The Farnum’s back-yard was something disagreeable. Still it didn’t
matter much, thought the children, as long as the front yard was nicely
kept and there was a high fence all around the back. Besides, Mr. Farnum
was away from home traveling all the week; Mrs. Farnum was so busy that
she hardly ever saw the disreputable yard, and the children, Rob, Lora
and Baby Jim, liked best to play away from home.
At last it dawned on the mother’s mind that they were hardly ever at
home except to eat and to sleep and to get ready to go away again and
she began to worry about it and wonder what she should do.
That very day Rob came running in to show a bug which he had in a
bottle. It was such a queer looking specimen that all became interested
in it at once.
“I’ll keep it till papa comes back, he’ll be sure to know!” exclaimed
Rob proudly.
“But this is only Tuesday, my boy. You can’t keep it in that bottle all
the week without food or drink. It must not be left to starve,” Mrs.
Farnum replied.
“We’ll find it something to eat,” cried the children, and off they ran.
But this was not such an easy matter. Mr. Bug would not touch any of the
back-yard “vegetables,” as Rob called the variety of weeds that clung to
the rotten fence boards or matted the ground of the large garden. In
spite of their efforts the bug stuck to the corner of the bottle and
refused to be comforted, with food, at least. At last, in despair, Rob
ran to the drug store and asked what he could give the bug to “make it
die a peaceful death.”
“Just put a layer of pyrethrum in the bottom of your bottle,” answered
the druggist, “keep it corked tight, and you can make every bug in your
yard die happy. Pyrethrum is a powder that is harmless to people (though
of course you must not eat it), but the least smell of it kills
insects.”
Rob went home delighted. “I’ll make a collection of bugs, as Sam Ward
does of butterflies,” he declared.
“I’d help you if it wasn’t for those horrid spiders,” said Lora. “I’m
afraid as death of them ever since I read about a baby dying from a
spider-bite.”
“Pshaw! Only a few spiders are poisonous, that is, I think so. Let’s get
a library book about them and find out; then may be we’ll have a spider
collection, too,” answered the practical brother.
While Rob was getting his bottles ready in which to “electrocute” the
bugs and Lora was going to the library after the books, Mrs. Farnum was
rummaging in the attic. At last she came down bearing triumphantly aloft
a big old-fashioned work-box.
“This you may have for a specimen case,” she said. “If you’ll fit some
little drawers in it, Rob, I’ll line them with scraps of velvet and have
a glass top put on.”
The children set to work at once, and in vain the neighbors’ children
whistled for them on the other side of the high board fence. Lora took
the hammock from the front lawn to swing beneath the old apple tree. But
the tall weeds reached up to the hammock, so Rob had to go for the old
scythe rusting in the fence corner and Baby Jim came dragging a hoe with
which to cut them down. Soon they had a large space cleared under and
around the apple trees, and when it was carefully raked and swept they
ran in to beg their mother for some porch chairs for their “summer
parlor.”
Then Rob made for himself a camp-stool that he could carry around and
plant among the bushes where he would sit watching for certain bugs to
appear and trying to catch them in his bottle. Such patience as it took
at first! And how little Rob had of it! But Lora read long, interesting
chapters to him out of “The Insect World,” and the specimen case grew so
fast and became so fascinating that he found the patience quite worth
while.
Whatever Rob did, of course, Baby Jim wanted to do.
“The ant-hill’s mine! I ’scovered it!” he announced at supper one
evening. “I’ll make a fence wound it to keep the wolves out, and I’ll
have the ants for my sheepses.”
Mrs. Farnum did not look as pleased as the rest.
“I don’t want the ants crawling all over you,” she said.
“No, they won’t; I’ll take my red chair out and sit on it, like Rob
does,” he answered, solemnly.
The next day he set to work to build a big circular fence around his ant
hill, working as perseveringly as ever any real shepherd did to get his
fold ready, and accepting no help from Rob except allowing him to shave
up a board to furnish the “palings.” Then, day after day, while Lora
swung in the hammock reading aloud to Rob, little Jim sat perched on his
red chair herding his ant-flock.
“I feed them and they eat, but they never drink a tiny bit,” he said.
“The ants find their drink away down in the ground, dear,” replied his
mother. “Now tell me what you have learned about your sheep.”
“I learned a greedy lesson to-day,” said Baby Jim. “One ant had some
food and he met an ant who hadn’t any, and he divided; then he went on
some more and met another ant with not any, and he told him to come over
to my chair-leg where the cookie was.”
The family all laughed, and still more at Rob, who asked, “Is Jim going
to be an ant-hropologist, papa?”
“Perhaps,” answered Mr. Farnum. “Now, children, I have something nice to
tell you. I have hired a man to come and help us improve the back-yard.
He will cut the weeds and trim up the trees and bushes, and we can plan
the walks and flower-beds for next spring.”
“How lovely!” cried Lora.
“I don’t know about that,” said Rob, with an ugly pucker in his
forehead. “It will scare all my bugs away. They like weeds and dirty
places.”
“Yes,” admitted his papa, “but next spring you will have to go to the
woods for new specimens.”
“It won’t scare my specimens away,” laughed Lora. “I’ve been studying
birds lately. You see when I become tired of reading I just lie back in
the hammock and watch the birds in the tree-tops. They are so very
smart, and they do the queerest things!”
So the plan to improve the yard suited all but Baby Jim, who wailed long
and loud because his ant city would be destroyed. In vain did the family
try to comfort him. He could not be persuaded to abandon his flock.
That night, to Jim’s distress, a cold rainfall set in. “My sheeps will
all be dwounded,” he wailed! “I meant to make a ’bwella over them!”
“Look here,” said Lora, drawing him up to the sofa beside her. “This is
the picture of the inside of an ant-hill. Here is the top door where you
see the ants go in, then they go down to this large room, then sideways
to this one, then down, down, down.”
Baby Jim’s eyes opened very wide. He seized the book and studied the
drawing long and earnestly.
“Your sheep are all down in the rooms now, having a nice Sunday, I
think,” continued Lora. “When winter comes and the snow is all over the
ground they won’t come up at all. Haven’t you seen them carrying food in
to pile up in one of their rooms?”
“O, and my cookies are all down there!” he cried in great delight.
When the man appeared in the morning Baby Jim marched out with an air of
importance, and, after surveying the deserted ant-hill, he turned to the
man and said, “My sheeps are all gone into the house to bed, so you can
clean up their meadow if you want to.”
And thus it was that the Farnum children began a study which will
interest them as long as they live. There is no longer any need to worry
about their living at the neighbors; and at last the Farnum back-yard
has become not only respectable, but actually a “thing of beauty and joy
forever.”
Lee McCrae.
THE AMERICAN ELK OR WAPITI.
(_Cervus canadensis._)
Centuries ago, before Columbus sailed the unknown seas which divided him
from the New World of his dreams and ambitions, before the birth of De
Soto, that adventurer whose discoveries and conquests were to unfold to
the Old World the mysteries and fascinations of the new land, through
the virgin forest and over the broad plains as yet unknown to the white
race, roamed many animals which were widely distributed throughout North
America.
They fearlessly sought those localities which would furnish them the
most abundant supply of food and water. Unmolested except by their
natural enemies, they multiplied and lived a free and untrammeled life.
In these early times the Wapiti or the American Elk, as it is commonly
though erroneously called, was probably the most widely distributed
quadruped in North America. Its range extended from the northern part of
Mexico northward to Hudson’s Bay and from the Atlantic to the Pacific
Ocean. At the present time, however, but a few wild individuals are left
in the United States east of the Mississippi and lower Missouri Rivers.
They are occasionally met with in the wilder regions bordering Lake
Superior, and it is reported that they are still living in the
mountainous regions of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The advance of
civilization, causing the cultivation of the lands and the destruction
of the forests, has gradually driven this noble animal to the westward
and into the wilds of British America. In the states bordering the
Pacific Ocean and along the western tributaries of the Mississippi and
the Missouri rivers it is still quite common. One writer tells us that
“in the rich pasture lands of the San Joaquin and Sacramento it formerly
was to be seen in immense droves and with the antelope, the black-tailed
deer, the wild cattle and mustangs covered those plains with herds
rivalling those of the bison east of the mountains or of the antelope in
South Africa.”
The name Wapiti is of Indian origin, and in their language is used to
designate a Rock Mountain goat. The name elk so commonly applied to this
animal should properly be limited to the moose.
The Wapiti is closely related and belongs to the same genus as the
famous stag or red deer (Cervus elaphus) of Europe. This animal, which
is smaller than the Wapiti, inhabits the forests of mountainous regions.
In both the Wapiti and the stag the senses of sight, hearing and smell
are well developed. They will detect a human being or other animal when
some distance away. Though their acute senses protect them, they are
said to have poor memories as well as weak powers of comprehension. The
Wapiti when listening raises its head and throws forward its erected
ears. When entering the forest it will examine the surrounding open
country and sniff the wind, seeking possible danger.
The antlers of both Wapiti and stag are much alike, though those of the
former are longer and heavier, corresponding to its larger size. The
full growth of the horns is attained about the seventh year. The perfect
horns are slightly oval in transverse section and thickly covered with
warts or slight elevations, which are arranged in longitudinal lines.
All the branches or prongs are situated on the front side of the main
trunk. “The general color is a light chestnut red, which deepens into a
brownish hue on the neck and legs and almost into a black on the throat
and along the median line of the under surface of the body. The buttocks
are yellowish white, bordered by a dusky band which extends down the
posterior surface of the hind legs.” In winter the fur is much thicker
and finer and the general color is more gray than in summer. “During the
mating season the males have fierce combats, and at this time the male
Wapiti emits a peculiar noise, resembling the braying of an ass,
beginning with a loud shrill tone and ending in a deep guttural note.”
At this time, even when kept in confinement, the male is easily
irritated and may attack people. Old males will frequently wage
persistent and long battles for supremacy. The antlers are used as the
weapons in these duels, and cases have been recorded where these have
become so firmly interlocked that they could not be separated, resulting
in the death of both individuals.
[Illustration: ]
When food is plentiful and the Wapiti is not constantly disturbed, it
will remain in the same region, only straying away during the mating
season. They assemble in herds of a greater or less number of
individuals. The females and fawns usually remain together; the older
females without fawns form another herd and the old males, as a rule,
lead a more or less solitary life, except during the mating season.
The Wapiti is more common in low grounds in the vicinity of marshes and
well wooded tracts, where it feeds on grasses and the young branches and
leaves of the willows and allied trees.
The Wapiti is graceful and proud in its bearing and very light in its
movements. This is especially true of the male, which may be described
as an animal of “noble carriage.” When moving from place to place it
walks rapidly and runs with remarkable swiftness.