flowers. The hedges will afford hiding-places for timid birds, and shade
on hot days. The tall trees will furnish perches when they want to sing;
and a well-fed bird, that has no family trouble on hand, wants to sing
nearly all his leisure time. As for the cherries and small fruits, the
birds are only gentle communists. If we cannot tolerate a division made
with all the inspiration of song, and which leaves us at least one side
of the cherry, how are we to tolerate that division predicted by some of
the labor prophets, if made with the music of paving-stones and much
fragile crockery?
One cannot go far into the woods in any direction without observing what
a protest all the birds utter at first. There are harsh screams, sharp
notes of warning, and general scolding. Now, every bird has a great deal
of curiosity to take a look at strangers. For a time they flit about in
the tall tree-tops, and afterward begin to hop down to lower limbs, and,
gradually descending, come to the ground, or on to low bushes. By
remaining quiet an hour or two, a dozen or more will circle around
within a few feet, turning their heads on one side occasionally, and
quizzing in a saucy, merry way. In a little while one may be on intimate
terms with the very birds which protested so loudly at his coming. They
will tell him a great many secrets. The leaves of his book on
ornithology may be a quarter of a mile square, but what can not be read
on one day may be read on some other. Even an owl burrowing with a
ground-squirrel, and both agreeing very well as tenants in common with a
rattlesnake, may suggest questions of affinity and community which it
might be inconvenient to answer at once. If you prefer to have some
readings in a book of nature, you can turn down a leaf and go back the
next day with the certainty that no one has lugged off the volume. And
if your finger-mark is a tree 250 feet high, there will be no great
difficulty in finding the place.
But a garden of a single acre can only be at most, a diamond edition of
nature. A great deal must be left out. The owl, as a singing-bird, is
not wanted; and, although tadpoles may be raised in the little
fish-pond, it is not expected that the hippopotamus will come there to
wallow. The birds must of necessity be few and select. If the lark
sometimes sings at sunrise on the lower fence, and the thrush and the
linnet bid you good morning out of the nearest tree-tops, you will not
fail to respond, unless on that particular morning when you especially
need an extract of dandelion; and that will generally happen when the
golden blossoms can be found along the way-side. It might be well, also,
to leave a little nook for sage and worm-wood. They are not only
handsome plants in their way, but the average wisdom of any grandmother
will unfold their remedial properties.
There are seven well-defined species of humming-birds to be found in
this State, and two or three more not described, except in the
unpublished notes of Grayson. None of these birds are singers; the best
they can do is to make a noise like the turning of a small
ratchet-wheel. But somehow, this ungenial, obstreperous little bird,
darting in a saucy way close to one's ears, and then, balancing over a
flower, never ceases to excite interest. He might have dropped out of
Paradise, if it were not for his temper, which lacks any heavenly
quality, and for his song, which would soon raise a mutiny above or
below. He is a half unreal bird; and we do not know what soul in a
transition state may be lodged in his little body. There are a great
many souls small enough to occupy it. Now, the house-cat had been
taught, after a long time, to respect birds, and that to look longingly
at a humming-bird was something akin to sacrilege. But original sin, or
instinct, was always ready to break out at the sight of a humming-bird.
One evening she trotted down the garden walk with head up and a
diminutive bird in her mouth. It took a lively turn of three times or
more around that acre lot to overhaul that cat; nor was it done until
the pursuer was thoroughly red in the face and blown, having just
strength enough left to gripe her by the throat and make her let go. It
was the poorest job of bird-philanthropy ever done in that garden.
There was nothing to reward a merciful man but a humming miller, of just
the size and finish, from bill to wings, of a humming-bird, but only an
ugly bug as to his posterior half--a creature with his head and wings
over in the realms of ornithology, and the rest of his ugly body still
in the field of entomology. The quality of mercy is strained which
undertakes to protect any such half-formed work of creation. When,
therefore, a few evenings afterward, a _shrike_, or butcher-bird, came
into the garden, devoured half a dozen of these bogus humming-birds, and
hung up as many more on the thorns of a honey-locust, that circumstance
suggested no doubt about the eternal fitness of things.
The quail is easily domesticated in any garden, and, if protected, will
become as tame as the chickens. I have more than once seen them run
where a hen was scratching, and pick up whatever could be found. Some
years ago, while mowing the grass around the edges of another garden, a
nest was discovered containing a dozen hen's eggs and _seventeen_
quail's eggs. The village _savants_ never did fairly settle the
questions raised about that nest. Did the hen have the prior right,
first choosing the place and making the nest? or did the quail pre-empt,
and was the hen an unlawful squatter? Did they lay on alternate days, or
concurrently as to time? And how did the eggs get that arrangement by
which all the crevices were filled with the smaller ones? And which did
the incubating? The quail could not cover the nest. But nearly all the
eggs of both sorts were ultimately hatched. It had been settled before
that time, by our system of patriarchial jurisprudence, that the issue
followed the condition of the mother. The chicks respected that
principle, since so rudely questioned, and each followed its mother, so
that substantial justice was done, and the heavens did not fall.
No garden is well stocked without a pair or two of toads. They will
learn to distinguish your foot-steps from those of a stranger, as they
come out at twilight. The toad is a philosopher, and is the most
self-contained of all living things. He meditates all day in the shade,
and takes his dinner promptly at twilight. That dinner may require a
thousand insects. The dart of his tongue is never made amiss. If you
cannot cultivate him for his beauty--and there may be a doubt on that
score--you can tolerate him for his honest work. There is some cant
about the ugliness of the toad that you would not respect when you have
taught a pair to come out of their hiding places at your call, have
given them pet names, and have seen them slay the remorseless mosquito.
If you step on one after nightfall, it will be useless to objurgate. You
cannot provoke him to talk back.
Consider what an advantage the toad has in another respect. He not only
hibernates a part of the year, and thus saves his board-bills, but he
has been known to suspend active life for a quarter of a century or
more; as when, getting into a hollow tree, the orifice has been filled
up, or he has been wedged in the cleft of a rock. But when restored, he
resumes life with no inconvenience to his digestion. What might be
gained if one only had the vitality of this batrachian! You have been
overtaken by a stupidly dull era, or are disgusted with life. What an
advantage to call on some friend to pack you away in ice, and to thaw
you out only when the next quarter-century bell rings! Since we cannot
go safely over this bridge with the batrachian, it is not well to put
such a discount on his ugliness, nor is it well to be too exclamatory,
if you tread on him in the twilight.
The garden is the place to test a great many pretty theories. And what
if some of them fail? Is not the sum of our knowledge derived from
failures, greater than all we have ever gained by successes? A feminine
oracle, not content with her honeysuckle theory, had said: "You must not
pull up a plant nor a vine that springs up spontaneously. Let it grow.
There is luck in it." When, therefore, a melon-vine made its appearance
quite in the wrong place, it was spared through the wisdom of that
oracle. It went sprawling over the ground, choking more delicate plants,
and rioting day by day in the warm sun and the rich loam underneath.
Nearly all its blossoms fell off without fruitage. One melon took up all
the life of the vine, and grew wonderfully. There had been tape-line
measurements without number. When it gave out a satisfactory sound by
snapping it with thumb and finger, and the nearest tendril had dried up,
it was held to be fully ripe. It was _very_ ripe. A gopher had mined
under that melon, and, not content with eating out the entire pulp, had,
in the very wantonness of his deviltry, tamped the shell full of dirt!
Where was the luck in this spontaneous growth? Nor did the matter end
here. Sometime thereafter the following note, written in a feminine
hand, was found pinned to that shell:
"GARDEN ON THE HILL, August 20, 187--.
"MR. B----: _Dear Sir_--Since you have had the benefit of my
discovery of the new method of planting honeysuckles inserted in
potatoes, and you have also tested my theory of the luck there is in
melon-vines of spontaneous growth, it has occurred to me that you
would fully appreciate my skill and attainments. Now, I expect to be
a candidate for the Chair of Horticulture and Floriculture in the
University. I must have strong recommendations. Will you be kind
enough to furnish me a certificate in which full justice is done to
my attainments? My success may hinge on that certificate. Make it as
strong as you can with a good conscience.
AGRAPINA.
P. S.--I forgot to tell you that if you had pinched out the eyes of
the tubers in that first experiment, while you would have had less
potatoes, you might not have had any more honeysuckles."
A.
That certificate was fully prepared. If we know anything about our
mother tongue, the qualifications of the applicant were fully set out.
Singularly enough, she has never applied in person for the document.
The almond tree is worthy of a place in every garden, even if it never
fruits. The pale blush of its blossoms is the herald of Spring. In the
warm days of February it puts on a pink dress, and is glorified. The
bees come out, lured evidently by the scent of its flowers; but they
flit about in a fugitive way, as if not satisfied with what they had
found. There are small resources of honey in the almond blossoms; so
much might be learned from the spiteful way in which the humming-birds
darted off after sounding a little with their long bills. Something like
one almond came to maturity for every thousand buds which unfolded in
the early Spring. Two or three hundred "paper shells" clung to the tree
hard by the library door, in the late Autumn. Whatever had been the
fortune of other almond growers, here was a crop by an amateur. It was
of no consequence that there had been a great discrepancy between
flowers and fruit. Precious things are never abundant. No, by no manner
of means, were these almonds to grace any Thanksgiving table. Let thanks
be given for the brown shells clinging to the tree, and for whatever of
internal good this outwardness might suggest. And not least, for the
humming-bird's nest on the end of a pendent limb, so like a warty
excrescence of the tree as not to be observed by careless eyes--and for
that mutual confidence when curly-headed children were lifted up, and
birds and children communed face to face, chirruped, and were glad.
"What became of the almonds?" There was a case of misplaced confidence.
It was well enough that the finch, the linnet, the chat and the sparrow,
had plucked the cherries, sampled the plums, and had taken kindly to the
mellow side of the pears. December had come. Only here and there a
fugitive gross-beak flitted about--a bird with a wonderful capacity for
mellow song, but silent, as if never a note had gone out of his
capacious throat and chubby bill. Perhaps they could be induced to sing
in midwinter if confidence could be established. Half a dozen almonds
were laid on the walk, which a pair of gross-beaks "shucked" with
wonderful facility. That stout, short beak is fitted for a nut eater.
Half an hour afterward there were twenty gross-beaks on that almond
tree; and forty minutes later, they had stored every almond in their
crops, cutting away the shells as deftly as one could do with a sharp
knife. So tame and bold were they that one could have nearly reached
them with his hand. Not a note was given in return, nothing but a
twitter, as much as to say, "This is a royal dinner; there were just
enough nuts to go round." And then they went off silently into the blue
sky.
The first man, being historically and traditionally perfect, had a
garden as his noblest allotment. The farther the race drifts away from
the cultivation of the soil, the nearer it gets to barbarism. The Apache
is not a good horticulturist, and therefore there is no gentleness in
his blood. Teach him to love and cultivate a garden, and he is no longer
a savage. The best thought and the best inspiration may come to one when
all the gentler ministries of his garden wait upon him--when the soul of
things is concurrent with his own, and bee and almond blossom, the rose,
and the smallest song-sparrow in the tree-top, are revelators and
instructors.
THE HOMESTEAD BY THE SEA.
THE HOMESTEAD BY THE SEA.
The sighing and respiration of the great sea to-day was wonderfully
soothing, until there was a series of dull explosions, like the
percussion of far-off gunnery. One may hear these sounds on a still
midsummer day, or at midnight, when the sea is pulsing and breaking
along the shore line. It required two hours to find out the secret.
Along these chalk cliffs there are great caverns, wind and wave worn.
Standing near the mouth of one of them, a "boomer" came surging along,
and placed its watery seal over the mouth, driving and pressing the
atmosphere before it. When the seal was broken there was an explosion
like a gun seaward. The turn of the tide is frequently marked by a
series of these boomers, and then there is a suggestion of a park of
artillery under the cliffs, and the long roll is beaten along the shore.
All discoveries are simple enough when once the secret has been found
out. How many men walk along the edge of a discovery all their lives,
and never quite enter into the promised land! Some blundering successor
stumbles into the fruition of the great secret. There are men within
bow-shot of prizes as magnificent as ever crowned human research; but
they will go no farther. Columbus rested at the Antilles; the continent
was just beyond. If you have got as far as the islands, it may be well,
before you give up the search, to look at the sea-weeds and drift-wood,
whether they do not come from the mainland. Having gathered and cooked
the mussels, you might as well stay and eat them as to have another eat
them and throw the shells after you. Charles Lamb discourseth about the
mussel wisely: "Traveling is not good for us; we travel so seldom. How
much more dignified leisure hath a mussel, glued to his impassable rocky
limit, two inches square! He hears the tide roll over him backward and
forward twice a day (as the Salisbury coach goes and returns in eight
and forty hours), but knows better than to take an outside place on the
top of it. He is the owl of the sea, Minerva's fish, the fish of
wisdom." And yet the mussel can travel, and if detached will seek out a
new location, and by means of its silken beard, or byssus threads,
which it can weave in a few minutes, anchor itself anew to the rock. It
has two enemies: The whelk, a sort of univalve mussel wolf, which bores
a hole through the shell about the size of a pin, and sucks the life
out; then there is a species of sea-gull which, when all other resources
fail, plucks off the mussels, and, rising high enough, dashes them on
the rocks; from which circumstance AEsop may, or may not, have invented
his story of an eagle dashing a tortoise on the shining crown of a
bald-headed man.
Yonder, where the surf frets the shore and pencils a dark line of kelp,
look for the star-fish and the limpet, and for mosses in ultramarine and
carmine such as no florist can match from his garden. And what is the
sea but a treasure-house of palms and ferns, of corals, and of lilies
which no eye hath seen, and royal highways, under whose arches there is
an eternal procession of living things, and glorious mausoleums for the
dead? This maritime discourse was somewhat abbreviated, because the
youngster for whose benefit it had been made suddenly disappeared behind
the rocks. He had begun some experiments on his own account. He had
found out that the abalone which cleaves to the rocks has a wonderful
suction, and the pinching of his finger between the shell and the rock,
as in the vice of a blacksmith, extorted a wholesome yell and kept him
in a grave and thoughtful frame of mind for five minutes. Anemones
abound in all the rocky pools, spongy, unfolding at the top and closing
quickly at the touch, the lowest form of sentient life, but knowing what
is what. This youngster takes his second lesson in natural history by
dropping in a mussel, when the anemone closes over it, and in a few
minutes thereafter throws out an empty shell; but when the young rogue
dropped in a stone, it was thrown out in a contemptuous way, as if the
anemone had long ago understood the trick and was not to be deceived by
naughty boys.
The star-fish comes in with the drift, as if he were altogether
helpless; but, dull and inert as he seems, he watches tides and
opportunities. Like the whelk, he loves the bivalve mollusk, but does
not bore for it. There is a theory that he holds his five fingers
affectionately around the clam or oyster, and then, by the aid of a sort
of marine chloroform, secures an opening, when in goes one of the five
fingers, and the mollusk is forced to shell out. There is a beautiful
combination of persuasion and force. The sedative is tried first, and
the pressure afterward. It is a pity that some such process could not be
tried on that class of human mollusks whose shells have closed over
their millions with an unrelenting grip. Some day their empty shells may
be cast up on the other shore. It might be better for them that a
star-fish should insert one of his fingers before the drift period
begins.
In the chalk bluff, more than forty feet from high-water mark, is the
vertebrae of a whale distinctly outlined. This monarch of the seas
selected his tomb with some reference to the fitness of things. The
Egyptian monarchs built for themselves granite tombs; but the whale lay
down on the ooze, and the infusoria of five thousand years or more built
around and above him. He was grandly inurned, and lifted up out of the
sea by such a force as no living or dead Pharaoh could command. In the
matter of royal sepulture, it is certain that the whale had an immense
advantage. But after three or four thousand years, the defunct monarchs
of sea and land are mainly valuable for bone-dust, and are rather poor
fertilizers at best. From the hill one may see whales gambol in the Bay
of Monterey, in the early Spring months. What a great laundry
establishment these fellows might set up, if they only knew how to
utilize their power! At present, these columns of spray blown into the
horizon are only picturesque. There is a grave suspicion that the
friend, whose Mongol servant blew the spray from his mouth into the
sponge to be set for bread, would have much preferred that the whale had
performed that office. Years ago, one of these monsters was seen
floundering about in the bay all day long, as though in great distress.
The following night he drifted ashore, dead. The great hulk had no mark
of the sword-fish or the whaleman's lance. The sailors said that he was
worried, teased, and finally hunted to death, by a fish called a
"bummer." How strikingly human-like was the experience of the dead
mammal!
There was a strange fascination about two wrecked vessels, whose timber
heads could be seen above the sand. Sometimes, in a storm, they would
get adrift. So weird like and mysteriously did they rise and fall on the
surging sea, appearing and disappearing, thrusting their timbers out
like arms imploring help, that one might fancy they were the spirits of
these lost vessels coming back to protest against this broken rest. How
strangely they accented the storm! When it subsided they would bring up
at the old place, and the sand would bury them again. There was an odd
genius in the town who claimed these wrecks by pre-emption. When his
finances were low, and creditors pressed for small bills, he made his
payments conditioned, as to time, on the coming of the next storm which
would unbury the wrecks. Providence saved him a deal of hard shoveling,
by raising the wind for him. Then he drew out copper bolts enough from
the wreck to liquidate his bills, but gathered no surplus. Hath not many
a mine been exhausted by indiscreet development? As long as that copper
lasted, "Bob" paid his debts periodically. If he has not yet drawn his
last copper bolt, he is still entitled to the financial confidence of
this trading and huckstering world.
These round holes in the hard rocks are wrought deftly by the _Pholas_,
a little bivalve, which, by means of its rasping shell and strong,
elastic foot, keeps up the attrition, grinding away day and night until
his excavation is perfect. It fits him on all sides, and he is content
to live and die there. How much better is his condition than that of
round men who have been trying all their lives to fit themselves into
square holes, and square men who never could adjust themselves to round
holes. The _Pholas_ has found his place, and therefore may be ahead in
the race. There was a famous theologian of the last century, who,
sitting at his desk year after year, wrestling with problems which
neither he nor any other mortal ever understood, ground the floor of his
little study, by the attrition of his feet, until it was nearly worn
through. His footprints are still preserved as sacred relics. Nor ought
the inquiry to be pressed now whether the hole which the _Pholas_
wrought with his foot, or the hole which the theologian ground with his
foot, was the better or more permanent one. If the question is at all
pertinent, it may be ripe for an answer a thousand years hence.
When the tide is out, one may find the razor-fish, so called because the
shell resembles the handle of a razor. If laid hold of suddenly, the
chances are that before he can be drawn out he will slip out of his
shell, leaving that empty in the hand, while the "soul and essence" of
him has gone down half a fathom into the sand. Yet he is not more
slippery than many an individual, who, when pressed to do some
magnanimous deed in behalf of the community, slips out of his shell,
and, losing the grip, you can no more find the soul and essence of him
than you can find the soul of this razor-fish, which has gone deep into
the muck and sand. In either instance, the empty shell is only the sign
of the thing wanted.