FIELD, FOREST AND FARM
THINGS INTERESTING TO YOUNG NATURE-LOVERS,
INCLUDING SOME MATTERS OF MOMENT TO GARDENERS
AND FRUIT-GROWERS
BY
JEAN-HENRI FABRE
Author of “The Story-Book of Science,” “Our
Humble Helpers,” “Social Life in
the Insect World,” etc.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
FLORENCE CONSTABLE BICKNELL
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1919
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Staff of Life 3
II The History of Tobacco 11
III The Origin of Fertile Soil 16
IV Different Kinds of Soil 21
V Different Kinds of Soil (Continued) 25
VI Potash and Phosphorus 30
VII Phosphates and Nitrogen 35
VIII Vegetation and the Atmosphere 42
IX Lime 47
X Lime in Agriculture 52
XI Plaster of Paris 56
XII Plaster of Paris in Agriculture 60
XIII Natural Fertilizers—Guano 65
XIV The Stalk of the Plant 70
XV The Root 74
XVI Buds 80
XVII Adventitious Buds 84
XVIII Bulbs and Bulblets 89
XIX Tubers—Starch 93
XX Uses of Starch 98
XXI History of the Potato 102
XXII Ascending Sap 107
XXIII Descending Sap 112
XXIV Tree-Pruning 116
XXV Pinching—Bud-Nipping 120
XXVI Making Fruit Trees Bear 124
XXVII The Seed 129
XXVIII The Seed’s Food-Supply 134
XXIX Germination 138
XXX The Blossom 144
XXXI Pollen 150
XXXII The Grain of Wheat 155
XXXIII Cultivated Plants 159
XXXIV Different Ways of Propagating 165
XXXV Layering 170
XXXVI Slipping 178
XXXVII Grafting 184
XXXVIII Grafting (Continued) 190
XXXIX Grafting (Concluded) 197
XL Rotation of Crops 202
XLI Rotation of Crops (Continued) 208
XLII Land-Drainage 214
XLIII Paring and Burning 219
XLIV Wine-Making 223
XLV The Stag-Beetle 228
XLVI Sheath-Winged Insects 235
XLVII The June-Bug 242
XLVIII Caterpillars and Butterflies 249
XLIX Ants 256
L The Ant-Lion 264
LI Venomous Animals 271
LII The Phylloxera 279
LIII The Phylloxera (Continued) 288
LIV Nocturnal Birds of Prey 295
LV The Smaller Birds 300
LVI Birds’ Nests 305
LVII Migration of Birds 317
LVIII Carrier-Pigeons 322
LIX Some Prehistoric Animals 328
LX The Origin of Coal 336
LXI The Farmer’s Helpers 342
LXII The Farmer’s Helpers (Continued) 348
FIELD, FOREST AND FARM
CHAPTER I
THE STAFF OF LIFE
With his nephews as willing companions and eager listeners, Uncle Paul
continued his walks and talks in the pleasant summer afternoons.
“Bread is made of flour,” he began, “and flour is wheat reduced to
powder under the millstone. What an interesting mechanism that is, the
flour-mill, driven by water, by the wind, sometimes by steam! What
wearisome effort, what waste of time, if we had not this invention and
were forced to do its work of grinding by sheer strength of arm!
“I must tell you that in ancient times, for want of knowing how to
grind wheat, people had to content themselves with crushing it between
two stones after parching it a little over the fire. The coarse meal
thus obtained was cooked in water to a sort of porridge and eaten with
no further preparation. Bread was unknown.
“Later the plan was hit upon of kneading the meal with water and of
cooking the dough between two hot stones. Thus was obtained a crude
sort of biscuit, about as thick as your finger, stodgy and hard, and
mixed with charcoal and ashes. It was preferable to the porridge, the
insipid paste, of the earlier time, but far inferior to the poorest
bread of to-day. To make a long story short, by trial after trial
success was at last attained in the making of bread like ours. It
became necessary then, without possessing anything to compare with our
mills, to grind wheat in large quantities.
“Flour was obtained by triturating the wheat in a hollowed stone with a
pestle. This latter was sometimes light enough to be operated directly
by hand; sometimes, to produce quicker results, it was so large and
heavy that it had to be turned in its stone mortar with the help of a
long bar. Such was the first mill. With appliances of this sort I leave
you to imagine how long a time was required for the production of a
single handful of flour. For bread enough to feed one person at one
meal, wretched slaves were kept toiling from morning till night and
from night till morning in turning the pestle.”
“What cruel masters they must have had!” exclaimed Emile.
“Yes, the slaves were harnessed to the bar like beasts of burden; and
when, weakened with fatigue, they did not go fast enough, a rawhide was
applied to their bare shoulders. These unfortunate millers were poor
wretches taken in war and afterward sold in the market with the same
indifference with which a drover sells his cattle. Such, then, were the
hardships that led the way to the modern mill which to-day, with a few
turns of its water-wheel, and to the cheerful accompaniment of its
tick-tack, can make flour enough for a whole family.
“But let us leave the mill and turn our attention to the following
interesting experiment. Take a handful of flour and with a little water
make it into dough. This done, knead the dough with your fingers over a
large plate while an assistant moistens it continually with water from
a pitcher. Keep the dough well in hand and continue kneading it,
flattening it out and gathering it together again, turning it over and
over under the fine stream of water poured from above.
“Examine carefully the water that passes over the dough and washes it.
It falls into the plate as white as milk, showing that it carries with
it something from the flour. This something will finally settle at the
bottom of the liquid, and we shall find it to be a substance not unlike
the starch used for starching linen. In fact, it is starch, or fecula,
as the chemists call it—neither more nor less. The starch used in the
laundry is obtained in considerable quantities by similar means: dough
is washed and the whitened water, left undisturbed, deposits a layer of
starch which has only to be gathered together and dried. [1]
“So much, then, is made clear: flour contains starch, but it contains
something else also. There is a limit beyond which the washed dough
yields no more starch; it is useless to knead it, the water falls
colorless into the plate. What remains in one’s hands after this
prolonged washing is a soft, gluey substance, having something of the
elastic quality of rubber. Grayish in color, it has a rather pronounced
odor. When dried in the sun, it becomes hard and translucent like horn.
It is called gluten from its gluelike character, its viscosity.
“Now this substance, so unattractive in appearance, all soft and sticky
and getting clogged between the fingers—this gluten, in short—do you
know what it is? Don’t try to dispute me, for what I am going to tell
you is the exact truth. In its composition gluten does not differ from
flesh. It is vegetable flesh, capable of becoming animal flesh by the
simple process of digestion, without any material loss or gain.
Therefore it is gluten, first and foremost, that gives to bread its
great nutritive value.
“Of all the cereals wheat contains the most gluten, with rye holding
second place. Maize and rice, as well as chestnuts and potatoes, are
wholly lacking in this ingredient; and for that reason flour made from
them, rich though it be in starch, is not at all the kind of flour for
bread. This will explain to you the superiority of wheat over all other
farinaceous grains.
“Wheat, the only cereal that can give us white bread, that superior
bread which nevertheless is not always to your taste unless spread with
a little butter, does not grow in all countries. Open your atlas and
run over with your finger the countries bordering on the Mediterranean;
your travels will embrace the principal regions where wheat flourishes.
Farther north it is too cold for the successful culture of the precious
cereal; farther south it is too warm.
“But that is not all. In the privileged regions not every district is
adapted to this incomparable crop: wheat needs the mild temperature and
fertile soil of the plains, not the harsh climate and dry slopes of the
mountains. Let us consider France in particular. Its plains produce
excellent wheat, but not enough to feed the entire population;
therefore in the hilly and cooler regions, where this cereal cannot be
raised, recourse is had in the first place to rye, which yields a bread
that is compact, brown, and heavy, but on the whole preferable to any
other except, of course, wheat. This rye bread is the customary food of
the country in the greater number of our departments.
“The raising of rye becomes in its turn impossible in regions too cold
and too sterile. There then remains, as a last resort, barley, the
hardiest of cereals, which is found in the mountains until we reach the
neighborhood of perpetual snow, and can be raised even in the frigid
climate of the extreme North.
“You ought to taste the miserable bread made from barley in order to
find our bread good—or, I might better say, in order to find it an
exquisite dainty even without butter or jam. Barley bread is full of
long bristles that stick in the throat; it contains more bran than
flour; it is bitter, stodgy, and of a disagreeable odor. Oh, what sorry
stuff! And yet many have to be content with it, and are only glad if
they can get enough of it.
“In the greater part of the world wheat, widely distributed by
commerce, furnishes bread only for the tables of the rich. The rest of
the population knows nothing, as a rule, of this article of food, has
never so much as seen it, and at most has only heard of it as a rare
curiosity. In place of bread the people eat here one thing, there
another, according to the country. Asia has rice, Africa millet,
America maize. In India and China the people have hardly anything to
eat but rice boiled in water with a little salt. Half the entire world
has practically the same diet.
“The plant that produces rice has a stalk resembling that of wheat, but
instead of ending in an upright ear it bears a cluster of feeble and
pendent branches, all loaded with seeds. The leaves are narrow and
ribbon-shaped, rough to the touch. This plant is aquatic. In order to
flourish, it must send down its roots into the submerged mud and spread
its foliage, excepting the tip, in the flood. Marshy shallows,
inundated a part of the year, are adapted to its cultivation.”
“But what do they do where there are no such marshes?” asked Louis.
“When such marshes are lacking, the ingenious Chinaman floods the
lowlands with water from some near-by stream until the ground is all
soft and muddy. He then draws off the water through a series of little
canals, and works the mud with a light plow drawn by a buffalo, a kind
of ox with a long beard hanging from its chin and a mane waving on its
back.
“The seed once sown in the furrows and the young plants started, the
water from the stream is again made to flood the fields, where it
remains until harvest time. Then for the second time it is drawn off,
and the reaper, sickle in hand and with the black mud up to his knees,
cuts down the rice-laden tops of the stalks.
“Maize, or Indian corn, is the staple food of South America, as rice is
that of Asia. Many call it Turkish wheat, a name doubly inappropriate,
for in the first place this grain is not indigenous to Turkey, but to
America, and in the second place it has nothing in common with the
wheat from which bread is made. From America its cultivation has spread
to our part of the globe.
“The ear of maize is very large and is composed of full, rounded
kernels, yellow and shiny, closely packed in regular rows. Like rice,
maize furnishes a fine flour of pleasing appearance but lacking in one
essential: it contains no gluten. Hence the utter impossibility of
using either rice or maize for making bread, despite the good
appearance of the flour made from them.
“Nevertheless maize is a very wholesome article of food, and one of
great value in the country, where the appetite is sharpened by open air
and hard work. Only it is not in the form of bread that it best yields
its nourishment, but rather in that of porridge, or boiled meal and
water.”