Mr. Meredith.--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might."--A Botanical Lecture.--The Goat Moth.--Blowing up a Tree.--
An astonished Cow.--Caterpillars in the Wood.
On the morrow, after morning service, the three boys (Dick having been
invited to spend the day with Frank) were walking from church and
talking upon the sermon which Mr. Meredith had just preached to them.
It was a beautiful morning--one of those days on which it is a treat to
live. The sun shone from a sky which was brilliant in its blue and
white, the waters of the lake sparkled diamond-like under the stirring
influence of a warm westerly wind. The scent of the honeysuckle and the
roses in the cottage gardens filled the air with pleasant incense, and
from every tall tree-top a thrush or blackbird sang his merriest.
"That wasn't a bad motto which Meredith took for his text: 'Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,'" said Frank.
"I think it is a motto you endeavour to carry out, Frank," answered
Jimmy.
"Well, I think if a fellow does that he can't be far wrong," replied
Frank; "but here is the parson himself."
A tall, broad-shouldered man came quickly up and said to them:
"Well, boys, I hope you are applying my sermon to yourselves."
"We should be glad to do so if we were quite sure about the application,
Mr. Meredith," replied Frank.
"Ah, you young rascal, you could not have been attending; but seriously,
what I meant was this: You boys, and especially Master Frank, are very
prone to take up a thing with all your might when once you begin. Now
that is very right and proper. Whatever you do you should do your best
to do well; but what I want you particularly to understand is that
before taking up a thing, you should first of all think well and decide
whether it is the right thing to do, and it is not until that question
is settled that it becomes right to throw your whole heart into it. Now
the immediate application of this is this: You are going head over heels
into the study of Natural History, and you are making collections as
fast as you can. Now it won't take you long to decide that Natural
History is a very right and proper thing for you to take up, and
therefore you may study it with all your might, and, I doubt not, to the
praise and glory of God; but be very careful about the collecting part
of the business. Don't let your zeal carry you too far. Don't let
collecting be your sole aim and object, or you will become very low
types of naturalists. Let it be only secondary and subservient to
observation. Let your aim be to preserve rather than to destroy.
Remember that God gave life to His creatures that they might enjoy it,
as well as fulfil their missions and propagate their species. Therefore
if you come across a rare bird, do not kill it unnecessarily; if you can
observe its living motions it will interest you more and do you more
good than will the possession of its stuffed body when dead."
"I quite understand what you mean, sir," replied Frank; "and it is only
what my father has often told me before. We will try to follow our
pursuits in moderation."
"Just so; then, as you have heard me so patiently, I will trouble you
with another application of my sermon. Do what you are doing _well_.
Don't let your observation be too cursory. Don't be Jacks of all trades
and masters of none. This district is teeming with bird, insect, and
animal life. You boys have peculiar opportunities for learning and
discovering all that is rare and interesting. You are sharp, young, and
active, and nothing can escape you. Now is the time for you to store up
facts which will always be valuable. Buy yourselves notebooks; put down
everything in writing which seems to you to be strange and noteworthy,
and don't trust to your memories. But above all, take up some one branch
of study and stick to it. It is well for you to know a little of
everything, but it is better for you to know a great deal of one thing.
Therefore I should advise each of you to take up a line that suits him
and to pay particular attention to it. Thus you, Frank, may take up
Ornithology; you, Dick, should go in for Entomology; and Jimmy, why
should you not take up Botany?"
The boys quite concurred in the justice of his observations, but Jimmy
said:
"There is nothing I should like better than to know something of Botany,
but there seems so much to learn that I am almost afraid to begin."
"Oh, nonsense," exclaimed Mr. Meredith; "let me give you a first lesson
in it now. I suppose you know the names of all the most common flowers;
but just look at their beauty. See how this hedge-bank is yellow with
primroses, and yonder you see the faint blue of the violets peeping from
their bed of dark-green leaves, and here is the white blossom of a
strawberry, which I pluck to show you of what a flower consists. First
there is the root, through which it draws its nourishment from the
earth. Then there is the stem, and on the top of that is this green
outer whorl or circle of leaves, which is called the calyx. Within the
calyx is the corolla, which is formed of petals, which in this case are
of a beautiful white. The corolla is the part in which the colour and
beauty of a flower generally resides. Within the corolla are the
stamens, and within the stamens are the pistils. The stamens and the
pistils are the organs of reproduction, and the yellow dust or pollen
which you see on most flowers is the medium by which the seeds are
fertilized. Now this flower which I have just plucked is the
wood-sorrel. Notice its threefold emerald-green leaf and the delicate
white flower with the purple veins. It is pretty, is it not? See, if I
strike it roughly, it shrinks and folds up something like a sensitive
plant. It is a capital weather-glass. At the approach of rain both its
flowers and leaves close up, and even if a cloud passes over the sun the
flowers will close a little; and, finally, its leaves taste of a
pleasant acid. There, you will have had enough of my lecture for the
present, but I should like to tell you more about flowers some other
time."
The boys were both pleased and interested with what he had told them,
and expressed their thanks accordingly; and then Mr. Meredith left them
and went home to dinner.
"I say, he is a brick of a fellow," said Jimmy; "if all parsons were
like that man everybody else in the world would have a better time of
it."
They went into the boat-house and sat at the open window looking over
the sparkling broad. Frank said:
"I tell you what we must do. We must get Meredith to give us part of
our holiday at the end of May or beginning of June, and we will take a
cruise over all the rivers and broads of Norfolk and Suffolk. We could
do it nicely in three weeks and scour every inch of the country in that
time. What do you say? I will undertake to get my father's consent and
Mrs. Brett's. What will Sir Richard say, Dick?"
"If you go, Frank, I am sure he will let me go; he has every confidence
in you, and that you will keep us all out of mischief."
"I will try. Then it is agreed that we go."
"Most certainly. Frank will go in for birds'-nesting, Dick will catch
butterflies and moths, and I must try to do something in the way of
botany."
"And now it is time to go in; but before we go I just want to say that
there is an old willow-tree down by the Broad which father thinks is an
eyesore. I think that it is a likely tree in which to find the
caterpillars of the goat-moth, which you know live on the wood of a
willow, and eat long tunnels and galleries in it. What do you say to
blowing the tree up with gunpowder?--it is only good for firewood, and
perhaps we may find some caterpillars. Shall we get up early in the
morning, bore a big hole into the heart of the tree, and fill it with
gunpowder, set a train to it, and blow the whole affair up?"
Such a proposal was sure to meet with consent, and at seven o'clock the
next morning the boys were down at the tree, boring a large hole into
it.
The caterpillar of the great goat-moth feeds upon the wood of timber
trees, notably oak, willow, and poplar. He is a smooth, ugly fellow of a
red and yellow colour, with black feet and claws. He makes extensive
galleries through the heart of a tree, eating and swallowing all that he
gnaws away from the wood in his onward passage.
During the summer he eats his way slowly through the tree, making
numerous and winding galleries; but during the autumn and winter he
takes a siesta, first casing himself in a strong covering made of chips
of wood and the silk which he weaves. The next summer he renews his
work, and so he lives and grows for the space of three years, and then
turns into the pupæ state, and emerges about July a dark brown but not
unlovely moth, which lives for a few weeks and then lays its eggs and
dies.
The boring was completed and was rammed full of coarse powder, and the
mouth of the hole plugged up with a piece of wood. Through this plug a
small hole was bored, and through this a long hollow straw made into a
fuse was inserted.
Setting fire to this, they retired to some distance to await the issue
of their experiment.
There was unfortunately a cow in the same meadow, and this cow was very
much interested in their movements; so when they left the tree the cow
approached, its curiosity the more aroused by the smoke rising from the
burning fuse.
"Now there is an instance of unreasoning curiosity which animals
possess. That cow will poke her nose into that tree, and get blown up
for her pains if we don't stop her. Let's shy stones at her."
But stones in that marshy meadow were not easy to procure, so they tore
up clods of earth and threw them at the cow. She scampered away, but
went to the other side of the tree and again approached it. The boys
dared not go any nearer to the old willow, because they momentarily
expected the explosion, and they were in a great fright lest the cow
should suffer damage. Just then, with a loud report and much smoke the
powder exploded. They threw themselves down to avoid any errant
fragments, and the cow scampered off unhurt, but exceedingly astonished
and frightened, jumped the ditch which separated the meadow from the
next one, and finally landed herself in another ditch, from which she
had to be drawn with ropes and a vast deal of trouble by some of the
neighbours.
The first thought of the boys was to see after the cow, and when they
saw she was in a fair way of being pulled out, they returned to their
tree, and found it split and torn to pieces and thrown about in all
directions. It was quite a chance whether they found any caterpillars in
the tree or not, and, to tell the truth, they hardly expected to be
successful in their search. What was their delight then to find, that
not only were there caterpillars there, but a great number of them.
Three or four they found dead and mangled by the force of the explosion,
but the many perforations in the wood showed that there were many more
caterpillars there. With the aid of a saw and axe they dug out several
caterpillars not yet full grown, and also several pupæ which they knew
would be out in two months' time. They carried some large pieces of the
wood up to the boat-house for living caterpillars to feed on, and
reinserted the pupæ in their wooden chambers, where they were safely
kept until their appearance in July.
The caterpillars of the white butterflies which Dick had collected under
Mary's instructions had some time since come out, and it was a very
pretty sight to see the chrysalis split at the head and the insect creep
out with its wings all wet and crumpled, and then to watch them
gradually expand to their full size and dry and harden, until the
perfect insect was ready for flight, when with a few flaps of its wings,
as if to try them, it would launch into the sunshine with a strong swift
flight.