhere in the sunny fields, the " zip, zip, zip, zip, zip" of its companion, the comical cone -head grass- hopper (ConocepJialus ensiger), to say nothing of the great orchestra of " high - elbowed grigs" gently fiddling with their long hind legs among the grass blades, their wing covers serving as strings and their thighs as fiddle bows. This individual fiddle of BEETLE MUSICIANS 139 the locust (I refer to the flying locust of our fields, those " grasshoppers " so generous with their " molas- ses;" these are the true locusts, the insect usually called " locust " being the cicada] this individual fiddle of the locust, then, is an inconspicuous instrument in itself, being barely distinguishable by the ear without effort, but in its myriadfold reenforcement it becomes an im- portant element in the great meadow symphony. But while the grasshopper and locust tribes are re- sponsible for most of our meadow music, there are yet a few minor isolated musicians whose modest strains we seldom hear, though individually their solos may be superior to those of their recognized rivals. In a previous paper I alluded to the mysterious music of the Antiopa butterfly, and the click- wheel rattle of the " Coral -wing ;" and I now desire to introduce to the music -loving public a trio of instrumentalists whose claims are not sufficiently recognized. But on second thought, perhaps one of my performers is already famil- iar to most of my readers, if not as a musician, assuredly as a " horrible creature " and a " horrid bug," that brings terror and confusion to the peaceful family group as- sembled around the evening lamp. A low drone just outside the window announces the visitor, and in a mo- ment more he is buzzing and bumping about the ceil- ing, and is soon master of the house, his formidable jaws insuring him a respectful distance and careful attention. But if we forego formalities, and unceremoniously lift our intruder by the nape of his neck, we learn of an ac- complishment which doubtless explains his overweening assurance. For, lo ! is he not the " first fiddle " of all out- doors? "Squeak, squeak, squeak!" is his now in- cessant refrain. It is well for us if we are content to 1 ** listen admiringly and not in- vestigate, for if our doughty musician can once fasten his teeth upon us, he will pun- ish us severely for the indig- nity, even parting with his head, if need be, to prolong his chastisement. This musical character will be recognized by a glance at his portrait on the oak-leaves. In the classic programme he is announced as OrtJiosoma nnicolor. He is a mahog- any-colored creature throughout, about an inch and a half long, and carries two violins and four fiddle bows, thus possessing within himself the resources for solo, duo, trio, or quartette, as his whim may dictate. Shall we then quarrel with his self-complacency? His music is produced by the contact of the four BEETLE MUSICIANS 141 hind legs, chiefly the last pair, with the edges of the wing cov- ers. He is the " first fiddle " of all out -doors. The locust orchestra follow his lead and method, but none of them have inherited such a mahogany Stra- divarius as he, and are thus left far behind. If the Antiopa butterfly has deceived some observers into the belief that it has a " voice," what shall be said of this con- cert of quaint singers which I have pictured on the bough op- posite, for singers they would certainly seem to be. There is no motion of the legs or wings observable in this group as they sit there quietly in the sun on the poplar branch. No fiddling here. And yet the faint trio of squeak music is plainly percep- tible, as they nod continuously to each other in mutual ap- proval. I have frequently come upon such a group, or an occa- sional isolated individual sun- ning itself upon the trunk of a poplar in the woods. The in- sect is about an inch and a quarter long, and in its decora- tion is a decided contrast to the 142 SHARP EYES fiddlers, being clothed in a nap of mottled gray and ochre yellow. Unlike most beetles, the head is set upon the body with the face looking directly in front, and the expression of that face, with its almond-shaped black eyes, as it peers around the edge of a twig with nodding accompaniment, lends a comic element to the musical performance. This is the Saperda calcarata. His musical instrument is unique in the insect orches- tra. It is not a fiddle, nor a click -wheel, nor a drum, nor a timbrel. It is a musical collar, from which he literally grinds out the music with the back of his head, into which it sets as in a socket. At least such seems to be his method. If not, which of my boy readers will tell us more about this queer squeak of the Saperda? Now is the time to find him. Hunt among the poplar branches. . If we care to search among the golden -rod blossoms we may find many specimens of another similar musi- cian, the Painted Clytus, a beautiful creature nearly an inch long, banded with yellow and sable, sipping among the blossoms, and squeakirig contentedly at the feast. AN ECCENTRIC PRECENTOR August i8th ORCHESTRA is complete, of course, without its leader. Even the "first fiddle" must observe the baton. And as the insect world affords us a veritable fiddler and a harpist, as well as other instrumen- talists, so too may we find our precentor close at hand, if our eyes are only sharp enough. This group of sing- ing beetles upon the poplar branch, I wonder if they are watching him as they nod their squeaky trio ? For he is close at hand. Even among these very leaves we are sure to find him with a little search. But if they are indeed observing him, he must be a decidedly con- fusing leader, for no two of the bobbing heads are keep- ing the same time. Ah, here he is! perched upon the mid-stem of an aspen leaf close by. You have seen him, perhaps, a hundred times, and all his pompous pride has been wasted on you, being doubtless mistaken for a part of a withered or curled leaf. Our precentor is about an inch and a quarter long. The forepart of his body is arched upward, like a sphinx. He wears a green vest and a flat triangular hat, and a white-bordered brown mantle decorates his back. And his baton? No wonder our bee- tle trio were confused, for our precen- tor wields two batons. He is a law unto himself, has no score to follow, and, what is more, if things don't go exactly to suit him, he whips out from the tips of his batons two long red whip - lashes, and makes things lively for a few moments. It is difficult to understand the many impetuous an- tics of our eccentric precentor squirming from side to side, circling his double baton about his head as with a hurrah, snapping his whip on right and left without rhyme or reason. Yes, as a precentor it is difficult to understand his doings. But when we return to reason, AN ECCENTRIC PRECENTOR 145 and remember that he is only an important puss- moth caterpillar, it is not half so mysterious. If we watch and wait for a moment or two we shall doubtless wit- ness a return of that buzzing fly a parasite, perhaps that has just been tickling him. The puss- moth caterpillar is quite common upon young aspens, and will be readily recognized from my portrait. It is an amusing insect, and, so far as I have seen, those peculiar rosy whip -lashes concealed within the forked tail, to be used when occasion demands, are not described in the popular works on natural history. THE EXPLOSIVE CLUB-MOSSES August 2_5//i F we ask our apothecary for five cents' | worth of lycopodium, he will proceed to pour out from a glass jar into the scales a half- ounce or more of a light ochre yellow powder. The same powder is also to be obtained in THE EXPLOSIVE CLUB-MOSSES 147 its tiny vial among the regular list of homoeopathic remedies. Outside of the drug-store, however, few of us have ever seen it ; rather, I should say, few of us have ever seen it to recognize it, even though we may have breathed it into our lungs in the woods, or brushed it from our clothing in clouds, under the impression that the dusty soil was alone responsible for our soiled gar- ments. " What do you use it for ?" I recently asked an apoth- ecary. " We keep it to put in pill -boxes with the pills," was his reply; "that is all we use it for. Powdered lico- rice is also used for the same purpose, but the lycopo- dium is preferable." But there is much of interest to be found in this yel- low powder which is not generally known. Nor need we visit the druggist's to get our sample for experiment. What, then, is this drug, lycopodium ? Our botany will enlighten us : "Lycopodiuui, a cryptogamous plant, com- monly known as 'club -moss/ a low evergreen some- what resembling a moss, its stems clothed with short pointed scaly leaves, the fruiting stems discharging their subtle spores in the form of a copious sulphur -colored inflammable powder." So, in substance, says Dr. Gray, and though the com- bustible nature of this yellow cloud is published to the world in nearly all our botanies, it is a singular fact that comparatively few of those who know the plant in all its many varieties, who perhaps have named it with its Latin tag, and who have pressed it and mounted it in their herbarium, have known its singular explosive prop- erties and the fiery tricks it is capable of performing. Country people everywhere, even though innocent of botany, will certainly recall the well-known "ground-pine," which carpets the winter woods in its fan- shaped green foliage, and which is such a favorite for Christmas wreaths and decoration in general. This is the most familiar form of the lycopodium (L, dendroidewn), but there are others equally common in our woods, some assuming the form of miniature branch- ing pine-trees, or trees resembling closely tufted mosses, but all, at one season or another, lifting their catkin-like fruiting spore fronds, and shedding in the breeze their smoky yellow clouds. Certain of these species are now fruiting in the woods, and we have only to find them to obtain our generous supply of this same yellow powder of the pharmacy. Where the plant grows abundantly these spore stems rise in profusion among the leaves, and as we walk through them our shoes and nether garments are soon covered with the yellow dust. With a little care each THE EXPLOSIVE CLUB-MOSSES I 49 separate catkin, by a gentle bend and shake, may be made to pour its dry grist into a box held beneath it, and several ounces of the powder may be thus gathered in a few moments. A little of this powder poured upon the flame of a match or candle will demonstrate its in- flammable qualities, exploding with a brilliant lightning- like flash. A few of the stems picked when immature and allowed to dry in the house will produce the same flash when shaken above the flame. In earlier times, and even to-day, for aught I know, this same powder was in great demand behind the scenes at the theatre, where, in association with the terrific din of the rolling balls and the crash of the enormous sheet of tin, it did brilliant duty in the mimic thunder-storm. In their natural destiny these floating spores are car- ried to the ends of the earth by the winds, to say nothing of an occasional artificial journey towards the stars as they are borne aloft in the rocket, and light the zenith in their glare. I have discovered that the pollen of the pine blossoms has similar inflammable properties to the lycopodium. i - ' SEED TRAMPS V September ist N his charming volume Wake-Robin Mr. Burroughs has felicitiously alluded to the weeds as the " tramps of the vege- table world." "They are going east, west, north, south," he says ; " they walk, they fly, they swim, they steal a ride ; they travel by rail, by flood, by wind ; they go under ground and they go above, across lots and by the highway. But, like other tramps, they find it safest by the highway. In the fields they are intercepted and cut off, but on the public road every boy, every passing herd of sheep or cows, gives them a lift." SEED TRAMPS 15! It is to this class of restless vagabonds that I would now direct attention, and what a precious lot of tramps they are ! Foreign immigrants almost without excep- tion, by hook and by crook, by fair means and foul, they have travelled from the ends of the earth, until now they are always and forever with us, lording it over every copse and wood. Do we seek our garden for a quiet evening stroll, they present their unwelcome compliments. Do we stoop to drink at the way-side water-trough, they thrust their cards upon us, and not content with a mere recognition, even plaster us with a whole pack of them. But the woods are their stronghold. There they have us at their mercy lay in wait for us, hedge us about, and intimidate us, until we return from our walk in helpless chagrin, decorated with their advertising tags from head to foot, champions against our will of their whole shady fraternity. What a representative rogues' gallery do we often bring home with us on our nether costume or even upon our coat -sleeve! Sly brigands, whose presence in the woods we had never suspected did we not here see their unimpeachable cartes de visite. We may know little enough of botany, scarcely enough, perhaps, to serve us in giving a wide berth to the poisonous plants that have often made us suffer; but there is at least one interesting botanical family whose familiar forms we have been forced to study with pa- tience the burrs and beggar- ticks, the stick-seeds, Spanish -needles, and "pitchforks." We know them all, and recognize the same old persistent tokens from year to year, yet how few of us catch them in the act of as- sault ! One or two, like the group that flanks my highway 152 SHARP EYES on the left with a " qui va la!" yearning for a jab at the humble craft in the background, are familiar to us even in their haunts. But here is an odd assemblage upon the skirt of our coat, the hangers-on of every wood and copse, and many of them I am certain the "oldest inhabitant" has never seen except as he picks them from his *|*H t? \ Jipp 1 " ^ IM*^' clothing day af- ter day with vigorous comment. There are those queer, flat, green, jointed affairs, for instance, that stick closer than a brother, either in de- tached pieces or plastered in strings and bro- ken chains in all sorts of devices. What was their history ere they fell from grace? There is a whole troop of them which are popularly stigma- tized as " ticks," and commonly supposed to be mem- bers of the same chain-crane. But this is not so ; there SEED TRAMPS 153 are at least a half-dozen different countenances to be found among them, and a little study will soon enable us to assort the several distinct types. I will not at- tempt to ; they are all sinners, and mostly black sheep from promising and comely ancestors. In the botany this group may be found under the title Desmodium, a name derived from a Greek word meaning a bond or chain, the seeds being arranged in links, as it were, each a tiny pod covered with minute hooks and containing a single seed. I have shown here four distinct forms of the pods, from either of which a botanist could readily bring to mind the pretty pink parent pea- blossomed flower of the woods. The low- est of them, rounded above and below, is the Desmo- dinm Canadense. The jointed pair above, D. panicula- tum, the single triangle, D. nudiflorum, and the upper trio, D. accuminatum. Turning our attention to the "pitchforks," Bidens (two- teethed), we have also a va- riety of styles, from the four-tined Bidens cernua at the right to the B. frondosa near it, and the slender Span- ish-needle above, B. bipinnata, the three -pronged indi- vidual on the left being the seed of B. connata. Each of these groups belongs to an individual family the first to the Bean family, the second to the Composites. One of the most persistent and tenacious of all these wild "beggars" is shown in the upper part of the group. As we pick him out of the puckers he has gathered about himself in our garments he appears less than a fifth of an inch in diameter, unless, indeed, he has mul- tiplied himself into four smaller sections, an odd trick which he generally resorts to. One of these sad -iron- shaped pieces is shown below. It is armed, not with hooks like the many clinging seeds, but with veritable arrow-headed spears, which, when once anchor- ed, reach deeper and deep- er with every movement, and embed themselves closely into whatever fabric they take a fancy to. They are the "beggar-lice" of the botany, and hang in a pretty row upon the graceful par- ent blossom stem, following a spray of tiny pale- blue blossoms. Another burr with a similar trick of multiplication is shown at the left below, splitting in half like two spring- backed turtles with curved tails. This is the fruit of the Saniclc Marilandica, a common plant in open wood's. A very frequent offender is the twin seed of the cleav- ers, or goose-grass, Galium, round and beset with slen- der hooks; there are a number of species, and if you occasionally chance upon a cluster of similar specimens among them, only of a distinct pear shape beneath the hooks, you may rest assured that you have visited the haunts of the enchanters night-shade as well as the cleavers. But the prettiest and most shapely of all the burrs upon our coat-sleeve is the nodding urn of the agrimony, its lower rim circled with a stiff array of hooks, and whose slender spires of green fruit may be SEED TRAMPS 155 seen all summer, tapered off at the summit with their bright golden blossoms. We all know the tenacious burdock and the cockles and clot-burrs, the most formidable of their kind among our native burrs; and he who has come into contact with the enterprising barbed spines of the sly " hedge- hog" caltrop as he reclined for comfort on the sand of the sea-shore, has probably speedily arisen to express his full recognition of their prior right to the premises. One of these vile burrs is shown on page 274, the sin- gular fruit of the Cenchrus, an anomaly among the tribe of grasses. A QUEER "SPIDER'S NEST" September 8th BOUT two summers ago a lady brought me a natural history specimen which was something of a puzzle to her and the rest of her household. " I have brought you a queer spi- der's nest," said she. " I suppose you have seen lots of them, but I never saw one like it be- fore. It fell from the folds of a silk dress, which I was taking from the closet, and broke, but I gathered up the pieces and the spiders, which all seemed to have been killed by the fall, and here are the fragments." I opened the handkerchief in which the nest was brought, and disclosed what appeared to be an irregular lump of mud. One side of it bore a perfect cast of the silk gros-grain fabric a perfect mould, easily identified as from silk. The broken portion disclosed a smooth cavity with a few spiders, apparently dead, within it, and, with the number of others to be seen in the debris, showing that the cell had originally contained no less than sixteen spiders, varying in size, but all of the same A QUEER " SPIDER'S NEST ' ? 157 species. The lump of mud contained two other cells, each of which was similarly packed with the spiders, one of them yielding seventeen individuals. All of them were in the same limp and lifeless condition. But a closer examination of the mass revealed the secret of our queer spider nest. After a moment's search I brought to light in one of the cells a tiny egg, and in the second a small white grub in the act of finishing a meal from the mutilated remains of the spiders. "It is perfectly plain, don't you see," said I, "that this plump larva, and not the spider, is the real lord of the manor, and that all the spider prisoners were to have been eaten." " Yes," said my friend ; " but how 158 SHARP EYES did the spiders get there? Have they deliberately pack- ed themselves here in this old wasp nest to be eaten up?" " Ah, then, you knew it was a wasp nest, did you ?" "Why, of course," she replied. "It didn't occur to me at first, but I have often seen the same sort of mud nests on the beams of my garret ; but never heard of the old ones Dem g used by spiders. And then the spiders are all dead, and are not like any spiders that I have ever seen ; and then there is that lit- tle worm and all. I don't understand the thing a bit." " Do you know what sort of a wasp it is that builds that mud nest ?" I asked. " I don't know his name; but I know he is deep-blue, and has a very slender waist. . I see them buzzing around my garret every day." "And it has never occurred to you what that nest was built for?" " Why, certainly," she replied ; " the young wasps are raised in it. I understand all that; but it is those spi- ders that puzzle me, for this nest is all closed up tight with mud, and there is no sign of a wasp to be seen, and he could not get into it if he wanted to." V And what do you imagine that blue wasp has been doing all these weeks while buzzing around your garret rafters?" I inquired. " Feeding its young ones in the nest, I suppose." "And where are the young ones?" I asked. " They have probably grown up and flown away by this time. But what has that to do with these spiders? l6o SHARP EYES I understand about the wasps, but the spiders are what I want you to tell me about." My friend knew the wasp-nest and the "deep-blue slender- waisted wasp" in her garret, but the trouble was that her acquaintance with the insect did not go beyond the garret window. Had she followed our "mud-dauber" or mason wasp as it flew abroad in its busy mission for that clay nest the mystery of the spiders would soon have been re- vealed. Out across the road it flew, and was soon buzz- ing over the rowen-field near by, which at this season is glistening with the beautiful upright web wheels of the satin -backed Argiope, a pretty spider, now about half grown, with its body banded in stripes of gray and yel- low. This nest, the doom of so many insects even larger than itself, knows no terrors to the mud-dauber. In a twinkling the glistening spider is seized, even in its lair, or, frightened thither, captured after a hunt among the leaves. It is quickly stung into submission by the wasp, and thus drugged into a stupor, as it were, though otherwise unharmed, is carried straight to that garret mud nest. Another and another trip is made to the rowen-field, with like results, until the mud cell is at length packed to the brim with the spiders. This done, the wasp lays an egg among them and immediately seals the opening with mud, and leaves the care of the prisoners to a deputy that is fully equal to the responsibility. One by one they fall a victim to the growing grub within, their number having been nicely calculated as a larder to carry him to his full growth. If we open one of these cells two months hence we shall find a few remnant spider legs as the only hint of the original A QUEER "SPIDER'S NEST" 161 "spider nest," while the cavity is now filled with a filmy brown cocoon, containing perhaps a plump white larva, perhaps a pupa, or maybe a steel-blue slender-waisted wasp just making its exit, and fully prepared to tell you all about spiders, if you will only listen to its hum with proper understanding. So then our "dead spiders" are not dead after all. A very little provocation in the way of a rude touch or jostle of any one of them will cause a perceptible tre- mor of the legs even after weeks of confinement within the sealed mud chamber. A wonderful provision of nature is this potent sting of the parent wasp to insure a supply of fresh living food for its young until the completion of its growth. Many varieties of spiders are packed within these nests through the season. The earlier nests are usually filled with the half-grown specimens of the beautiful black and yellow Argiope, which, is the species shown in our illustration. The common house-spider is a favorite prey in the summer months, while in the late autumn the banded Argiope seems to be the principal attraction. The Sep- tember nests in this locality are usually packed full with this species. THE TALKING FLY September i^th OT once but a half-dozen times has this com- ical-looking fly made game of me in my walks. It needs only a single glance at the specimen to see that something out of the ordinary run of things might be expected from him. The first time he experimented on me I well remember. I was sitting beneath a hazel- bush in the shadow of a stone-wall, examining some flow- ers which I had just gathered. For a matter of five min- utes while thus employed I was carelessly conscious of voices somewhere in the remote neighborhood on the other side of the wall. The tone suggested a masculine source, and at one moment seemed to take the form of a soliloquy, and then of an interrupted dialogue, now suggesting a long-drawn nasal exclamation which pict- ured to my mind a Coriolanus in the far distance "driv- ing his oxen by sheer force of his lungs," " Ha-a-aw-w-w !" with a falling inflection, and again a yell across the THE TALKING FLY meadow, "Sa-ay! Fra-a-ank! Waou !" or perhaps a brief nasal interchange of seasonable com- ment about crops or weather. All these pretty pastoral visions hovered in my fancy between my botany glass and my flowers, carelessly, as I have said, and would have vanished like a dream had not a little inci- dent served to revive them, and forever frame them in my memory. My flower identified, I prepared to re- sume my walk, &%<&, 164 SHARP EYES when my attention was claimed by a curious visitor, which had suddenly perched upon a head of tear-thuml> blossoms close at my elbow, ogling me most mischiev- ously. I had seen portraits of this black- sheep in the rogues' gallery of insects, but was never brought into such close quarters with the original before. I soon identified him, and knowing that in my superior fighting weight I would be perfectly safe in tackling him, I prepared to- catch him with a sweep of my hand, when away he went with a " Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a !" which seemed drawn out in a long nasal perspective to the limit of my hear- ing, and the inspiration of my pastoral visions was sud- denly revealed. On several occasions since I have been momentarily deceived by the twanging buzz of the big fly. It is im- possible to suggest in type the peculiar quality of the sound, but a glance at my portrait of him will serve to identify the insect, and he may be heard tuning up any day now in our meadows, as indeed he might have been for several weeks past, and may be for several to come. He is closely related to the murderous mock bumblebee described in a later page. AN UNDERGROUND FRUIT September ijjth N a former botanical chapter I called attention to some common plants which have kept a few secrets from most of us. And there is still another which I forgot to mention, or perhaps concluded to postpone to its more appropriate season. We may see it now everywhere in our walks, clambering over fence and shrub, and lending its graceful foliage and drooping pinky-white blossoms to many a homely weed which ought to be glad enough for the borrowed adornment. Here is a nook in the woods where the ground is screened be- neath its delicate threefold leaves, while an ascending spray has twined to the summit of a neighboring golden- rod, perhaps, with long tendril -like tips reaching out for new opportunities. It is the delicate "wild bean;" and if the threefold leaf and long raceme of pale drooping blossoms do not at once suggest the name, a little further search will disclose the telltale cluster of flat pods, like tiny Limas hanging among the leaves. But the botany, we find, has still another christening in store for the delicate vine " the hog pea-nut " an inelegant name of no possible significance, unless it be that the hog, from his well-known rooting propensities, is most likely to discover its secret. The Greek sci- entific title is more to the point Amphicar- p> him from the moment she first /I, peeped from the little silken box. \ ^4 In a twinkling she has lit upon jJaw him, and soon has plant- ^ ed a number of eggs y %*&? within his body. He .' expostulates with his tormenter cat- erpillar fashion, and wriggles from y - ^_ : .JK^' ^ ij^ THOSE PUZZLING COCOON CLUSTERS 2OI side to side for a few moments, and then concludes to make the best of a bad matter and forget his troubles in a generous meal of clover, for he now must eat for a host where he ate for but one before. In a few days the eggs have hatched into minute larvae ; these attach themselves to the tissues within his body, and are probably little more than an inconven- ience to our caterpillar until the final few moments of his career. He now suddenly loses his appetite, and feels an " all gone " sensation, such as few dyspeptics ever experience. In a few minutes we shall look for him in vain, his place being occupied by a cluster of white or yellow cocoons and a few whitish grubs half hid in their unfinished webs. An hour ago he was a full-grown, apparently normal caterpillar; now nothing remains of his identity but a thin, shrivelled skin down among the grass, while the butterfly of his hope has given place to a brood of black ichneumon -flies a most pregnant illustration, drawn from real life, of the dire consequences of indwelling, abiding sin, which is re- spectfully referred to the consideration of our pulpit counsellors. THE WITCH-HAZEL BOMBARDMENT October 2oth NE by one the lingering wild flowers have succumbed to the frosts; a few of the hardy asters being the only reminders of the regal glory - of the October copses. But though the blighting breath of the approaching winter is fast quenching even these remnants of bloom, there is one fresh blossom which shall abide to welcome " chill Nov- ember," even as the dandelion welcomed May, and as the rose and the golden-rod welcomed June and Sep- tember. The waving pennants of the witch-hazel, coil- ed for weeks within their patient buds, are now swung out from thousands of gray twigs in the copses, and the underwoods are lit up with the yellow halo from their myriads of fringy petals. These luminous blossoms are very well known to most dwellers in the country, but there is something else going on there among the twigs which few observ- ers have suspected. It is a mischievous haunt out there among the witch-hazels about this time. I shall never forget the caper it played upon me years ago. I had been attracted by a bush which showed an un- THE WITCH-HAZEL BOMBARDMENT 20 3 usual profusion of bloom, and while standing close be- side it in admiration I was suddenly stung on the cheek by some missile, and the next instant shot in the eye by another, the mysterious marksman having apparently let off both barrels of >* his little gun directly in my face. I soon discovered *> ^ * him anarmyof V * * them in fact, a saucy Vjj legion all grinning with open mouths and i$ **/ white teeth exposed, and their double-barrelled guns loaded to the muzzle, and ready to shoot whenever the whim should take them. These little sharp-shooters I have shown in my illus- tration. They are the double-barrelled guns of the witch-hazel the ripe pods of last year's flowers now 2O4 SHARP EYES opening everywhere in the woods among the yellow blossoms. Each pod contains two long black shining seeds of bony hardness. The pod splits in half, expos- ing the two white-tipped seeds. The edges of the horny cells contract against the sides of the seed, and finally expel it with surprising force, sometimes to the distance of over forty feet. If we sit quiet on a sunny day in a witch-hazel copse we may hear the dry leaves rattle with the continual bombardment. A branch of the unopened pods brought home and placed in the vase upon the mantel will afford considerable amuse- ment as the seeds rattle about the room, singling out their whimsical targets, or, perhaps, carrom around from walls and ceiling, from the glass lamp-shade upon the table, or the evening newspaper of paterfamilias, or, possibly, the bald spot upon his head. a f THE SALUTE FROM THE VIOLET October 27th HE witch-hazel is not the only sharp- ?,AK shooter of the autumn woods. It has a tiny rival down there among the dried ^ ^1' leaves, which, in proportion to its size, ~jW Y ^ s quit 6 as valiant the blue spring violet \l']/ and with which it doubtless exchanges an oc- casional salute. " But the season of the violet was closed some six months ago," you remark. " What has Novem- ber to do with violet seeds?" Yes, the " blue violet " which the world knows closed its season in May; but having devoted a month or so to vanity, it has since been settling down to sober realities of life, and the cares of maternity scattering its broods through the woods. There are blossoms there among those seeds even now which the frost will probably kill perfect blos- soms. To be sure they have no petals, but all these shooting pods, that are pinching out their pear-shaped seeds a distance of ten feet upon the dried leaves, were preceded by just such blossoms, tiny, pointed affairs, 2O6 SHARP EYES which never even peep beyond their calyx. How few of our wild-flower hunters know their "blue violet?" My illustration, the Viola cucullata, is a specimen which grew in my city garden, a plant brought from the woods and which soon made itself too much at home. The singular cleft form of the leaf was the cause of its original selection, a variety known as the "hand leaf," and which is a frequent "sport" of this species of violet. In its new quarters it devotes itself particularly to a rank growth of its peculiar foliage, showing but few flowers ; but in the late summer and autumn, when no one ever thinks of a violet, the plant is prolific in bloom, invisible to the general observer, but easily seen on close examination of the soil at its root. Every sunny day, even until the middle of November, the three-cornered stars of the opening pods may be seen by hundreds, and all the neighboring grass-plot and borders are sown with violet seeds. THAT WILLOW CONE October 2?th ANY one who is at all acquainted with botany knows that a willow has no right to have a cone. The pine, spruce, hemlock, larch, and others of their evergreen tribe are supposed to have a monopoly of cones. The magnolia has a sort of cone-shaped fruit, 'tis true, and the tulip -tree another, but they are not true cones, after all, and there are only a few of similar mimics among fruits. Yet here we find a willow bearing dozens of cones ap- parently as perfect as any that the pine-tree can show, which is, in truth, no fruit at all. They are an inch or an inch and a half in length, and grow on the tips of the branches. Yet we know perfectly well that all the axils of the leaves below have already 2O8 SHARP EYES turned out their proper willow fruits in the " cottony seeds" of early spring. What, then, is this spurious fruit which we now see everywhere among the leafless dwarf willows ? Look ! Yonder chickadee can tell us all about it. He knows the confusing botanist that would make a pine out of a willow. See ! He alights upon a branch, and now inserts his bill at the apex of the cone, and probes the interior. Presently the probe is withdrawn, and with it the tiny expert who is responsible for this mischievous confusion a small orange- colored grub, which has been sleeping and luxuriating for weeks within the hollow core of the growing cone. It is per- fectly plain from an examination of a section of this cone, with its layer on layer of leafy scales, its hollow cavity at the centre, and of course no sign of any seed, that it was designed merely as a home for this plump larva. And why, then, has this willow been so accommodat- ing as to give up its own plans, and sprout this tiled domicile for a yellow grub to which it is under no obli- gation ? If we gather a few of the cones and keep them until next spring, we shall see the real magician who has vou- dooed the willow a tiny fly (Cecidomyia strobiloides of the naturalists), that tampers with the willow buds of spring, and with some magical medicine humors it into thus taking care of its young ones. This cone is one of thousands of similar gall growths upon various plants, such as the rosy ball on the cinque-foil, the crimson sponge on the sweetbrier, or the swollen tumors on the high blackberry stems, with their hundreds of squirming tenants, all of the same origin, caused by the THAT WILLOW CONE 209 stings of tiny insects and the implanting of their eggs. It must have escaped the notice of old Gerarde, the botanist of two centuries ago, else he had doubtless classed this species as the "cone-willow," even as he act- ually classified another willow as a " rose " on account of a similar insect excrescence, in which the bud was transformed into a dense cluster of leaves somewhat suggesting a rose a species which may frequently be found in company with our " cone." THE FROST- FLOWER November jd T is called the " frost - weed " in ^^^^w^Sw our botany. But when we know ^B ^ nat ^ Blooms only in July, and has gone to seed by August, we may wonder at the christening ; and though the botany clearly tells us why it is so named, it is always a surprise when we first verify it in the fields. Properly speaking, we have but one true frost -flower a flower that awaits the season of frost as its chosen period of blossoming and that is the witch- hazel, of which I wrote last week. The chick- f* 5 ''" weed often blooms beneath the snow in mid- winter, but this is at best a tardy blossom of a plant *.-" that bloomed in summer; it is not a true frost-flower like the witch-hazel. The plant which forms the subject of this article is a "frost-flower" in another and more curious sense. The botanical name of the plant is HeliantJicmum THE FROST- FLOWER 211 Canadense. It is richly endowed with blossoms three sorts, in truth. One bright showy one of July, which soon withers, followed in August and September by thousands of others on each plant, though no one would guess it, so minute are they; and again, now in No- vember, the third and quaintest blossom of them all. The July blossom is indicated in my illustration. It is bright yellow, about an inch across, with its stamens flatly pressed against the petals, and two or three are occasionally in bloom at once. The November flower is also shown in my panel picture the flower from which the plant is named, but which few people ever see. Almost any morning during the past week, after a severe frost, would have shown it to us among the stubble where the plants are known to grow, glistening like specks of white quartz down among the brown herbage close to the base of the stem. It is a flower of ice crystal of purest white which shoots from the stem, bursting the bark asunder, and fashioned into all sorts of whimsical feathery curls and flanges and ridges. It is often quite small, but some- times attains three inches in height and an inch or more in width. It is said to be a crystallization of the sap of the plant, but the size of the crystal is often out of all proportion to the possible amount of sap within the stem, and suggests the possibility that the stem may draw extra moisture from the soil for this special occa- sion. The frost -flower is well named. NOVEMBER BIRDS November jd HE glow of the autumnal tints has now almost faded from the hill-side, and is smouldering beneath the ashen gray of naked twigs ; for the sound of rustling leaves now follows us in our rambles in the woods. The wilds are almost desolate as to bird voices; the plaintive note of the bluebird is the sweetest note these days, and the jargon of the distant crows is November's own. But the crows we have always with us, and their vo- cal strain is never much of a novelty. Most of the great choir of spring songsters are now on their migration to the South the bobolinks (such as have escaped the shot-guns of New Jersey and Pennsylvania), song-spar- rows, thrushes, orioles, vireos, etc. and those that now remain with us are mostly so shy and uncommunicative as to be scarcely recognizable by their friends. But these November remnants of the spring and sum- mer are not my " November birds." November, at least with us in New England, has its own especial birds, even as it has its flower. But they are ours for a few days or weeks only brief visitors, birds of passage from the North, that touch and go, as it were, sampling our NOVEMBER BIRDS 213 meadow crumbs in their leisurely journey to the South, and we should avail ourselves of the opportunities to make their acquaintance. Prominent among the list of these rare visitors is the fox -sparrow, which may now be seen in flocks in the woods, in size suggesting a thrush, but whose stouter bill and foxy dress and compact build will readily iden- tify him. Then there is quite a brood of tiny warblers which are now passing our way, either as the pioneers of those coming flocks, or loiterers of flocks already gone. The autumnal -streaked warbler, with its jetty head and white cheek and gray and black streaked back and breast (Dendroica striatd), is a common straggler in our November woods ; also the yellovv-rumped warbler, with yellow crown, black cheek, and broad black stripe on the breast under the wing (D. coronatd]. The Cape May warbler is considered the rarest of these flying callers (D. tigrind). Its throat and breast are of a bright yellow, streaked with black. A yellow line over the eye and the tan-colored cheek, with melting tinge of the same color around the back of the head and upon the throat, will help to identify the species. Then there are yellow redpoll and black and yellow warblers, whose distinguishing features are well indicated in their names, though the latter has lost some of its black in its au- tumn plumage. Among the most constant of these autumn birds is the snow-bird, with its black head and ashen-gray body. He has only just arrived with us, but inasmuch as he will abide with us all winter he is not properly one of my " November birds." The most conspicuous of all these November comers is the white bunting, or white snow-bird, which arrives with the first flying snow-flakes, - ', : and through the winter their flocks may be seen flying before the wind in the clouds of drifting snow, for they, too, have come to stay with us. Their summer has been spent among the arctic snows. They are lovers of the cold, and in their migrations keep to the edge of the severest winter, going southward as the cold increases, but never at home without the snow and the biting cold. But my one November bird, which is the crown jewel of them all, yet re- mains to be described. We may confidently look for him now NOVEMBER BIRDS 215 out in the orchard or border thicket of the woods. He passed us in his northward trip early last spring, but was lost in the throng. But now he is almost alone, and we should not let our November pass without paying our compliments to him, almost the tiniest of our native birds. His total length is only four and a half inches, his plumage generally of a dull olive-color, but he wears a crown of the brightest vermilion, which is his unique feature. You would hardly suspect it as you see him there, almost within touch of your hand, prying among the dead leaves upon the apple branch. Strangely enough, he seems especially careful to keep it conceal- ed beneath the surrounding olive feathers. " Ruby- crowned Kinglet," he is called " kinglet," a little king. There are few crowned heads of larger size that wear a brighter coronet than the Regulus calendula. His is a needless lesson, for certainly none of his superiors in size has more reason to display the crown than he. THE ASH PADDLE, AND THE BIRCH BARK November loth HAT a pleasant rus- tle is this which we hear now in the denuded woods from the brown dry clusters of the ash seeds overhead ! It is enough to sit beneath the trees and simply listen, but we should not stop at listening. This ash seed, consid- ered merely as a seed, with its trim contour and shapely symmetry, and its gamut of soft tints of olives and browns, is a beautiful creation. The \\ botany designates this particular form of seed as a samara, or winged fruit, of which the flut- tering broods of the ma- ple, the pine, tulip-tree, and elm are other fa- miliar examples ; but this rustling ash seed has a little more to say to us that is, if the reader is of my way of think- ing than is found in the botany. Every now and then a stray seed flutters down in its dizzy whirling flight and settles lightly upon the dry leaves. Let us look at one closely, and as we look give freedom to our fancy. Something in the design of this flat-bladed samara will surely set us thinking and irresistibly suggest a series of questions. What is the favorite and most ancient timber from which the oar and paddle are made? The ash. Who, then, was the primeval wood -craftsman who first took this unmistakable hint from this singu- lar seed for is it not a perfect model for the Indian paddle or the blade of the mod- ern oar? How many _ . - - 2l8 SHARP EYES centuries did these clusters of prophetic seeds rustle against the white bark of the birch, awaiting that ul- timate association of utility in the Indian canoe and paddle? Nor is this the only model which the ash bestows. There are half a dozen native species of this tree, each with its especial design of paddle here a long tapering and there a broad and abrupt blade, each, no doubt, the faithful expression of its particular parent tree of the grain and fibre of its being. Confusion, then, to the wood-craftsman who shall violate its precept and shape his red-ash paddle upon the blue-ash model ! The birch and the ash are further wedded in the tro- phies of the Indian. We have seen where he obtained his model for the paddle; who knows where he found his hint for the fashioning of the stone arrow-heads which he bound upon the ash shafts of his arrow? "The birchen bough drops its bright spoil Like arrow-heads of gold," says Bryant, in his poem to " October," in allusion to the autumn foliage of the smaller white birch, whose leaf might well serve as a pattern for many an Indian arrow-head in the archaeological collections. BIRD-NEST MATERIALS November i*]th NOTHER bright winter's day. To the woods to see what birds' nests are made of." Such is the brief entry in Thoreau's winter journal one January day, over thirty years ago, and in others of his pages we read of his pur- suing the same quest, and stopping in his walks to unravel the deserted hanging- bas- kets of the vireos and other birds. Many winter walkers before and since Thoreau's time have followed the same amusement. It is an attractive and instruc- tive pastime, and will give added zest to our autumn or winter stroll. The woods are now nearly bare of foliage " Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the book of nature Getteth short of leaves" 220 SHARP EYES and hundreds of nests which before were completely concealed are now disclosed on right and left. What a surprising list of materials have these feathered builders gathered in their gleaning! What singular preferences and whimsical fancies are shown in almost any deserted nest you may meet ! Let us begin with this gray vireo's nest hung here almost across our path in the woods. How little did we suspect its presence as we passed this way last June! What are the materials of this basket hanging here in the fork of the maple ? Let us unravel it. It is already somewhat worn and weather- beaten, but it will be many a month before these tough strands which enwrap the twig are loosened. Here we find the toughest material of the nest, our wise bird BIRD-NEST MATERIALS 221 having selected fibres of inner bark, spider, and cocoon silk, and strips from the milk-weed stalk strong as flax to moor its cradle. The compact body of the nest gives a singular vari- ety ; here are strips of white and yellow birch bark, as- ter calyxes, cobwebs, a blue-bottle fly, spider-egg silk tufts, slender roots, bits of pith, skeletonized leaves, pine-needles, old cocoons of the tussock-moth, grass, caterpillar- hairs, dandelion seeds, moss, and feathers. A broad piece of mottled gray paper- like substance forms the outside base of the nest. We might have been certain of finding this a fragment of hornet's- nest, one of the favorite fabrics of all the vireos. And what is this white weather-beaten fragment which crops out beneath it ? A bit of newspaper ! Further unravelling shows a number of similar pieces embedded in the fabric, and one or two are seen on the ground beneath the nest. Such were the ingredients of a certain vireo's nest which I once found, and which I have selected as my present specimen. It was a nest of the red-eyed vireo, and though quite an average specimen of its kind, it proved in one respect a remarkable disclosure, as I will explain. Most of the fragments of the nest I threw away, but I found in the newspaper bits a rev- elation which led me to preserve them most carefully. Not that the newspaper element was an exceptional rarity, for all the vireos have a fancy for this peculiar material. Indeed, the white-eyed vireo was called the "politician" by an old ornithologist because of this very fondness for the newspaper. But why did I pre- serve these particular newspaper selections above oth- ers? As I have said, the nest was that of a red-eyed 222 SHARP EYES vireo. This bird has been called the "preacher" by Wilson Flagg, a close bird observer, who had noted the peculiar, continuous, deliberate song-sermon of the bird in the tree-top. Remembering this, I was led to scan with curiosity, as I had often done in previous nests, the text of these weather-beaten waifs of news. There were about a dozen pieces in all. In most of them the print was worn and illegible, and in others so fragmentary as to be without sense. But at length I came upon the sentiment which I have here reproduced f by photography, the only single perfect sentence to be found in all the print my "preacher's" text " have in view the will of God." But I have not begun to men- tion all the curi- ous things that are woven into a vireo's fabric. These nests are the " samplers " of nat- ure's nest textiles, and each one may have a new sur- prise for us. I once found one which was decorated with a hundred or more black spiny caterpillar-skins. Another showed the gauzy mitten of a toad. Another a half-yard of lace edging. And only last year I dis- covered the most singular specimen of all a real nov- elty even for a vireo a nest almost entirely composed of snake-skins. THE SNAKE-SKIN HUNTER November ijth |T would be interesting to know just where our whim- sical vireo obtained those snake-skins. A fragment of snake -skin, or even one whole skin, we might allow him; but three or four! this is rather suspicious. Had he discovered a family of sleepy striped snakes about to drop their winter clothing, and taken care of their cast-off garments one by one as they were left in the grass? But this is stretching a point in favor of our vireo and his valor. I rather suspect that this particular 224 SHARP EYES nest represented a raid on the stores of another bird noted for his partiality to the snake-skin. Once, when a boy, while investigating a woodpecker's den in a wil- low-tree, I pulled from the bottom a handful of snake- skins. Knowing the habits of snakes in the casting of their sloughs, and knowing, too, that the " racer," or black-snake, was a good climber, I concluded that I had intruded upon the private dressing-room of the snake, and not knowing how soon he might return to change his clothes, I quickly left the premises. A few years later the mystery was explained in my ornithology. I had found a deserted nest of the great crested fly-catch- er. This bird is the snake specialist, and its nest in the deserted woodpecker's hole is seldom free from a gener- ous lining of snake- skins of various kinds and sizes. Here are a few of the eccentric specialties of other nest-builders : Wren Feathers. Chipping-sparrow Horse-hair and roots. Solitary vireo Coon-hair, deer-hair. Snow-bunting Fox-hair. Worm-eating warbler. . .Hickory and chestnut catkins. Ovenbird' Dried spore-stems of mosses. Purple finch Hog-bristles and horse-hair. Kentucky warbler Pith of weeds. Prairie warbler Cast-off caterpillar-skins. Yellow warbler Feathery seeds. Blue-gray gnat-catcher . . Bud-scales, dried blossoms, and fern-down. Humming-bird Fern- wool, red-oak leaf-down. Baltimore oriole .Milk-weed bark, horse-hair, and long moss. Yellow-billed cuckoo. . ..Small sticks. Robin Grass and mud. Golden-crested wren. . . .Spanish-moss. Chimney swift Home-made glue (saliva) and sticks. It will be seen that there is a wide variety of choice THE SNAKE-SKIN HUNTER 225 among the birds. No doubt, like other two-legged artists, they en- joy most spirited squabbles among themselves as to the comparative merits of hogs' bristles and badger- hair, or of this or that method of laying on the paper, hornet-nest, horse-hair, or caterpillar-skins. We must admit, of course, that there is some particular virtue in each of these ingredients, but we must draw the line somewhere. Here, for in- stance, we come upon a nest in the fork of a tree that is lined with cherry-pits and buckwheat- shells. But I will not dwell upon this now, for I shall have something more to say about it in an- other page. ^3F' T . w V * X ** \v\ ,- ""' - ^ - " >i'/ ^k\;; NOVEMBER'S WILD FLOWER November 24th HAT is the last wild blossom of the year? If we go into the bare woods, we may even now bring home quite a bouquet asters of various kinds, golden- rods, creeping mallows, daisies, purple toad-flax, yellow toad -flax, centaury, dandelion, chickvveed, and other blooms. But these do not count ; they are not true November flowers, but only straggling remnants from October's overflowing cornucopia. The month of NOVEMBER'S WILD FLOWER 227 March has its own chosen prophet in the hooded her- mit of the bog the skunk-cabbage flower. What is the one floral emblem of November New England November, at least ? Before what flower may we now pause in the woods, with this greeting from the poet : " Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is at an end." Thus sang Bryant to his " fringed gentian " long ago ; but I will venture the assertion that the next time he went into the bare autumn woods he had to run the gauntlet of the bombardment from the witch-hazel guns, for it is to the witch-hazel blossom alone that such sentiments could be addressed with any justice or truth. "The fringed gentian belongs to September," says Burroughs, commenting upon the above lapse of the poet, " and when the severer frosts keep away it runs over into October. But it does not come alone, and the woods are not bare. The closed gentian comes at the same time, and the blue and purple asters are in all their glory. Golden -rod, turtle-head (chelone), and other fall flowers also abound. When the woods are bare, which does not occur in New England till in or near November, the fringed gentian has long been dead. It is, in fact, killed by the first considerable frost. No ; if one were to go botanizing, and take Bry- ant's poem as a guide, he would not bring home any fringed gentians with him. The only flower he would find would be the witch-hazel." Burroughs evidently gave the cold shoulder to the remnant blooms already 228 SHARP EYES . mentioned, his botanical quest referring only to the fresh new flower of the month, for the fringy blooms of the witch-hazel are the only flowers that "wait and come alone." Elsewhere the poet welcomes the dandelion in his late autumn flowers, for this " first pledge of blithesome May " is also a pledge of October and November as well. All through June its cloudy balls seemed to float above the grass ; but since then how few of us have seen a hint of the dandelion! But now, in the cool, frosty days it has taken a new lease of life, and the lawn and rowen fields are again dotted with their gold- en buttons set close within their rosettes. It is one of our perennial bloomers, and is the only solitary rival of our witch- hazel, for both are frequently to be found in flower in Decem- ber, while the dandelion occasionally continues in bloom through the entire winter, meeting the skunk-cabbage in March and the hepatica in April, and thus completing the floral garland for the entire twelvemonth. During the year 1871 I picked a dande- lion every month in the calendar. Another astonishingly pertinaceous winter bloomer is the chickweed. Who can tell us when this plant at our NOVEMBER'S WILD FLOWER 229 feet first began to bloom? It must indeed be a cold day when "the chickweed's eye is closed." You are always sure of it. Even in midwinter, if you know its haunt in some sunny nook, you may dig away the snow, and pick its white, starry blossoms, larger and fuller now than those of summer. I recall a beautiful episode from one of my winter walks long ago, in which the lowly chickweed won my gratitude. I was skirt- ing the borders of a swamp where every hollow between mound and tussock was roofed with thin, glassy ice left high and dry by the receding of the water beneath, and had approached within a few feet of the remnants of an old farm hot -bed, which stood at the foot of a steep southern slope. Its foundation was rimmed with the mimic glass as though in consolation, and, in further sympathy, at one portion the clear crystal roof disclosed a lush growth of the chickweed beneath, its starry blossoms rivalling the surrounding snow in whiteness. A mimic conservatory no, not a mimic, rather say the model, the "cold-frame" which nursed its winter blos- soms eons before the modern infringement of the florist was conceived of, or the florist himself an entity. A WINTER BIRD'S-NEST December ist UR birds'- nest hunter at this season may learn much of the constructive arts of the birds. As I showed in a former chapter, the unravelling of these abandoned nests reveals a surprising va- riety of textiles and linings and deco- rative materials. But if we suppose that we are the only birds'- nest hunters in the woods, we are greatly mistaken. We will say nothing of the owls, the cow-bird, the jays, the fish-crow, the black-snake, and the red squir- rel, which have all had their turn at the bird cradles, with more or less murderous success. If we continue our search long enough, we are certain to come upon the most novel nest of all one which has been found before us, and which has been packed as full of inno- cent mischief as a " jack-in-the-box." A WINTER BIRD'S-NEST 231 I remember once in a winter walk discovering what I supposed to be an abandoned nest of the chipping-spar- TOW in a small spruce about seven feet from the ground. I reached for it, and had barely touched it when I felt a commotion within its interior, and in another instant two black, beady eyes were staring down at me over the dge of the nest. But only for a moment, for, with a squeak and a spring like a gray streak to the ground, the mysterious tenant was soon lost in the grass. I carefully removed the nest. It proved to be, as I had supposed, that of the chipping- sparrow, but so many liberties had been taken with it that but for the horse-hair lining I should hardly have recognized it. A domed roof of interwoven grasses m u and dried leaves had been erected upon it, and skilfully intermeshed at the sides or rim, a small hole having been left for a door-way. A soft lining of cotton or wool and feathers almost filled the interior. I carefully replaced the snuggery, and doubtless had I thought to visit it occasionally during the subsequent months a half-dozen whiskered, furry, bead -eyed in- fants would have crowded at that little door- way to give me a squeaky reception. For I had intruded upon the winter retreat of the field-mouse, destined soon to be a well-packed nursery. The field-mice are the natural successors and heirs to the bird domicile, and their evidences are to be seen in many a disintegrating nest in the woods. On several occasions I have discovered the nests of vireos and the hair- bird lined with a variety of litter for which the bird builders could hardly be held responsible chaff of oats, Indian -corn with the eyes cut out, buckwheat- shells, and the like. There is no telling what whims the vireo might not take in nest building, but when we find the lining of its A WINTER BIRD'S-NEST 233 nest composed of cherry-pits and hazel-nuts even though the nest be several feet above the ground, and far out upon a slender twig, as I have found it we must look elsewhere for our bird, especially when we find all the nuts to have been emptied through small round holes in their sides, and the tiny grooves of sharp teeth marking the edges of the shells. THE MOST MARVELLOUS DRILL IN THE WORLD December 8th HE season of animated insect life is long past, and the "bug-hunter's" attention is now mostly confined to the winter harvest of co- coons everywhere disclosed among the de- nuded twigs. True, there's the black-and-tan "woolly bear" every now and then to be seen crawling across the snow, the caddis-nests in the brook, the water-beetles at the edge of the ice, and those winter butterflies and snow-fleas, all of which I shall describe in a later page. But there are two curiosities more remarkable than any of these yet awaiting us in the woods, if our eyes are only sharp enough to find them ; one of which, in certain respects, is the most wonderful insect which any insect cabinet can show. It is true that we might have looked for our strange insect several months ago; but then there was so much else to choose from through the summer months, and we knew that our secret would keep, and that the winter would show us our prize. And here it is, clinging to the bark of a maple-tree in the woods, all ready and waiting for its collector a perfect specimen, with legs and wings firm and nicely spread and set, and, what is more, mounted to the bark with its own pin ! A "big black wasp," you think? Yes, it does look like a wasp ; but I can readily imagine an or- dinary wasp turning green with envy at a sight of the sting which this specimen carries ; the hornet's dagger is an insignificant af- fair beside it. Let us examine the insect closely. It seems to be standing on tip- toe on the bark, with wings upraised ; its body is bent in an up- ward arch, and seems en- tangled in a double-twist- ed loop of horse-hair. And thereby hangs a tail, for it is this singular loop that has won the insect its well-deserved name as the most wonderful borer on record. If I were to exhibit to the reader a piece of black horse-hair about five inches in length, and claim that it was a wonderful new kind of gimlet which was capable of boring a hole four inches deep into solid wood, would I be taken seriously? And if so, how astounding would seem the assertion ! And yet to all appearances such is the instrument and such the actual feat accomplished by this black wasp-like in- sect here upon the tree before us the great ichneumon- fly (Thalessa lunator), which is endowed with the most marvellous drilling instrument in the world a dainty complex machine beside which the most exquisite and skilful mechanism of man's appears insignificant and clumsy. Had we chanced this way last summer we might have had a better view of this wonderful drill, as our buzzing ichneumon-fly hovered about the tree-trunk selecting a place for her operations. I have pictured her in flight with her slender borer displayed. To be correct, my picture should show but one hair-like appendage instead of three, but I have separated the borer into the three divisions which appear in the act of boring two of them being merely the sheaths which close about the true drill all appearing as one when the insect is in flight. THE MOST MARVELLOUS DRILL IN THE WORLD 237 The variety of her positions assumed during the bor- ing process I will not attempt to describe, nor can I, in a brief popular paper, enter upon the very strange mus- cular and anatomical action which accompanies the proc- ess. But I have shown my ichneumon as she appeared after the drilling was well under way ; the large disk at the extremity of the body being a contractile tissue dis- tended by the loop of the drill within, and by which the pressure is communicated to the straight shaft be- low. By a muscular wriggling motion, continued with patience for hours sometimes, the horse-hair gimlet has sunk three inches into the wood, bringing up to the surface a continual pouring of fine sawdust. The membranous disk has disappeared by gradual contraction, and the body at length assumed the position which we now see in our dead specimen on the tree, with the two loops of the sheath- ing parts separated and meeting around the drill where it enters the wood below, this short section of about half an inch beneath the tip of the body being all that is now to be seen of the original four-inch bore. But this last effort was evidently too much for the insect. It exhausted her strength, and she died without being able to withdraw the shaft. And what is it all about ? What fun can there be in such laborious work, and in such hot August weather too ? The intention of this ichneumon is no less aston- ishing than her mechanical skill. She knows very well 238 SHARP EYES what she is drilling for. There is a rival drill in the insect field which she is evidently determined to ex- terminate. I have shown her in the act of pouncing upon another wasp-like insect upon the tree-trunk. These two insects are linked in a most strange fashion in the divine plan of Nature. The second insect is the pigeon Tremex (Tremex columba), a borer of no mean accomplishments, though her drill is less than an inch in length. We may see her almost any day in Au- gust, sometimes half a dozen together working upon a single tree. Sooner or later our ichneumon finds this same tree and searches out her enemy; for the Tremex has laid its eggs within the tree, and its young larvae are now driving their tunnels through the wood. It is these that the ichneumon is after. She knows that they are within, and her drill is something more than a mere drill, for when once in place she lays an egg through it, and the little grub which hatches from it immediately takes the hint given by its mother. It searches among the burrows within the tree until it finds the Tremex larva, upon which it fastens itself, living upon it as a parasite, and ultimately destroy- ing it. It is an ichneumon -fly instead of a Tremex which emerges from the aperture in the tree bark next summer. The mechanism of this ichneumon instrument is too complex for adequate description here. It is composed of three long pieces, which are dovetailed one with an- other, and glide easily through their entire length, the boring being accomplished by the alternate gouging of the chiselled tips. The entire diameter of this shaft is less than the smallest period on this page, and though constructed THE MOST MARVELLOUS DRILL IN THE WORLD 239 of three pieces, there is room to spare for a soft chan- nel through its centre, by which the egg is conducted to the depths of the burrow. I have somewhere read that this particular boring tool of the Thalessa has been infringed upon by a recent human device, in which the same drilling mechanism has been employed without so much as a " thank you " to the ichneumon. How many others of the imple- ments and devices and commodities and processes in daily use by man the fruit, it is claimed, of his "supe- rior intelligence," all duly protected by letters-patent have had their first working model in nature ages be- fore the human era? Who is he that assumes to be the first paper-maker, weaver, plasterer, potter, or mason? The world is overrun with impostors who would claim the invention of saw, file, chisel, and gouge ; of the first gun, or diving-bell, or lathe, to say nothing of propel- lers, water- proof cement, log-cabins, javelins, scissors, and even pincers! WINTER'S ROSETTES December i^th E are going to have an early spring," said a rural philosopher to me one late Feb- ruary day, pointing, as proof of his asser- tion, to the numerous clusters of lush green leaves disclosed everywhere in his garden upon the melting of the snows. " The weeds are starting already," he says, pulling up a close clump of peppergrass leaves. And yonder is a flat starry tuft of sorrel leaves as green as April grass, and near by a hundred -pointed starry rosette of the evening primrose hugging the frozen ground all proofs of an " early spring." Yes, the spring is in the hearts of all of them, and has been abiding there for several months. How few of them ever get the credit for the hope and faith of which they are the perennial elo- quent symbols ! The snow covers thousands of them. Not all our evergreens are accounted for in our bot- WINTERS ROSETTES 2 4 I any. We find no adequate mention of these quiet res- olute rosettes which are everywhere disclosed in spring upon the melting of the snow, but which might have been found as early as the previous September. Many a dried stalk or withered seed-pod protruding above the snow will point the way to them. This wiry spire of the pretty moth-mullein beset with its globular pods these brown catkins of the rib-grass plantain ; this feath- ery sprig of peppergrass we may readily guess what a pretty tufted carpet is that which covers the bare earth about their feet. This brown spiny mock- ery of last summer's thistle reminds us of the most beautiful of all these winter dec- M orations, the sym- metrical compound star of acanthus-like leaves, guarding the root beneath, and waiting in patience for the first oppor- tunity of sending up its stalk of bloom. The evening primrose shows us one of the most per- fectly symmetrical of all these leaf clusters a beautiful complex spiral star, geometrical in its arrangement, and a perfect pattern for the modeller, sculptor, decorator, or wood-carver. The willow-herb, or fire- weed (Epilo- biuni), is almost equally perfect; and, indeed, our art- worker may find a wide choice of ornamental types, 242 SHARP EYES without recourse to "design" to those accustomed liberties with leaves and blossoms in the "convention- alized " rosettes so prevalent in decoration. To the botanist this beautiful sym- metry tells an interesting story, giv- ing, as it does, a key to the entire spiral arrangement of the leaves in the mature plant, the stem being but a prolongation of the axis upon which the same progression of the rosette is repeated. In the evening primrose, for instance, we may count nine leaves up the stem before we reach one di- rectly over the first, or starting-point. A careful exami- nation of the rosette discloses the same arrangement. If we imagine the stem of the plant to consist of an elastic cord at full tension, then our rosette would represent the resultant of its contraction to the ground. In the instances of the moth- mullein, thistle, and evening primrose, we see typical bien- nials, or plants which spend one year in making a rosette, one year to blossom, and die the next. The plantain rosette is perennial, renewed from year to year from the same root. The peppergrass, with its deeply-cut leaves shown above, is classed as an annual by all botanists, though its millions of rosettes prove it to be biennial as well, for many of them abide the winter awaiting the spring for bloom. WINTER'S ROSETTES 243 The examples which are here pictured are not draw- ings, but are reproduced from actual photographs from the plants themselves, all gathered in a few moments from a vacant city lot not five minutes' walk from my Brooklyn home. Almost any good-sized spot of bare earth will show many other forms equally interesting, and occasionally so profuse as to carpet the ground. The plantain and peppergrass are thus frequently prev- alent. T seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural ob- ject. . . . He who knows the most, he who knmvs what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. ' ' EMERSON. SNOW December 22d NLESS our almanac is a delusion and a snare, this is the first week of winter, and we may now confidently " look for snow." Perhaps it may have fallen dur- ing the night, covering the bare ground for the first time during the winter, or perhaps only sifted lightly over the crust of an earlier snowfall. But both boys and girls may well put aside their sleds for a walk with me this morning. This snow is good for something else than coasting, or even snowballing. Those who like a good story-book will do well to study the snow, for they may indeed read it like a book. 248 SHARP EYES It is a great white page storied with the doings of the little wild folk which few of us ever see. Who ever sees a deer-mouse t or even a common field-mouse? The summer meadows are full of them, but we should never suspect it, did we not occasionally surprise one scam- pering away with a squeak before the scythe of the mower, or perhaps jumping like a gray streak from a forkful of new-made hay, or from beneath the corn- shock as it is raised to the cart. Their doings down deep among the summer grass no one ever sees, but it is not so now. From the moment their little whiskered noses peep from their burrows their acts are recorded. They write their autobiography day by day. We can see all the mischief they have been up to during the night, and just what company they have kept. Here is a well-worn track to a pile of brush near by where the snow is all cut up with footpints a fa- vorite rendezvous, evidently ; doubtless the gossip ex- change of all the wild bead-eyed folk. Here is a spot among the weeds where four little birds have danced a quadrille or minuet balance corners, forward and back- ward, chassez, and all hands round. Close by, the snow appears as if sewed with tiny stitches, and here we see two long jumping trails circling about a stump. How alive they seem ! telling plainly of a lively race between two mice, both tracks terminating in a hole beneath a stump. The snow on the top of the stump is ruffled with the feet of the furry populace who witnessed the sport, and doubtless cheered on their favorites in their sprightly race. I remember one winter catching sight of a retreating tail whisking into a hole beneath a stump like this, and STORIES IN THE SNOW 249 I shall not forget the eager pull with which I dislodged a piece of the rotten timber, nor the jumping mouse that sped out across the drift, nor the pocketful of hazel- nuts and beechnuts which rolled out upon the snow. There were acorns and chestnuts, too, and kernels of corn with their "eyes" nibbled out, and in a cozy al- cove within I discovered a snug nest of grass and cot- tony substance the winter home and larder of the deer-mouse, or white-footed mouse. HOW BUNNY WRITES HIS AUTOGRAPH December 22d HERE are few country boys who do not know those footprints about the box-traps in the woods, and all through the thickets everywhere four in a set. Yes ; we all know them ; they are the unmistakable seal or signature of the little gray rabbit, or, more properly, hare. And yet I have never met an individual who knew just how bunny writes his autograph. Even though we see him in the act, he writes it so fast that we cannot follow him. It is only by examining it very closely that we can get at the secret. These footprints are always four in a set ; the two front impressions being about six inches apart, and the other pair quite close together, or even united occasion- ally, or placed one directly in front of the other; the direction of the hare's course being plainly seen by the prints of the toes. But it will be a surprise to most people to find on examination that the widely-separated pair in front are really made by the //zW-feet of the animal, certain impressions showing plainly the full im- HOW BUNNY WRITES HIS AUTOGRAPH 251 print of the long hind shank even to its heel, or elbow, as this joint of the leg is incorrectly called. Where the animal has progressed by slow, short jumps " when the hare limps awkward " the marks of the long soles are frequently to be seen ; but in the more rapid leaps, clearing from one to two yards, only the tips of the feet have touched the snow. The instantaneous photo- graphs of Mr. Muybridge have shown us some very surprising disclosures in the various posi- tions of the running horse and other animals. I should like to see a rabbit caught on the fly in the same way; I am sure we should get some comical revelations. A careful examination of his fourfold autograph indicates the method of its technique. The short fore-paws are planted near together, the hind-feet then pass outside and some inches beyond 252 SHARP EYES them, and then follows a jump which may vary from two to ten feet. It is quite possible that bunny may really lift his fore-paws by a spring before the hind- legs overtake them, as shown in my foreground hare, but I fancy that the photograph may yet show us some such transitory attitude as we see in the one behind him. , THE COCOON HARVEST December 2gth jOW is the time to lay up your store of cocoons, looking to i those beautiful moths of next : June; and there are two kinds 1 at least which will prove a sure harvest for your winter walk. For weeks they have been most effectually hidden among the foliage, but now the thickets are full of them in plain sight that is, if your eyes are sharp enough to find them. It always adds to the zest of a walk at any season to have some particular quest in view a rare flower or bird, an Indian arrow-head, perhaps. And even now, in midwinter, when the wilds 254 SHARP EYES are comparatively drear, there are few objects of life more certain to reward your search than the large cocoons of the Attacus Cecropia and the Attacus Prometheus two among our most beautiful and important moths. The twigs of most thickets are now quite denuded, with only what might appear a stray determined leaf here and there. Often this leaf is precisely what it ap- pears to be, clinging by its stem, or perhaps tangled in a tiny spider's web which the winds have as yet been unable to sever. Here and there, however, a cluster of two or three will be found which have a suspicious look, and a closer examination discloses that they are but the artful disguise of a living secret within the Cecropia in its warm double cocoon. But there is a great deal of hocus-pocus, too, among these deceptive leaves. The bunch of leaves often proves a delusion. They are a continual challenge to the analytic eye ; a puzzle often only to be settled by so small a factor as their degree of firmness in the wind, a light, beckoning leaf seldom being worth answering. It is often a matter of no small skill to tell at a hundred feet distance just which cluster of leaves holds its cocoon. These cocoons vary considerably in size and shape ; some being nearly five inches long and very much in- flated and bag-like ; others pointed at each end and be- ing more contracted, but always of the toughest of silky gray parchment in texture. They are secured to the twigs by their longest side, and are quite commonly (especially early in the winter) attended by the few leaves which the caterpillar originally drew together while constructing its silken framework. Occasionally a specimen is found partially incased in a leaf, which leaves a perfect mould of itself in the silk upon removal. THE COCOON HARVEST 255 With these another cocoon is commonly found, and it is an interesting study of insect sagacity for those who are unfamiliar with it. In this case the deception is quite pronounced, and doubtless hundreds of the co- coons have been passed by and noted simply as dan- gling leaves " the last leaf upon the tree in the spring," perhaps. This is the hammock of the Attacus Prometheus. Unlike the Cecropia caterpillars, the Prometheus adopts a distinct preconcerted plan in the construction of its cocoon, by which it pro- vides a safe anchorage for the winter. A suitable leaf is first selected, generally upon a wild cherry, sassafras, spicewood, or button- bush ; the stem of the leaf is then completely incased in silk, and carefully secured to the twig for several inches by the same means; after which the leaf is contracted about the caterpillar, and forms the mould for its win- ter hammock. The wind and weather at length loosen the withered leaf, but nothing short of a vigorous pull will dislodge the co- coon, which often suffers the branch to break, or calls the pocket-knife into use before it will release its hold. Among the most pleasant winter memo- ries of my boyhood was the quest for these cocoons. Whether on foot through the woods, or on frozen lake or river, skating around among the flaky ice of the sedgy border swamps and coves among the button -bushes and alders, sub- merged in summer, but now revealing those empty nests of the "conkaree," which so tantalized me a few months before here I filled my pockets with a daily harvest 2 5 6 SHARP EYES of cocoons that was the envy of my less- favored entomological companions. Nor has the fever left me ; even to-day I cannot pass a cocoon and leave it alone. I find my steps turning involuntarily towards every thicket I meet in my winter walk. Only last week, from one small copse in the suburbs of the city, I brought home a bouquet of twigs bearing one hundred and forty odd of the cocoons of these two moths, mostly of the Cecropia ; also one small branch with a dangling accom- paniment of twenty- three cocoons of the beautiful ailantus moth, which, added to the stock gathered in pre- vious recent walks, ran the total number up to nearly four hun- dred. What will I do with them? I shall take the greatest pleas- ure in dividing them around among my friends, to most of whom they will prove a real curiosity and rarity, and who, when June comes again, will thank me most earnestly, as so many have done already, for affording them a glimpse of that wondrous revelation of the emerging moth. Gather the cocoons, then, my young friends. Gather all you can, and distribute them among your neigh- bors. It is good missionary work. There is a winged sermon in every one of them. -" AMONG THE WINTER TWIGS Jamtary $th HAVE recommended the Cecropia and Prometheus cocoons as desirable quests for a winter walk. There was a double purpose in that rec- ommendation ; for, even though we get no cocoons, we are led into wild haunts where various other in- teresting things are* to be seen. There is much be- sides cocoons to tempt our search among the denuded twigs of the woods. The fallen leaves have laid bare many of the pranks of insect life that are completely concealed in the summer foliage. What a variety of interesting galls are now to be found that had escaped us when last we walked this way ! There is that bulby- stemmed golden -rod. We see them on all sides now against the snow. It is worth our while to gather a few of them to keep till spring, when we may witness the little winged tenant emerging through a tiny hole, which is even now to be found beneath the bark if our eyes are sharp enough to find it, for each one of these is the winter home of a tiny insect at present in its chrysalis stage. I have often been asked to ex- plain another bulbous excrescence which is found upon the twigs of apple and wild -cherry. I have introduced a picture of it here in my border- group, just above the bulby golden-rod. Every winter- walker should know it, if only to gather it for destruction, for every one of them so plucked has saved the tree or bush from an unsightly caterpillar web the following year, and, if in the orchard, from much serious damage to the growing fruit and to the tree as well. This curi- ous bunch is the work of the small brown apple-tree moth, and consists of hundreds of eggs laid in a broad, close gir- dle completely around the twig, and afterwards covered with a brown water-proof and weather-proof varnish. AMONG THE WINTER TWIGS 259 One of the most noticeable freaks to be seen among the bare branches are those eccentric clusters of twigs in the birch and sugar-berry trees ; all the branches run- ning into brooms, as though getting ready for the spring house-cleaning. But this is no natural expression of the tree. It has been bewitched by a tiny mite, whose broods live year after year in the crowded twigs, and are the cause of the diseased growth. In early times these bunches were known as "witches' brooms," and all sorts of weird stories were connected with them. But the true "witch" has since been caught riding the broom ; and inasmuch as she is not readily discovered without a magnifying glass, we need hardly worry much about her. THE GIRDLER BEETLE January ^th F we search beneath the hickory- trees we may gather an interesting handful of twigs. The snow is sometimes strewn with short branch tips, their ends appearing to have been cut off as with a file. Some artful fagot-cutter has been at work here, surely! If we examine the low- hanging branches of the trees, we shall find bet- ter proof of his clever work, as shown in the pictured twig. The branches are seen to be girdled with a deep groove, sunk through the bark and deep into the wood. Many of these girdles appear quite recent, the branch beyond being full of sap, while in others this part of the twig is plainly dead, and readily snaps when handled, a strong wind being sufficient to strew the surrounding snow with the lifeless twigs. The works of the myste- rious pruner are plainly seen on every side, but we shall have to go back to the August woods to solve the rid- dle of his identity. Here we shall find the artful " gir- dler " trimming the trees to its fancy, or, as I should say, to her fancy; and how many are the misshapen hickory- trees that can be laid to her effective industry? I have pictured the pruner at its work ; and now THE GIRDLER BEETLE 26 1 that I have disclosed it in its haunt, and shown it to be a prosaic beetle, I must be true to scientific fact, and that fact is that this is a mother beetle, working solely in the interest of her offspring. It must be admitted that she takes a curious mode of providing for her chil- dren ; but she is doubtless doing the best she knows, and the plan seems to have worked very well, or else we would not see her following the hereditary example of her long line of foremothers. This is the way she in- sures her posterity. First she finds a twig that suits -3^ her fancy and her fancy is easily satisfied. After gnawing around on the bark for a while, as though to find a suitable place to begin operations,.she at length starts her groove, travelling round and round the twig, sideways, sinking the girdle deeper at every turn until satisfactorily completed. After this sometimes before. 262 SHARP EYES it is said she travels along the branch tip beyond, and lays an egg in the soft bark, beneath one or more buds of the twig, depositing each in a puncture well beneath the surface. She now commends the branch to destiny, and repeats the operation on another twig. Briefly told, the sequel is as follows : the eggs soon hatch into minute grubs, which penetrate beneath the bark, and later devour the wood, which is more or less alive with sap during the first season. The grub is believed to live within the twig nearly three years, re- ducing it at last to a mere shell, from which the per. feet beetle at length emerges. r THE WELL-NAMED HORSE- CHESTNUT January i2th NDER our popular vocabulary of plants we \\ find many inappropriate names. We have, for instance, a herd of " horse " growths horse-gentian, horse-balm, horse-radish, horse- mint without so much as a trace of signifi- cance to recommend their christening. But the horse-chestnut need no longer be in- cluded among the common herd. A few years ago a friend called my attention to cer- tain scars upon the twigs of this tree, which he claimed were the reason of its christening. I had noticed the scars repeatedly without seeing any suggestion of the " horseshoe " which he discerned there ; and the scars themselves were not very different from those on the hickory and ailantus, and various other compound- leaved trees, which leave similar sunken marks upon the twigs after the leaf-stalk has fallen. But one winter's day, while carefully examining the branches of the horse-chestnut, mainly with a view to its interesting 264 SHARP EYES varnished buds, I was struck with a remarkable resem- blance to the leg, fetlock, and hoof of a horse. I give herewith a careful and exact drawing of the twig as I have since repeatedly found it, and as it may be discovered by any one who will take a little care in the search. The three-cornered leaf scars may be seen conspicuously on the winter twigs in opposite pairs, particularly on the youngest wood, towards the budded tips. In themselves they bear only the faintest suggest- ion of the foot or shoe of a horse, as may be seen by reference to the isolated scar represented in the sketch. It is only when we find a branch with an accidental forked tip that the conditions give rise to the mimicry I have shown. Each of these branching twigs, naturally straight, has now acquired a curve at the fork, by which they seek to neutralize the vacancy caused by the loss of the ter- minal shoot. This curve an- swers to the fetlock joint of a horse's foot; while the dis- torted scar, with its row of seven raised dots around its edge, takes its place with striking significance. If with a sharp knife we now cut off the twig, trimming the wood close to the edge of the mimic hoof, the resemblance is still further en- hanced, while the surface beneath discloses other mark- ings which seem almost patterned after the sole, or "frog," of a hoof. Here we have the leg, hoof, fetlock, frog, seven nails, and all. It is certainly a curious freak, and well worth a hunt among the winter twigs. THE GROUSE ON SNOW-SHOES January I2th N a previous chapter I have touched upon the sprightly record of the birds and mice upon the fresh-fallen snow. I omitted to mention one very interesting snow- track which we may frequently meet with, lead- ing us over the tops of snow-drifts and circling among the alders and sedges of the swamps, where the snow is suggestively littered with bud-scales and dirt. It is the track of a large bird ; and \ from what we know of the habits of our winter game, is plainly that of the ruffed grouse, or " partridge," as he is commonly called. But how is this? This is not the clean, trim imprint which the bird makes in the mud or wet sand of sum- mer. Here is something worth looking into, surely. The snow gives us the tracks of the tiniest mice with perfect modelling, tail mark and all ; yet while the foot of the grouse is slender and dainty, here we find a blurred and jagged track, with each toe apparently a third of an inch in width. It is worth your while, my city youth, to stop at the market or butcher's shop on 266 SHARP EYES your way to school this morning, and look at the feet of the grouse. Nature has not asked this bird to walk the snows for its living without providing it with proper means of locomotion. With its slender summer foot it would sink in the soft drift at every step, while now it walks with perfect ease on the lightest snow, for each foot is provided with a snow-shoe. Every autumn the shoe begins to grow, a stiff fringe of horny bristles spreading around the sole and on both sides of each toe, until, by the time n. THE GROUSE ON SNOW-SHOES 267 the blizzard arrives, the bird is ready to walk on the highest drifts. I have made a drawing of the foot with and without its shoe. The intention of this bristly growth is perfectly plain, for in April, when the snows have melted, you may look in vain for the snow-shoe ; the grouse has kicked it off as a thing that has served its purpose. And yet, unless I am much mistaken, you will find no mention of this singular fact in any of our natural histories. The curi- ous pectinated (comb-toothed) feet of the grouse are noted as a special feature of this family of birds, but the peculiar annual growth and ad- aptation are, I believe, not generally known. The difference between the summer and win- ter tracks first drew my attention and awakened my suspicion, but that observant naturalist, Mr. Er- nest Thompson, was the first to re- cord the snow-shoe of the grouse. This accommodating foot is com- mon to all the grouse family, and the prairie-hen is even more generously equipped in winter than the ruffed grouse. The latter bird uses his broad foot for bur- rowing, and the winter walker, after a fresh snow-fall or during a very cold stress of weather, may often find their snow tunnels running for several feet beneath the drifts. I once knew a boy who surprised a grouse in the act of excavating one of these burrows; but the bird, in spite of the most extreme caution on the boy's part, left nothing but its tail in his hand to show for his adventure when he reached home. THE "FAIRY RING" AND THE FAIRY January i2th HE rabbits, mice, and birds all leave their own peculiar and unmistakable autographs their " hands and seals " in the snow, but they are not responsible for all the sin- gular hieroglyphics to be seen on this great white page. The wind often takes a hand, and after a light, fresh snow-fall plays pretty pranks with the drooping stems of some of the withered grasses; a single grass -blade under the influence of varying playful breezes tracing a puzzling variety of inscriptions. Various degrees of proficiency are exhibited by these queer writings; some being clusters of eccentric touch- es, cutting the snow in odd lines, like stenographic notes, as it were, made by our artist on the spot, as though quickly jotting down some racy incident of furry life which was passing at the moment. I have seen these queer inscriptions on the fresh-fallen snow when I was utterly at a loss to explain their origin, until the thought of the wind suggested a clew, and by bending down the tip of a long neighboring grass- blade I was enabled to add to the written score so perfectly that I doubt if either old Boreas or gentle zephyr, whichever may have been the writing-master, would have been THE " FAIRY RING " AND THE FAIRY able to tell where he left off and I began. Here and there we see a beautiful bow sharply drawn in the snow, a perfect arc or section of a circle, the work of this wiry sedge blade when the wind guided its hand. If we care to con- tinue the search, we may find an arc extended to a semicircle, a spiral, or even to a complete ring, almost as true as if struck with a com- pass, and with the telltale drooping or broken grass-blade still at work with every stir of the breeze. " Fairy rings," the children used to call them. I have pictured both the ring and the fairy. 269 > ^ \ & 'V*. : J -T ' *.-# ' ' THE THAW BUTTERFLIES Jamtary iptk j^f HE "January thaw" does not always arrive on schedule time. It may come in late December, or not until February. Even though there are no icicles to melt and drip at the eaves, and no snow to slide in mimic avalanche from the steaming roofs, we may know of the thaw's impending arrival by the appearance of its butterfly heralds. ^Jfc Nor is it necessary that the thaw eML should be a general condition of V the weather. I have known a sunny, sheltered nook on the south side of the barn to have a little thaw all by itself. The poet sings pathetically of the fate of the butter- fly on the approach of winter: "Dying when fair things are fading away;" and in the general truth he is correct. But did he know that we have a whole brood of butterflies for which the cold has no terrors, and which always tide over the win- ter to enjoy the "fair things" of another spring? The well-known "yellow edge," or Antiopa butterfly, else- where alluded to in these pages, is of this hardy tribe, and perhaps the best known among them. THE THAW BUTTERFLIES 2 7 I Then there are the " Comma," the " Semicolon," and the Atlanta, or the Red Admiral, so familiar to all our young butterfly collectors all members of the same sturdy group known as the " angle-wings." As late as the middle of October, when most caterpillars, like the Cecropia and Prometheus, have tucked themselves away in their snug silken winter- quarters, you may still find the last caterpillar broods of these butterflies either transformed to chrysalids, or feeding upon their various food plants. But their gilded chrysalids are rarely con- tent so to remain for more than two weeks, the severe frosts of late October only seeming to hasten their ea- gerness to be on the wing. It is true there is little invitation in the way of blossoms for honey-sippers now; but the cider-presses are running, and the whole family of angle- wings, it must be confessed, would disdain acres of bloom for one good sip of apple- jack. Go to the pomace heap at the cider-press, and you may pick them up in your fingers perfectly passive in con- tentment. In the orchard, the brown, frozen apples offer a similar bait ; and in the wood -pile the fermented juice of the ex- uding sap from the freshly-cut logs tempts the same appetite a "nightcap," possibly the necessity for which is foreseen by the butterfly in view of that long, cold sleep which it has chosen to take in its winged state rather than in the chrysalis, which is the choice of most of its kind. When the biting chill of November ush- ers in the winter, you will look in vain for your angle-wings ; that is, unless you look in the right place. Even then it is ten to one that you will not find them; for, though your eyes may be resting upon them, you will hard- ly recognize those faded brown or gray scaly chips as the bright sylphs of the autumn sunshine. Their wings are folded on their backs, concealing the color, and the dull surface now ex- posed is in such perfect harmony with their present dingy surroundings as to conceal all suggestion of their animate existence. Where, then, shall we look for them ? A butterfly hunt in midwinter ! Hundreds of \.\\e Antiopa have been found hanging in a single crevice between the boards of a shed, falling to the earth like bark scales when dislodged. They are found beneath loose clapboards and shingles, and the crannies in the hay- barracks beneath the conical roof are a favorite haunt for their hibernation. I have seen a small brood of them sunning themselves around an opening in such a barrack-mow; and once, in tearing away a slab of bark from an old stump, two or three of this same " yellow THE THAW BUTTERFLIES 273 edge " tribe fell out upon the snow, like so many inan- imate scales of bark. Any one of these angle- wing butterflies may be kept in domestication through the winter months, becoming very tame and familiar, and forming a pretty feature of the conservatory, or even the window-garden. THE FLUTTER FROM THE TULIP-TREE January 26th ALKING through the woods on our way home we observe the snow here and there sprinkled with brown paddle- shaped objects about an inch and a half in length, which at first glance appear to be the seeds of the ash previously described. But upon examination we see that they are of an entirely new model, having a heavy and blunt curved extremity. One of them is to be seen in my windrow of seeds on page 282. To one /amiliar with the woods these paddle seeds offer a temptation not to be withstood. Somewhere near by we may confidently look for the lofty tulip-tree, where the remnant seed-broods are still nestling by the thousands in their mimic cup or cone- shaped clusters at the tips of the branches, each bringing THE FLUTTER FROM THE TULIP-TREE 275 to mind the orange-spotted yellow magnolia-tulips of last July. One glimpse of them is enough for me a challenge which I never permit to pass unhonored. The nearest club or stick or stone is soon flying up among the branch -tips, and what a mazy, whirling, dizzy, dan- cing response is mine in the flying cloud which follows ! SNOW-QUAKES AND THE SNOW-QUAKER January 26th NE of the most welcome occasional companions of the winter walker is the gray squirrel. On almost any genial day we are sure of him if our eyes are sharp enough, and our manners sufficiently decorous. His eccentric doings are written in his footprints everywhere upon the new-fallen snow, connecting tree with tree, and keeping one's eyes ever on the lookout for the whisking tail. At our approach he has leaped upon a convenient trunk, and suspended himself head downward, unwink- ing and motionless, with brush laid flat against the bark. But not for long. If we wait with sufficient pa- tience, the nervous loop of that tell-tail will soon show us his whereabouts, and in a moment more we see him bounding with graceful curves across the snow, every subtle motion of his beautiful body accentuated as nev- er before, in its contrast against the white carpet. His summer companion, the chickaree, or red squir- rel, is still curled up in its semi-hibernating sleep, or perhaps has taken a peep at the white world without from its hole in the tree, or a nibble from its convenient frozen apple or nut in the crotch above. But we rarely see him in those winter days when the gray spe- cies is quite generally abroad. We can hardly suppose that our gray rover is out freezing his toes merely for enjoyment. If we observe his doings close- ly, we may soon discover that a more urgent mis- sion animates his being. 2/8 SHARP EYES The red squirrel, aloft in his den, sets an example of providence which his bigger gray neighbor has persist- ently ignored. Every day last autumn he might have been seen packing away his provender of nuts, apples, etc., into secret chinks and crannies high above ground against the coming snow-bound days. The gray squirrel has doubtless had the benefit of much of his wisdom, but it is doubtful whether he has taken his hint even to the extent of a hazel-nut. These winter outings, there- fore, are not primarily for pleasure, but for dire neces- sity. Let us observe our squirrel carefully. There he goes in graceful bounds across the snow, his sensitive plumy tail in every movement expressive of its homage to the line of beauty. Now he pauses and seems to scent the snow-flakes, and in a moment more, evidently satisfied with his bearings, he begins to burrow like a woodchuck, and is soon lost to sight. Now he reap- pears at the mouth of the burrow with a pine-cone in his teeth, and in the tree-top near by he quickly extracts its seeds while the cone scales litter the snow beneath, "Wonderful sagacity this! How did he spot that cone so accurately through six inches or a foot of snow?" So exclaims the ordinary observer. So ex- claimed the present writer on more than one occasion, until at last the true significance of the episode was revealed. My squirrel on this occasion, which I can hardly con- sider exceptional, had already brought one cone from the hole and devoured its seeds. He then descended from his tree, and procured another. But did he dis- cover it through the snow, and dig as above described ? Not at all. He entered the burrow, and soon appeared with his second cone. Were there then two cones at SNOW-QUAKES AND THE SNOW-QUAKER 2/Q this one spot? I queried; and those suggestive scales yonder, from perhaps a dozen cones, which strewed the snow, had these, too, all chanced to fall at this partic- ular place beneath the snow ? Drawing closer to the scene of action, the mystery of this " wonderful saga- city " was solved, the opening of the burrow being but a convenient door-way to a system of snow burrows extending for several feet on all sides, the crust up- heaved and cracked here and there in broken mounds, each of which probably marked the scene of discovery and struggle with a cone. Whatever may be said of the comparative provident sagacity of the red and the gray squirrels, it must be admitted that the snow-quaker fairly earns his Christ- mas dinner. STATE r;ui<:. i :.LoJUli WINTER GRIST FOR THE BIRDS February 2d ^ WEED has been described by Emerson as " a plant whose virtues have not been discovered," and it must be confessed that many of them fail to show any good reason for their existence until the secret is disclosed in their dried and brown skeletons against the snow. There is the pretty ragweed, for instance * (Ambrosia), figured on page 44. Who has ever said anything good of it? Its copious pollen is accused of being the provoking cause of hay-fever. Even Burroughs, who certainly might have been expected to discover some redeeming trait in the weed, only heaps ignominy upon it. "Ambrosia, ' food for the gods,' "he says. " It must be the food of the gods if of anything, for, as far as I have observed, nothing terrestrial eats it, not even a billy-goat." It is certainly delightful food for the eye, with its finely-cut, graceful summer foliage and long tapering spires of greenish bloom ; but it is in the dried and leaf- less winter stalks of this and a number of other weeds that we find the best reason for their being. What could the birds tell us? How would the winter bunt- ings, sparrows, finches, and snow-birds bridge over the snow-bound days were it not for this garner of seeds which the weeds hold above the snow? Generally speaking, the seeds of a plant are supposed to be released upon maturity. We all know how speed- ily the wind takes care of the dandelion and thistle seeds when the plant has completed their education. Autumn scatters showers of seeds of all kinds with every breeze ; but the meadows are full of know- ing weeds that refuse to give up their grist ; and though a few grains are occasionally wrenched from them, they still hold a gen- erous share for the white days when the hungry winter birds will surely need them. It is very interesting to go through a sloping or undulating meadow after a snowfall, and es- pecially after a snowfall that has been followed by a wind. The snow is peppered with meadow- crumbs dislodged by the gale. If by chance there should be a glassy crust on the snow, we may sample al- most the entire grist of the meadow, swept up into windrows and gath- ered into bins and pock- ets. All the little hollows and gullies and chinks and crannies of the un- even snow are full of the crumbs. And what queer crumbs they are, too! Here is a little wavy line, looking like brown chaffy powder or fine sawdust, with occasional larger grains intermixed. It follows along for quite a distance WINTER GRIST FOR THE BIRDS on the snow at the foot of the steep, white, weedy slope. It is well worth our while to study it closely. Each handful of the powder swept up at random will have a surprise in store for us. Darwin it was, I believe, who coaxed quite a number of foreign plants from the dirt scraped from the foot of a migrating wild- duck. What a garden might we not get next year from a pinch of this meadow snuff, or from a ball of mud rolled in it for only a moment ! Not a foreign garden, it is true, but perhaps a beautiful one, never- theless. Let us see what we might expect, for we can tell pretty nearly what it would be, though we may be sure that it would in- clude a fair number of plants which only the birds care anything about. I have shown a few of these crumbs which the windrow would give us some of them only occa- sionally, and others in great quantity. I am sure that few of my younger readers will remember ever having seen such queer-looking things on the snow or anywhere else, but I can assure them that these are but a few of the pre- cious packages which may be found in the winter fields, and each one of them is as good as a whole plant to the eye of a botanist. There is no mistaking where they come from. Let us turn our powerful magnifying-glass upon each in turn as it may be necessary. Here is No. I, a turtle- shaped seed beset with bristles. This is from the wild 284 SHARP EYES carrot, that manages to hold a generous remnant of seeds in its withered nest all winter. No. 2 needs no magnifying- glass, being a large hairy burr, nearly the size of a hazel-nut, and armed with cruel thorns, a seed of the hedgehog grass, and not a pleasant thing to han- dle. No. 3 we all recognize as the same two-pronged " beggar-tick " that is so fond of our clothes in the late summer. No. 4 is the urn-shaped kernel of the ragweed. No. 5, the large samara of the elm, though you will find few of them in the winter. No. 6, a pine seed. No. 7, a buttercup seed. No. 8, with its rough conical body and fine-toothed crown, is the pretty seed of the sneeze- weed, which certainly deserves a place among our mead- ow snuff. No. 9 has come from a sedge. No. 10 was blown from the ash -tree, perhaps half a mile away. No. 1 1 will be remembered as another of those friendly " beggar- ticks." No. 12 was once in the centre of a may- weed blossom. No. 13 is one of that fluttering swarm from the seed cone of the tulip-tree. In No. 14 we have the dainty packet which holds the seed treas- ure of the pig-weed. The tooth-crowned fruit of cich- ory is shown at 15; a wingless milk-weed seed at 16; that of the smart-weed at 17. And we leave the read- er to guess at the long line of other representatives from grasses and sedges and other sources; and, like my little flock of birds, to take his pick among them. CURIOUS SPECKS ON THE SNOW February gth INTER weeds and their wind-blown grist for the hungry birds are responsible for many curious specks on the snow, as we observed last week, but there are two forms of peppered snow which the win- ter walker occasionally meets with, and which have plainly no connection with weed or copse, for they are found on the lawn, or in the open meadow, or in the woods where no weeds are seen above the snow, and occasionally in such quan- tities as to cause some wonder about their source. There are those queer tiny mimic birds, for in- 286 SHARP EYES stance. Go where you will in the snowy woods, espe- cially after a wind, and their flocks would seem to fol- low you, though without the snow to serve as their background no one ever sees them. In an open winter their existence would never be suspected ; but now we see their myriad flocks soaring over the drifts, with their tiny wings fully spread and tail expanded like diminutive hawks, floating above the white field. I have said that they are everywhere to be seen, and this is really quite among the possibilities, for the wind is a most thorough sower ; but it must be confessed that when we find the snow literally peppered with them, we may know that there is a birch-tree close by, for the birches are responsible for this winged brood. More than once have I been asked to identify this tiny mimic bird by those who need only have reached the drooping branch of the birch in the woods to have put a million of them to flight towards the snow. So con- stant and pronounced a feature of the winter are they that it is impossible for me to think of the snowy woods without recalling them, and I do so now to satisfy what I know must have been a frequent wonder on the part of many a winter walker who shall chance to read this page, and also to direct attention to those curious pen- dent nests where they have been so snugly brooded all these months. The white-birch-trees during the winter season are seen to be hanging full of catkins. These are of two kinds, the more numerous of them being quite large and full, the others confined in groups of two or three at the branch tips. The latter are the true catkins winter parcels done up ready for the coming spring. April will see them all shaken out into dangling tassels of blossoms several inches in length. But the other dark brown cones have already seen their catkin days. They were blossoms last spring. But they are now firm and rigid and reso- f lute on their stalks, their only thought being to spread the white counterpane with manna for the birds, and to fill the woods full of birch- trees ; for each one of these fruiting catkins contains certainly a thousand seeds packed away with wonderful art, and here is where we find the mimic birds, each with its brood of two or three of the light-brown seeds beneath its wings. This innocent-appearing catkin is well worth our care- ful examination. I never go into the woods in winter without stopping to admire its little hocus-pocus, for it is a pretty piece of jugglery. \ '. t How firm and compact it seems as it hangs j upon its stem ! But it is laughing at our sim- v 288 SHARP EYES plicity. Only as much as shake the twig, or, what is better, give the cone a pinch at its tip, and see how quickly it takes the hint to be off. Firm and compact indeed! In the continuous disintegrating shower that follows, and which leaves nothing but a short, stiff stem, we may well wonder at the trick that has so long kept the cone together. The secret has been held by the sentinel at the tip of the cone. When he once opens the door the entire troop takes flight. On examination it will be seen that these birdlike scales and light-brown, filmy seeds have been arranged in circles and tiers around a cen- tral stem or core to which they were once joined. In ripening they have become free, and are then held in their compact shape only by contact and pressure , the whole elastic mass being locked by the hard scale at the tip. Let this or any other part be- come dislodged, the structure crumbles away. And this is how the snow becomes peppered with the tiny birds. But these are not the seeds; these we rarely see, even in winter. The scales being the heavier, fall near the trees, while the light, filmy-winged seeds are blown to the ends of the earth. SNOW-FLEAS February gth NE of the strangest of all specks on snow is the snow-flea no mimic flea, but an actual living and very lively midget, whose swarms some- times cover the snow in patches as black as ink, or convert large spaces of its surface to a dark -gray color. Like my hibernating butterflies, they, too, are creatures of the thaw. Almost any bright and genial day in winter invites them to an outing. I have seen patches two feet in diameter moving like a dark shadow across the meadow, and I remember once, when a boy, walking on the snow-crust over a field of several acres that was everywhere peppered with their millions. The books tell us that the insects live in moss and lichens on the rocks and bark of trees, from which they emerge for exercise in mild weather. This theory is probably warranted by the facts, but it will be no easy task so to convince many a rustic philosopher whom I know, and to whom these fleas are as much a celestial shower as the snow itself. I have talked with several rural authorities on the subject, and have obtained some facts which may well puzzle the scientists. " It's all easy 19 SHARP EYES enough to say they come from the trees and rocks," says Enoch, " but thar's my five-acre meddy yonder, it's un- der two feet of snow, and they ain't a rock or a tree on it, ner in a half-mile on't, and yet it's all alive with 'em. I tell ye, them as sez they come from trees and rocks SNOW-FLEAS 2QI don't know wut they are talkin' about. Why, I've seen 'em cum down a-ridin' on the snow-flakes !" I am sorry that I cannot give an accurate picture of the mysterious flea. Once, when a boy, I made a draw- ing from one by the aid of a magnifying-glass, but it was lost, and I can only give a suggestion of it from memory. t f THE CURIOUS BASKET-CARRIERS February i6th E must not let the winter pass with- out gathering a few of the cocoons of the basket-carriers, or bag-worms. \Yj//\\J// There are many kinds of cocoons to be found in winter, and all sorts of beautiful moths come out of them, but there are ; few such queer specimens as this of the bag-worm, ',? with its array of sticks and leaves and thatch of vari- ," ous sorts; and you may be sure it has a surprise in store for you next spring, if you have not yet learned its secret. It is only necessary to gather a dozen or so, and place them in a box and await further developments. I shall never forget my first experience with them. It was one winter early in my boyhood. A larch-tree in front of my city home was dangling full of the stick- THE CURIOUS BASKET-CARRIERS 2Q3 covered baskets, then seen by me for the first time, and a rarity in these parts. I gathered a hundred or more, and coveted all the rest that hung beyond my reach. I placed them in a box, and no one but myself knows how I longed for spring to come, in anticipation of that wonderful moth that was to have the place of honor in my collection. Surely, I thought, something extraor- dinary must come from such a very queer cocoon ; and my suspicions were more than verified, for it was in truth a singular progeny that greeted me one morning in June, when I went to take my daily look at the box of cocoons. All over the cover and sides of the box, the mantel- piece on which it rested, the walls, and the ceiling, were thousands and thousands of little parti -colored specks, wriggling and turning all sorts of queer antics in puz- zling confusion, and hanging and squirming in webby festoons on all sides. As soon as my surprise was over I began to investi- gate the matter a little more closely. The animated specks consisted of cases or baskets about an eighth of an inch in length, each of which was occupied by a lively little tenant, which, on being pulled out of its house, showed itself to be a tiny black caterpillar, with a very intellectual head, this portion being about one -fourth the size of the entire creature. On opening the box, its interior was found to be literally alive with the little fellows ; and as I examined them closely, I noticed a 2 9 4 SHARP EYES marked difference in the color of their diminutive cases. Some were pure white, others were buff-colored ; some were bright blue, others variously tinted ; and one was red, white, and blue. This little individual I appealed to my patriotic sentiment, and I took him to the window to get a closer look at his domicile. Until that moment it had not occurred to me to examine the material of their tiny baskets. I went back to the box. I had previously noticed a mottled appearance in its interior, but it had not es- pecially interested me. It now became a matter of more significance. The box was made of common straw board covered with white paper, and at its upper edge, inside, were attached two loose pieces of blue paper, which formerly had covered the articles packed within can- dles, I believe. The white paper had been worn through in spots by the myriad pairs of little teeth, and with the bits of fibre thus obtained, and by the aid of the silk web, of which the caterpillars seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, a countless number of baskets had been made. The mottled effect of the interior of the box was caused by the yellow straw board appearing in spots where the covering paper had been gnawed away. This yellow board had again been utilized by several of the caterpillar babies, who preferred more highly col- ored homes, and the blue paper was riddled with holes THE CURIOUS BASKET-CARRIERS 2Q5 by the immense demand made upon it for building-ma- terial. Near by, on the mantel, was a pile of books, in- cluding one old leather-covered volume, from which a fragment of red blotting-paper protruded. Both the leather and the blotter had been largely utilized in the baskets, the soft quality of the red paper having made it very popular among the little architects, many of which occupied conspicuously gaudy apartments. It was from this blotting-paper that the patriotic speci- men above alluded to obtained the red material which surrounded his door -way the white and blue bands having been built within the box. Nor were these all the materials which the builders had laid under tribute. A green worsted mat, a red napkin, the black paper of a passe partout frame, had all furnished their share in the motley acrobatic pro- cession that moved about the apartment. A repetition of this singular show is within the reach of any one who cares to witness it, and there is no end to the experiments that may be tried as to building-ma- terials, for the industrious little builders will make use of anything within their reach in their haste to begin house-keeping. Almost the moment they crawl from the cocoon they begin to erect their houses ; and when we consider how little experience they must have had, their skill and dexterity are indeed surprising. Singu- larly enough, like true architects, the arch would seem to have especial attractions, as a foundation, but further than this their methods are their own. Professor C. V. Riley, our Government entomologist, has carefully de- scribed the process which follows, and I have taken the liberty of copying his little panorama, which illustrates the knack of the tiny builder and the growth of its case, 296 SHARP EYES for every one of these thousands of bag-worm babes have followed the same plans and specifications. The tiny inverted arch is first built. When this has reached nearly to the height of its body, the caterpillar grasps it with its feet and turns a somersault, thus bringing the arch uppermost. The builder then carefully turns beneath it, and upon regaining its feet proceeds to add to the structure on the lower edges until a complete ring is formed around its body, when, by adding tier on tier of chips, the bag is soon completed. My swarm above described, showed thousands of the houses in all these stages of progress. But where was my moth? I waited for it in vain. And no wonder; for upon dissecting the cocoons, I could find no chrysalis from which I could expect a moth. Many of the cocoons were entirely empty, and the others contained only a chrysalis shell filled with eggs and a peculiar fuzz. This will be found to be the contents of the cocoons which we may now gather from the trees. But there is a moth not such as we might select as the prize of our collection, it is true a small, black- bodied, clear- winged, buzzing, bumblebee affair, whose only ambition in life would seem to be to bump its head against everything in its reach. This is the male moth. It was years before I could ever find the female, partly because I had gathered the cocoons at the wrong season, and partly because my powers of ob- servation had not been sufficiently trained. Lest other youthful entomologists may become puzzled like myself over this very singular insect, I may mention that both sexes of the moth are to be found in the cocoons gath- ered in September. At this time the full-grown cater- pillars suspend their baskets, and are transformed into THE CURIOUS BASKET-CARRIERS chrysalides. The male chrysalis works its way out at the lower end of the cocoon, and its shell falls out after the escape of the moth. The female moth never leaves the cocoon she is hardly entitled to the name of moth, being both wingless and legless ; and after having de- posited several hundred eggs within her pupa case, few would recognize in the inconspicuous remnant of her- self which remains any likeness to an insect. Few of our common insects have been such a theme for discussion and controversy among naturalists as the bag- worm; and there is much of interest in the life of the insect which it is im- possible to touch upon in this brief paper. The basket-carrier ^ j^* never leaves its case. It carries its house about in its travels, enlarg- . ing and decorating it with sticks and leaves as its whim di- rects, and always keeping it safe- ly moored to the branches. A collection of the cases from different food trees makes a singular exhibition, for they are thatched with locust, hemlock, spruce, arbor-vitae, or long pine-needles, ac- cording to the plant on which each is found. In the South, we are told, these basket-carriers are looked upon with much superstition by the colored natives, the nat- ure of which is illustrated in the incident narrated by 298 SHARP EYES Dr. McCook of a darky laborer's refusal to burn a lot of the cocoons, with which his master's trees had been infested: "I can't do it, sah! I done got conscience agin it. Dem's what we call ' firewood billies,' an' dey is nuf- fin mo' nur less dan human critters what's a-bin pun- ished fer stealin' wood wen dey wuz alive an' in de body." HOUSE-CARRIERS UNDER WATER February 2jd AST week we made the acquaintance of those queer house-carriers of the trees, the bag-worms, with their thatched and ornamented cocoons now firmly swung among the winter twigs. But there is another house-builder that few of us ever see in its home the caddis. He lives on the pebbly bottom of the stream or the shallows of the pond. Even as we stood upon the black ice at the edge of the dam, gathering our bag-worms last week, we need only have lain down upon the ice and looked be- neath to have seen our caddis crawling upon the bot- tom, leisurely lugging its stone cottage or log -cabin around with him. But who would ever think of going "bug-hunting" in winter? This stream, locked fast and muffled in ice, or bubbling beneath the snow-drift, its overhanging icy border fringe crowding close upon the ripples in the intense cold, would hardly invite the en- tomologist as a likely field for specimens. The city nat- uralist who happens to keep an aquarium knows with what difficulty he can keep it stocked in the winter months if he would depend alone upon the dealers in aquarium supplies. A few lizards, polliwogs, and gold- 300 SHARP EYES fish are almost their only stock in trade at this season, with perhaps a fine show of green moss in bunches, picked in the woods, which "looks pretty" under water. " But I want some plants, snails, water-beetles, and craw- fish," I said to such a dealer recently. " Oh, you can't get anything of that kind now, you know," he replied. "They're all dead or froze up. We'll have plenty of 'em in the spring." Nevertheless, the film of ice over the pond or stream need be no barrier to the winter naturalist. The mud at the borders of the bank holds a lively har- vest, and does not seem to care a snap for the seasons. One good scoop with a strong net will sometimes bring up a veritable summer haul of specimens fish, frogs, water-beetles, lizards, water-boatmen, dragon larvae, and occasionally a dainty case of the caddis, resembling one of the group which I have here picked from HOUSE-CARRIERS UNDER WATER 301 yonder pool and laid upon the snow. I have a number of these cases before me as I write, and they are really beautiful works of insect art. As a rule, each species of caddis is true to some particular whim in building or in the choice of materials for its domicile. Here are two individuals that seem to have taken a hint from the bag-worm, and think there is nothing to compare with sticks and leaves. Their cases are about an inch and a half long. Another has carefully selected tubular pieces of floating grass stems or straws, enlarging the tube as its growth requires by slitting up the side and fitting in a strip of new material ; afterwards, perhaps, decorating the exterior with a few stray chips or pebbles. But the most interesting of all are the dwellings of the stone-builders, actual mosaic tubes of carefully- selected pebbles, all joined edge to edge, and neatly closed at the rear opening by a nicely- fitted pebble of larger size. And one there is, the glassy abode of the smaller caddis, a perfect marvel of mosaic art. A small, slightly curved tube about three-quarters of an inch in length (shown directly above the stick case in 302 SHARP EYES the illustration), the crystal palace of the most exquisite and gifted artist among all the caddis fraternity. The tube is composed of minute, glassy, flat pebbles, joined V edge to edge with the most skilful exactness, and is often so transparent that when wet the form of the dweller may be seen through its wall. Here may the human worker in stained-glass find his matchless model. An artist, too, that accomplishes his task without resort to metal frame or solder, the edges of his glass being joined by some insoluble cement of which he holds the secret. The art of the bag-worm appears almost commonplace HOUSE-CARRIERS UNDER WATER 303 by the side of this rare product. With its ready re- serve of silk it is an easy matter for the bag-worm to weave a mere pouch, while the further attachment of the sticks and leaves is mere pastime; but what shall we say of the intelligence that gleans among the pebbles beneath the water, constructing a mosaic tube about its body, even in the current of the stream ? This is what the caddis larva does. As in the bag- worm, this case of the caddis serves as a protection against its enemies ; and while the basket -carriers in the trees are keeping an eye out for the birds, dodging into their case and literally "pulling the hole in after them," or drawing it close against a twig, on the approach of the enemy, the caddis is continually on the alert for hungry prowl- ing fish that know a tidbit when they see it. The number of empty shells to be found in every caddis pool would seem to show that the fish know all about caddis. I was once greatly amused at the sly arts of a tiny rockfish in my aquarium that soon left nothing but empty shells to show for my caddis and my snails. His plan of operation was to steal up from behind as the unsuspecting victim was regaling itself in the water, and with a sudden dash grasp the head of his prey, when, after a vigorous shake and determined grip, the shell was released, and the victorious fish retired to its corner among the pondweed to think which of the two yonder snail or caddis it would rather have for supper. I have said that few of us ever see the caddis in its home. And yet he is an old acquaintance with most of us. There are few summer evenings when he does not make himself perfectly at home around our "evening lamp " in the country, that brown, circling, moth-like in- sect, with steep -sloping wings, and such a powerfully 304 SHARP EYES strong odor, being in truth the perfected product of these tube-cases beneath the water. A collection of caddis cases makes a very interesting exhibit. I have shown a group of six foreign species, but it is possible that any one of them may yet reward our search in our native pools. I have found three specimens that closely resemble some of them. THE WHIRLIGIG WATER-BEETLE March sd IBERNATION is the law among the in- sects which survive the winter; but, there is a notable exception, they are not all asleep. Indeed, if I were asked to name the sprightliest bit of life to be found in all the winter landscape, I think my choice would have to be, not the mouse, nor chickadee, nor even the hare, but a little dweller in the pond or brook, one of the lively brood that we brought up in our net last week as we dredged in the mud for our aquarium the little black whirligig-beetle known as the Gyrinns. Had we approached the bank more cautiously, we need only have skimmed the surface of the water to have captured a whole family of them. It is apparently summer all the year round to the Gyrinus. They take little account of the changes in the calendar, and I fancy their idea of the seasons must be summed up simply as "green summer" and "white summer." The caterpillars and thaw butterflies, grass- hoppers, and other insects which we find in the freez- ing winter days are numb and stiff with the cold, but there is no numbness nor stiffness known to these little black bodies that whirl in their maze of ripples in many an opening in the ice along the edge of the pond. V. Seen thus in early March, the observer is apt to look upon them as eager heralds of spring, perhaps the first signs of returning life in animated nature. I have somewhere read of the early appearance of the Gyrinus being in- stanced as a sign of an advanced spring, but the infer- ence is gratuitous. We may look for him almost any moderate winter's day ; certainly, at least, any genial day that could tempt us out-of-doors has seen him there before us. Their whirling swarms have surprised many a winter walker even Thoreau, who has much to say of them. In his notes of January 24, 1858, he writes: "At Nut Meadow Brook the small- sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. I see forty or fifty circling together THE WHIRLIGIG WATER-BEETLE 307 in the smooth and sunny bays all along the brook. This is something new to me. They seem to be more ready than usual to dive to the bottom when disturbed. At night, of course, they dive to the bottom and bury themselves, and if in the morning they perceive no cur- tain of ice drawn over their sky, and the pleasant weath- er continues, they gladly rise again and resume their gyrations. I think I never noticed them more numer- ous. What a funny way. they have of going to bed! They do not take a light and go up-stairs ; they go be- low. Suddenly it is heels up and heads down, and they go to their muddy bed, and let the unresting stream flow over them in their dreams. " Sometimes they seem to have a little difficulty in making the plunge. Maybe they are too dry to slip under. Suppose you were to trace the course of one for a day, what kind of a figure would it make ? I see one chasing a mote, and the wave the creature makes always causes the mote to float away from it. I would like to know what it is they communicate to one an- other ; they, who appear to value each other's society so much. How many water-bugs make a quorum? Where did they get their backs polished so ?" It is true, as Thoreau says, that they do not take a candle and go up-stairs to bed as some bigger folks do ; but if he supposed that they went to bed without a light, he little knew the bug he describes, for they carry a brilliant lantern that goes gleaming like a silver streak down into the depths ; for when those little " heels go up " a bubble of air is caught beneath the tips of the black wing-covers, and a diamond of pure sunlight ac- companies their course down among the weeds until they once more ascend to the surface. Indeed, this bubble gives them a buoy- ancy which only their con- tinued downward efforts can overcome. It is only by cling- ing with their long front legs to the submerged plants that they are able to remain be- ^^^^_,. neath the surface. No amount of soaking ever seems to wet * their polished armor. When they emerge to take up their circling dance, they are apparently as dry as the labelled specimen in the cabinet. There is, of course, a certain limit of temperature at which the whirligig beetle draws the line in its winter gambols, but I have never tested it with a thermometer. I know that I have seen them when my ears were tingling, and have paused while skating to study their rapid circling, when the black water at the edge of the ice was all atan- gle with their ripples. At such a time, if we steal close upon them, it is amusing to note the sudden "heels up and heads down" with which the swarm dives to the depths below. Nor can you surprise them so quickly that they will forget their bubbles, even though they spatter the water quite briskly and make an audible clicking of their wings in their haste to be off. THE WHIRLIGIG WATER-BEETLE 309 These insects are not " bugs," as Thoreau inadver- tently implies, but true beetles, and, moreover, beetles endowed with resources far above the average of their kind. Most beetles are content with existence in one element, but the Gyrinus is equally at home in air or water as the whim takes him. His hard polished back conceals two gauzy wings which can be spread in a twinkling, giving him all the agility of a fly upon the wing, and which occasionally bring him in among the buzzing throng around " our evening lamp," while his peculiar equipment in the paddle-shaped feet of the two nether pairs of legs gives him the lead in the race among all the insect swimmers under the water. This remarkable adaptability to a dual mode of existence is further strikingly emphasized in the peculiar endow- ment of vision. The whirligig-beetle has two distinct sets of eyes; one large pair of goggles beneath its head, with which it commands a continual view of its lacustrine haunts while floating or circling on the sur- face of the water ; and another pair on the lookout above how keenly alert we all know, who have seen the whirling swarm dive with their bubbles at our cau- tious approach. Indeed, were I to search my insect cabinet for the most appropriate emblem with which to close my pages, I could scarce find a happier exponent of "Sharp Eyes" all around the calendar than in our wide-awake, peren- nial little Gyrinus. ABBOTT, C. C., quoted. Claytonias, 23. Acorn, germinating, 29. Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatorid), hook- ed seeds of, 154. Ailantus moth (Samia Cynthia) cocoon, 256. Alder, leaf-rolling beetle of, 104-106. Ampelopsis. See Virginia-creeper. Anemone {A. nernorosd), wind-flower, 21. Angle-wing butterflies, 271. Animals in motion, photographs of, 251. Antiopa butterfly. See Butterfly. Ants, 119. Aphides, or plant-lice, 119. Aphis-galls, 60. Aphis-lion (Hemorobida), 119. Apples, May, of Azalea viscosa and Po- dophyllum peltatum, 57 ; false, of An- dromeda, 60 ; various so-called apples cedar, custard, ground, love, oak, pine, prairie, of Sodom, 57. Apple-tree moth, egg-band of, 258. April and April birds, 38. Aquarium supplies, 299. Arbutus, trailing (Epigea repens), 22. Ash, seeds of, 216, 284. Asters, seeds of, 173 ; flowers of, at night, 126; various, 227. Audubon, on the "drum" of the grouse, 42. Autumn: Calendar, 177-243; flowers of, 202 ; piping toads, frogs, and sala- manders ; bird-notes, 192. Autumnal streaked warbler, 213. Azalea (A. viscosa), 57. BACHELOR'S-BUTTONS, or Blue-bottles (Centaurea), 126. " Bagpipe " of the toad, 54. Bag-worm. See Basket-carriers. Balsams, garden, leaves at night, 126. See Jewel-weed. Baltimore oriole {Icterus Baltimore}, 224. Basella flower, pollen of, 115. Basket -carrying caterpillars (Psyche), 292-298; Southern superstition con- nected with, 298. Basswood. See Linden. Bean, various leaves of ,at night, 126; bean family, clinging seeds of, 153 ; wild- bean, underground pods of, 165167. Bed straw. Cleavers, 154. Bee bread, pollen ingredients of ; queer fruits from the bee's basket, 112-116. Beech-nuts, sprouting of, 29. Bee, honey ; abroad in March, 1-3, 19 ; its dual motives in visiting flowers, 112; entrapped by milk-weed blossom, 116; nest of solitary, 74 ; leaf-cutting, 119. Beeswax, 112. Beetles : Bombardier (Brachinus fu- mans),jj; Brazilian, 99; clytus, music of, 142; crusader, 118; eye-spotted spring (Elater oculatus), vi ; fiddling, 140 ; girdler (Oncideres cingulatus), 260 ; golden cassida (Cassida auri- 3 I2 chakea), 99; "green dandy" of the dog-bane (Eumolpus auratus), 102, 119 ; identification of beetles, 79 ; lady- birds (Coccinella), 119; leaf -rolling, weevils of hazel and alder (Attelabus), 104106 ; rove (Staphylinus), 77 ; use- ful tail of, 78, 119 ; Saperda, music of, 142, 143 ; other musical species, 33, 138-142; scavenger, 78; snapping {Elater), vi, 119; stag (Lucanus), iv, 239 ; Thoreau on, 306 ; water (Gyri- nus), 305 ; remarkable double vision of, 309 ; " going to bed " with a bub- ble, 307. "Beggar-lice." See Hound'stongue. *' Beggar-ticks" (.Desmodium), 150-155, 170, 284 ; night attitude of leaves, 125 ; flowers and seeds of, 153. Benzoin. See Spice-bush. Bidens, 150-154. Bind-weed (Calystegea sepiuni), gold bee- tle of, 100. Birch, white, bark in nest, 220 ; sugary sap of, enticing bees, 2 ; curious seed catkins of, 286-288 ; seed-scales on snow, 285288 ; birch and ash associ- ated, 217; leaf and Indian arrow-head, 217; broom gall of, 259. Bird entrapped by a burdock, 197. Birds : Of April, 38 ; in winter, food of, 280-284; of November, 212. Bird's-nests, materials of, 219225; vireo, 220 ; cherry-pits, buckwheat shells in, 225; hazel-nuts in, 223; deserted, used as winter resorts, 230. Bird -songs, imitative of insect songs, 128-131 ; in words, 40. Bitterweed. See Ragweed, Small. Black and yellow warbler, 213. Blackbird : Crackles, 41 ; redwinged, song of, 40. Black snake as a nest hunter, 230. Black swallow-tail butterfly. See But- terfly. Bloodroot (Sangtiinaria Canadensis), 21. Bluebird, 39 ; song of, 40 ; in autumn, 212. Blue - bottles (Centaurea cyanus), trans- formation of flowers at night, 126. Blue lettuce (Mulgedium), seed of, 173. Blue mud-wasp (Pelopceus), 156. Blue swallow-tail. See Butterfly. Bobolinks, migration of, 212. Bombardier- beetle (Brachinus), 73. Botany : Teachers of, among butter- flies, 80-86 ; lesson from a squirrel, 17; practical, 93, 151; in a cobweb, 171. Bower-building caterpillar, 168. Brewer, the ornithologist, on the " drum" of the grouse, 42. Bryant, W. C., quoted. Hepatica, 22; "painted-cup," 61, 62; drum of the " partridge," 42 ; fringed gentian, 227; yellow violet, 20, 21; trailing arbutus, 22 ; birch leaves, 218. Buckwheat shells in bird's-nest, 225. Buds, opening, 48 ; various tints of, in landscape ; leaf arrangement in ; lin- den and tulip-tree, 49 ; hickory, horse- chestnut, 50 ; winter, of dogwood, 49, 50. Bumblebee, a mock, 179. Bunting, white, 213 ; nest materials of, 224. Burdock (Lappa major), dew on leaf, 122; seed of, 155; a trap for birds, 197. Burr-grass (Cenchrus], 155, 274. Burroughs, John, quoted. " April," 38 ; Robin, 39 ; drum of the grouse, 42 ; fringed gentian, 227; peeping frogs, 6 ; early spring flowers, 22, 23 ; ragweed, 280; weeds, 150; whistling salaman- der, 194. Burrs, 120, 150-155, 197. Bush clover (Lespedeza), night attitude of leaves, 125. Buttercup, seed of, 284. INDEX 313 Butterflies: Antiopa (Vanessa Anti- opa), 34, 270 ; rustling wing of, 32 ; Hibernation of, 270 ; wing - music of, 30-33, 141; caterpillars of, 33; Ar- chippus (Danais), 84 ; black swallow- tail (Asterias), 80 ; caterpillar and chrysalis of, 82; blue swallow-tail ( Troilus), curious-eyed caterpillar of, 132-134 ; comma, 34, 84, 271 ; Hunt- er's, petal bower of, 168 ; red admiral (Pyrameis Atalan(a), 34, 270; semi- colon (Grapta interrogationis), 34, 84, 271; yellow (Philodice), 84 ; ichneu- mon parasites of, 200; Butterflies as botany teachers, 80-86; tipsy, 271; winter, 34, 184, 270; winter pets, 273. Butterfly-net as a companion to a walk, 117. Button-wood, leaf socket of, 45. CABBAGE, dew on leaf of, 122. Caddis, larva of, 299-304; fine mosaic tenement of, 301 ; its water-proof ce- ment, 302 ; enemies of, 303; caddis-fly, 303 ; foreign specimens, 304. Calico-bush. See Mountain-laurel. Calla (Calla Ethiopica), a relative of skunk-cabbage, 3. Camberwell beauty. See Butterfly (Anti- opa). Cape May warbler. See Warblers. Cardinal - flower (Lobelia cardittalis), brilliancy of, 62. Carnivorous fly, 162, 179-182. Carrot (Daucus carota), seed of wild, 284. Cassia. See Partridge-pea. Catchfly (Silene nutans) flowers at night, 126. Caterpillars: Apple-tree web or tent, 258 ; Vanessa Antiopa, 33 ; skins of, in bird's-nest, 221 ; basket-carrying (Psvche ep/ieniera-formis), 292 298 ; of black swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio Asterias), 82; of blue swallow-tail (Papilio 7'roi/us), 132; bower-build- ers, 168, 169 ; burrowing, 97 ; fungus growing upon a, 191 ; ichneumon par- asites of, 67-72, 199; oak (Dryo- campa), 97 ; puss-moth, with whip- lashes, 144; span-worm, 118. Cat - tail ( Typha lati folia), seed - down of, 173- Cecropia (Platysamia), cocoon of, 253; moth, 256; parasites of, 71. Cedar-apple, 57. Centaury, 226. Champignon. See Fairy-ring Fungus. Chemical experiment with scouring-rush, ill. Cherry-pits in a bird's-nest, 225. Chestnut-burr, fungus growing upon, 188. Chickadee and willow-cone gall, 208. Chickaree, 276. Chickweed, 226 ; blossoms under snow, 210, 227. Chimney swift, nest materials of, 224. Chipping-sparrow, nest materials of, 224 ; nest of, as a winter nursery, 231. Chrysalis (Dryocampa) emerging from ground, 96 ; of Antiopa butterfly, 33 ; of blue swallow-tail, 134; of Hunter's butterfly, 169; of milk-weed butterfly (Archippus),&^\ fungus growing upon, 190. Cicada, or harvest-fly (" locust "), drum of, 33, 138 ; cicada and " locust" dis- tinguished, 139. Cichory (Cichoriunt), seed of, 284; pollen of, 115. Claytonia. See Spring Beauty. Cleavers (Galium), clinging seeds of, 154. Clematis (C. Virginiana), seed of, 172. Clotbur seeds, 155. Clover ( Tri folium), various niglit atti- tudes of leaves, 125, 126; sprouting seeds of, 29. Club mosses (l.ycopodiunt), explosive spores of, 146-149. Cobweb, botany lesson from, 171 ; in dew, 124 ; in birds'-nests, 221. Cockle-seeds, 155. Cocoons, Platysamia Cecropia and Pro- metheus, 253 ; winter harvest of, Ce- cropia, Polyphemus and Prometheus, parasitic broods from, 67-72 ; ailantus (Cynthia), 256; of bag-worm, 292; of tussock-moth in bird's-nest, 221 ; cocoon clusters on grass-stems, 199. Colt's-foot. See Wild-ginger. Comma butterfly. See Butterfly. Composite, winged seeds of, 171 ; cling- ing barbed seeds of, 153. Cone-gall of willow, 207. Cones, 207 ; pine (see Pine-cones), spu- rious, 207. Convolvulus. See Morning - glory and Bind-weed. Coon-hair in bird's-nest, 224. Coral-winged locust ((Edipoda corallind), 34- Corn in a bird's-nest, 232, Cotyledons in seed';, design of, 29. Cow-bird, 230. Cranesbill (Geranittin maculatum), flow- ers at night, 126. Creeping mallow (Malva rotundi folia), 226. Cricket, white tree ((Ecanthus niveus), 119. Crow in autumn, 212. Cuckoo, yellow-billed, nest material of, 224. Cucumber, star {Sicyos angulatus), pol- len of, 115. Custard-apple. See Papaw. DAISIES, 226. Dandelion, 38, 202, 226 ; in autumn and winter, 227 ; feathered seed-balls of, 170; seed, 171 ; seeds in bird's-nest, 221; dwarf (Krigia), beautiful seed of, 172. Darwin, allusion to, 282. Deer-hair in bird's-nest, 224. Deer-mouse (Hesperomys leucopus), nest of, 248. Desmodium, various species, flowers, and clinging seeds of, 153. " Devil's coach-horse," 77. Dew, singular freaks of, on various plants, 122, 124. Dicentra (Cucullarid), 21. Dog-bane (Apocynum androsccrnifoli- ttm) and milk-weed, resemblance be- tween, 85 ; brilliant beetle of, 102, 119. Dog-wood, flowering (Cornus floridd), 49 ; expansion of bud to bloom, 50 ; the " corn signal," 39. Dog - wood, poison. See Sumach (A*. venenata.) Draba. See Whitlow-grass. Dutchman's -breeches (Dicentra cucul- larid), 21. EGGS of apple-tree moth, 258. Elder, poison. See Sumach (R. venenata.) Elm, seed of, 284. Emerson, R. W., quoted. April's bird, 39 ; weeds, 280 ; Nature study, 246. Enchanter's nightshade (Circtza luteti- and), pollen of, 114; clinging seeds of, 154- English plantain. See Plantain. Equisetum, 107-111. See Scouring- rush. Evening primrose (CEnothera Inennis'), winter leaf rosettes of, 240, 241 ; pollen of, 114; opening of; daylight moth tenant of, 135. Everlasting, dwarf (Antennaria planta- gini folia), 21, 22 ; Gnaphalium, cater- pillar bower of, 168. Eye, the seeing, 176. "FAIRY-RING" mushroom, 177; snow circles, 269. INDEX 315 False winter-green. See Polygala. Fennel-worm. See Butterfly (Asterias). Field - mouse, tracks of, in snow, 248 ; wintering in a bird's-nest, 232. Finch, purple, nest materials of, 224. Fire - weed {Epilobium angusti folium), winter rosettes of, 241. Fire - works from club - mosses in the woods, 149. Fish-crow as a nest-hunter, 230. Flagg, Wilson, quoted. "Drum" of grouse, 42 ; vireo, 221. Flicker, or golden-winged woodpecker, 40. Flowering dog-wood. See Dog-wood. Flowering winter - green, or Fringed polygala, 63. Flowerless plants (Acrogens), type of, 107. Flowers, earliest, 1-3, 19-24; under- ground, of polygala, 63, 64, and wild- bean, 165; of autumn, 202; flowers which are not flowers painted-cup, 62; dog- wood, 50; flowers without pet- als never opening (Cleistogamic), 205; various, at night, 126-128. See Wild Flowers. Fly, a talking, 162-164 ; blue-bottle, in bird's-nest, 221 ; carnivorous (Asilus), 164-179; mimic bumblebee (Laph- ria), 179-182 ; various, in sweep-net, 119. Fly -catcher, great -crested, snake -skin nest of, 224. Flying seeds, 170-174. Fox-hair in bird's-nest, 224. Fox-sparrow (Passerella iliacd), 213. Fragrant suma.ch(/?Ausaromati<:a), 90,94. Fries, the fungologist, on puff-ball, 177, 187. Fringed gentian (G. Crinita), flowers at night, 126; Bryant's allusion to, 227. Fringed polygala (P. pauci folia), 63. Frog music, 52, 53 ; European, 6 ; South- ern, 55. Frogs, clucking, 52; Savannah cricket (Acris crepitans), 8, 10; peeping (ffy- lodes Pickeringi),(>-\z; song of, 8; in autumn, 9, 194 ; tree, 9; wood, 52, 194; toy decoy ("locust") for mimicry of, 52 ; mimicry of song, 9, 52, 194. Frost-weed (ffelianthemum), 210. Fruit, an underground, 165-167. Fungus : Cedar-apple, 57 ; fairy ring, 177; growing on insects, 190, 191 ; va- rious species of, 187-191; myriad spores of, 187 ; method of vegetation, 177. GALINSOGA, beautiful seed of, 172. Galls: Aphis, 60 ; cone, of willow, 207; rose, of willow, 209; of golden-rod, 257; oak-apple, 57 ; various, 208, 257; witch - brooms, 259 (see also May- apple, 58; and false May-apple, 60.) Garlic flower, pollen of, 115. Gentian, fringed (Gentiana crinita), 126, 227 ; closed (G. Andrewsii), 228. Geranium, wild, or Cranesbill, 126. Gerarde and his "rose-willow," 209. Germination : Maple, 4, 5, 25-29 ; oak, clover, and beech, 25-29. Ginger, wild (Asarum Canadensis), 21. Ginseng, dwarf (Aralia trifolid), 65. Girdler- beetle (Oncideres), 260. Gnat-catcher, blue-gray, nest materials of, 224. Gnats in sweep-net, 119. Golden-beetle ( Cassida auric halcea), 99. Golden-crested thrush. See Oven-bird. Golden-crested wren, nest materials of, 224. Golden-rod (Solidago), 202, 226 ; bulb- ous, gall of, 257 ; musical beetles of, 142 ; seeds of, 1 73. Goose-grass. See Cleavers. Gossamers and dew, 124. Crackles, 41. Grass, blades of, marking on snow, 268. Grasshopper : Meadow (Orchtlimum vulgare), song of , 129, 1 38 ; a bird-mimic of song, 128-131 ; cone-head ( Conoceph- alus ensiger), song of, 138; Grasshop- per music. 33; "Grasshopper," ci- cada, and " locust " distinguished, 139; Grasshoppers captured in sweep-net, 118; parasites of, 119. Grasshopper - lark (Alauda. trivia/is), 128. Grass-seed, extraordinary, 155. Gray, Dr. Asa, quoted. " May-apples," 59; ragweed,44; germinating seeds, 2 7. Great-crested fly catcher, snake-skin nest of, 223. Green dandy Beetle (Eumolpus aumtus), 108, 119. Ground-apples, 57. Ground-nut (Aralia tri folia), 65 ; Apios tuberosa, night attitude of leaves, 126. Ground-pine. See Club-moss. Groundsel shrub (Baccharis halmifolia), beautiful seed-tuft of, 174. Grouse, ruffed, "drum" of, 41; theo- ries of the mysterious sound from vari- ous authorities, 42; snow-shoes of ,265; snow burrows of, 267. HAIR-BIRD. See Chipping-sparrow. Hare, footprints of, in snow, 250. Harvest-fly, or Cicada, 33, 138. Hay-fever and ragweed pollen, 280. Hazel, leaf-roller of (Attelabus}, 104; witch, see Witch-hazel. Hazel-nuts in a bird's-nest, 233. Hedgehog -grass (Cenchrus), burr -seed of, 155, 284. Hepatica. See Liverwort. Hibernation among insects, 305. Hickory, opening buds of, 50 ; beetle- pruner of, 260. " Highhole " woodpecker. See Flicker. Hog . peanut (Amphicarftea), leaves of, at night, 126 ; underground flowers and pods of, 165-167. Hogweed. See Ragweed, Small. Holmes, O. W., quoted, xxii. Honeysuckle, wild (Azalea viscosa), 58. Hood, Thomas, quoted, 219. Hornet's-nest fragments in bird's-nest, 221. Horse-chestnut : Buds of, 48, 50 ; re- markable leaf-scar of, 263. Horse-hair in birds'-nests, 224. Horse-tail (Equisetum), beautiful dew decoration of, 122. See also Scouring- rush. Hound'stongue (Cynoglossum Morisoni) > "beggar-lice," 154. Human inventions and their prehistoric models, 239. Humblebee, " honey-bags and red hips'* of, 112. Humming-bird, nest materials of, 224. Hylodes. See Frogs, Peeping. ICE conservatory, 228. Ichneumon flies : A remarkable wood- boring (Thalessa lunator), 234 239; construction and object of drill ; the victim of the ichneumon, 238 ; "wasps" from caterpillar cocoons, 68 72, 199. Indian paddle and ash seed, 216. Indian turnip (Psoralea esculenta), 57. Insects : Entrapped by milk-weed blos- som, 116; for aquarium, 300 ; gall-pro- ducing, 57, 60, 257259 ; in the grass, 77, 117; harvest of sweep-net, 117 120; hibernation of, 305 ; music of, 30, 33, 34. J 38; imitated by birds, 128- 131 of winter, 34, 234, 270, 289, 292, 299, 305; under stones, 74; wood-bor- ers, 34, 234239 ; Insect magicians, 208,257; parasites on, 67-72, 119,145- 199. See also Beetles, Butterflies, Cat- erpillars, Chrysalis, Cocoons, Moths. Iron-weed (Veronia), seeds of, 173. Ivy, ' 'five-leaved. " See Virginia-creeper. INDEX 317 Ivy, poison, or " three -leaved.' Sumach (A', toxicodendrori). See JAYS 'as nest -hunters, 230. Jewel-weed (Itnpatiens), night attitude and beautiful dewy revelation of, 124. June-berry or Shad-blow (Amelanchier Canadensis), 49. KENTUCKY warbler, nest material of, 224. Kinglet, ruby-crowned (Regulus calen- dula), 215 Kirby, the naturalist, quoted, 128 LACE in bird's-nest, 222. Lace-wing fly (Ckrysopa Oculatd), 118. Lady-birds (Coccinella), 119. Lark, meadow, 40. Laurel (fCalmia latifolid), jumping sta- mens and pollen of, 114. Leaf-cutting bee, 119. Leaf - hoppers (Helochava) caught in sweep-net, 1 18. Leaf-roller of the hazel and the alder, 104-106 ; the process described, 105. Leaf-rosettes under snow, 240-243. Leaves masquerading as flowers, 50-62; night attitudes of, 123-127. Leguminous plants classified by butter- fly, 84. Lettuce, wild. See Wild Lettuce. Linden ( Tilia Americana), opening buds of, 49- Liverwort (Hepatica triloba), 22-24, 227; Bryant on, 22, 23 ; under snow, 24. Lizard. See Salamander. Locust and grasshopper, 34 ; the right and wrong of "locust," 139; coral- winged ((Edipoda corallina), 34, 139 ; green, 35 ; " fiddling " of, 33, 139 (see Cicada); " Locust," toy, 52. Locust (Robinia Pseudacacia), night at- titudes of leaves, 96. Love-apples. 57. Lowell, J. R., quoted, on opening buds, 48 ; dandelion, 38, 227 ; spring black- birds, 41. Lupines, various night attitudes of leaves, 126 Lycopodium, club-moss spores, inflam- mable nature of, 146-149. McCooK, A. G., quoted, 298. Magnifying-glass, pocket, 117. Mallow, creeping (Malva rotundifolia), 226. Mandrake (Podophyllum peltatum), 58, 59- Maple: Buds of, 48; caterpillars of, 98; silver, blossoms of, 22 ; sugar, and bees, 2 ; maple-seed revels, 4; sprout- ing samaras, 5 ; masquerading seeds, 25-28 Marigold, night aspect of flowers, 126. Mason-wasps. See Wasp, Mud-dauber, and Vase-maker. May-apples, 57; of Azalea viscosa, 58; of Podophylluui peltatum, 58, 59 ; Ur. Gray's allusion 10,59; ^ se May-ap- ples, 58. May-flower. See Trailing Arbutus. May-weed (Afaruta), seed of, 284. Meadow-lark, 40. Meadow-lily, pollen of, 114. Melilot clover, night aspect of leaves, 126. Melon flower, explosive pollen of, 115. Microscope, pocket, 117; interesting specimens for; Equisetum spores, loS ; Equisetum skeleton, in; pollen, 114. Midnight, plants by, 121-127. Milk-weed (Asclepias cornuti) : Seed of, 172, 284; blossom of. entrapping in- sects, 116; pompons made from seeds, 174 ; stalk fibres used in birds'-nests, 220; family, classified by butterfly. 85; butterfly, see Butterfly (ArcJiippus). Mocking-thrush. See Thrush. Morning-glory, gold beetles on, lor. Mosses, club. See Club Mosses. Moth, feather -winged, 119; Bull's-eye (Saturm'a /