_William Hamilton Gibson_ _Frontispiece_
_Initial. The Studio Door_ 3
_The Rose-bush Episode_ 9
_A Corner of My Table_ 12
_An Animated Brush_ 14
_A Specimen in Three Stages_ 16
_The Studio Table_ 18
_Initial_ 23
_The European Cuckoo_ 24
_The Yellow-billed Cuckoo_ 26
_Browsing Kine_ 29
_A Greedy Foster-child_ 34
_The Yellow Warbler_ 44
_A Blighted Home_ 46
_The Normal Nest of the Yellow Warbler_ 47
_The Yellow Warbler at Home_ 49
_A Suspicious Nest of the Yellow Warbler_ 50
_The Nest Separated_ 52
_Initial_ 57
_The Door-step Arena, with its Pitfalls_ 60
_Fishing for Tigers_ 65
_Tiger-beetle_ 68
_The Spider Victim_ 70
_Filling the Spider's Grave_ 71
_Black Digger-wasp_ 73
_Black Digger-wasp and His Victim, Showing the Egg of the
Wasp Attached_ 75
_Protecting the Burrow while Searching for Prey_ 79
_The "Cow-spit" Mystery Disclosed_ 81
_The Tiger's Head, from the Victim's Stand-point_ 84
_Initial. Branch of the Bittersweet_ 87
_A Bittersweet Covey_ 90
_Flushing the Game_ 92
_Specimen Twig_ 94
_Building Froth-tent_ 100
_Butterflies and Flowers_ 105
_A Row of Stamens_ 106
_The Parts of a Flower_ 109
_Historical Series, Showing the Progress of Discovery of
Flower Fertilization_ 110
_The Garden Sage_ 120
_Cross-fertilization of the Sage_ 121
_Elastic Stamens. Anthers Inserted in their Pockets_ 124
_Elastic Stamens of Mountain-laurel_ 125
_Andromeda Ligustrina_ 127
_Fertilisation of Andromeda_ 128
_The Laurel_ 130
_Cross-fertilization of the Blue-flag_ 131
_Blue-flag_ 132
_Pogonia and Devil's-bit_ 133
_Devil's-bit_ 134
_Horse-balm. Collinsonia_ 135
_Cross-fertilization of the Horse-balm--Flowers in Various
Stages, and in the Order of their Visitation by the Bee_ 136
_The Cone-flower_ 137
_Cone-flower, Showing Numerous Florets, Some in Pollen,
Others in Stigmatic Stage_ 139
_Cross-fertilization of Cone-flower_ 140
_The Fertilization of the English Arum, 1st Stage_ 141
_The Fertilization of the English Arum. 2d, 3d, 4th,
and 5th Stages_ 142
_Pogonia_ 145
_Cross-fertilization_ 146
_A Pine Branch_ 151
_Initial_ 151
_The Picnic_ 159
_Tail-piece_ 167
_Habenaria Orbiculata_ 171
_Arethusa Bulbosa_ 177
_The Botanical Distribution of an Ordinary Flower and of
the Orchid_ 182
_The "Column" in Various Orchids_ 183
_The Result of the Bee's Visit_ 184
_Cross-fertilization of Arethusa_ 188
_Habenaria Orbiculata. A Single Flower Enlarged_ 190
_Orchis Spectabilis_ 191
_Cross-fertilization of H. Orbiculata (Sphinx-moth)_ 193
_The Flower and Column of Orchis Spectabilis, Enlarged_ 195
_Orchis Spectabilis_ 195
_Position of Pollen of Orchis Spectabilis Withdrawn on Pencil_ 197
_The Cross-fertilization of Orchis Spectabilis_ 197
_The Purple-fringed Orchid_ 199
_The Ragged Orchid (Front Section)_ 200
_The Ragged Orchid (Profile Section)_ 202
_The Ragged Orchid (H. Lacera) and the Butterfly's
Tongue. Cross-fertilization_ 203
_The Yellow Orchid (H. Flava)_ 204
_The Ragged Orchid (H. Lacera)_ 205
_Cypripedium Acaule_ 207
_Moccasin-flower (C. Acaule)_ 208
_The Bee Imprisoned in the Lips of Cypripedium_ 210
_Moccasin-flower. Bee Sipping Nectar_ 211
_The Bee Passing Beneath the Stigma_ 213
_A Bee Receiving Pollen-plaster on His Thorax_ 214
_Rattlesnake-Plantain--the Young and the Old_ 215
_Cross-fertilization of the Rattlesnake-Plantain.
Side Sections_ 216
_Cross-fertilisation of the Rattlesnake-Plantain. Front View_ 217
_The Tongue of a Bumblebee_ 218
_Goodyera, or Periamium Pubescens_ 221
_Milkweed Captives_ 231
_The Pollen Masses and the Fissure_ 232
_The Tragedy of the Bees_ 235
_A Moth Caught by the Tongue in Dogbane_ 237
_A FAMILIAR GUEST_
[Illustration]
Solitude! Where under trees and sky shall you find it? The more solitary
the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider
and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at
length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his
branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If he fails to
be aware of the fact, more's the pity. His desolation is within, not
without, in spite of, not because of, his surroundings.
Here in my country studio--not a hermitage, 'tis true, but secluded
among trees, some distance isolated from my own home and out of sight of
any other--what company! What occasional "tumultuous privacy" is mine! I
have frequently been obliged to step out upon the porch and request a
modulation of hilarity and a more courteous respect for my hospitality.
But this is evidently entirely a matter of point of view, and, judging
from the effects of my protests at such times, my assumed superior air
of condescension is apparently construed as a huge joke. If the
resultant rejoinder of wild volapük and expressive pantomime has any
significance, it is plain that I am desired to understand that my exact
status is that of a squatter on contested territory.
There are those snickering squirrels, for instance! At this moment two
of them are having a rollicking game of tag on the shingled roof--a
pandemonium of scrambling, scratching, squealing, and growling--ever and
anon clambering down at the eaves to the top of a blind and peeping in
at the window to see how I like it.
A woodchuck is perambulating my porch--he was a moment ago--presumably
in renewed quest of that favorite pabulum more delectable than rowen
clover, the splintered cribbings from the legs of a certain pine bench,
which, up to date, he has lowered about three inches--a process in which
he has considered average rather than symmetry, or the comfort of the
too trusting visitor who happens to be unaware of his carpentry.
The drone of bees and the carol of birds are naturally an incessant
accompaniment to my toil--at least, in these spring and summer months.
The tall, straight flue of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an
organ, is softly murmurous with the flurry of the swifts in their
afternoon or vesper flight. There is a robin's nest close by one window,
a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and
continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and
oriole within close limits, to say nothing of an ants' nest not far off,
whose proximity is soon manifest as you sit in the grass--and
immediately get up again.
Fancy a wild fox for a daily entertainment! For several days in
succession last year I spent a half-hour observing his frisky gambols
on the hillside across the dingle below my porch, as he jumped
apparently for mice in the sloping rowen-field. How quickly he
responded to my slightest interruption of voice or footfall, running to
the cover of the alders!
The little red-headed chippy, the most familiar and sociable of our
birds, of course pays me his frequent visit, hopping in at the door and
picking up I don't know what upon the floor. A barn-swallow occasionally
darts in through the open window and out again at the door, as though
for very sport, only a few days since skimming beneath my nose, while
its wings fairly tipped the pen with which I was writing. The chipmonk
has long made himself at home, and his scratching footsteps on my
door-sill, or even in my closet, is a not uncommon episode. Now and then
through the day I hear a soft pat-pat on the hard-wood floor, at
intervals of a few seconds, and realize that my pet toad, which has
voluntarily taken up its abode in an old bowl on the closet floor, is
taking his afternoon outing, and with his always seemingly inconsistent
lightning tongue is picking up his casual flies at three inches sight
around the base-board.
A mouse, I see, has heaped a neat little pile of seeds upon the top of
the wainscot near by--cherry pits, polygonum, and ragweed seeds, and
others, including some small oak-galls, which I find have been
abstracted from a box of specimens which I had stored in the closet for
safe-keeping. I wonder if it is the same little fellow that built its
nest in an old shoe in the same closet last year, and, among other
mischief, removed the white grub in a similar lot of specimen galls
which I also missed, and subsequently found in the shoe and scattered on
the closet floor?
I have mentioned the murmur of the bees, but the incessant buzzing of
flies and wasps is an equally prominent sound. Then there is the
occasional sortie of the dragon-fly, making his gauzy, skimming circuit
about the room, or suggestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling;
and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a
fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one
corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from
the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which
makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried
hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of
course, somewhere in its dusty spread, tapers off into a dark tunnel,
where lurks the eight-eyed schemer, "o'erlooking all his waving snares
around."
Sooner or later, it would seem, every too constant buzzing visitor
encroaches on its domain, and is drawn to its silken vortex, and is
eventually shed below as a clean dried specimen; for this is an
_agalena_ spider, which dispenses with the winding-sheet of the field
species--_epeira_ and _argiope_. Last week a big bumble-bee-like fly
paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To-day I find him dried and
ready for the insect-pin and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the
web, which affords at all times its liberal entomological
assortment--Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Lepidoptera. Many are
the rare specimens which I have picked from these charnel remnants of my
spider net.
Ah, hark! The talking "robber-fly" (_Asilus_), with his nasal, twangy
buzz! "_Waiow!_ Wha-a-ar are ye?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive
onslaught against the window-pane, which betokens his satisfied quest,
is out again at the window with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his
powerful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak.
Solitude! Not here. Amid such continual distraction and entertainment
concentration on the immediate task in hand is not always of easy
accomplishment.
[Illustration]
Last week, after a somewhat distracted morning with some queer beguiling
little harlequins on the bittersweet-vine about my porch, of which I
have previously written, I had finally settled down to my work, and was
engaged in putting the finishing touches upon a long-delayed drawing,
when a new visitor claimed my attention--a small hornet, which alights
upon the window-sill within half a yard from my face. To be sure, she
was no stranger here at my studio--even now there are two of her yonder
beneath the spider-nest--and was, moreover, an old friend, whose ways
were perfectly familiar to me; but this time the insect engaged my
particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a
green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body
as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my
little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have
made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and
wondered where you would take up your abode."
The insect now reaches the edge of the sill, and, taking a fresh grip on
her burden, starts off in a bee-line across my drawing-board and towards
the open door, and disappears. Wondering what her whimsical destination
might be, my eye involuntarily began to wander about the room in quest
of nail-holes or other available similar crannies, but without reward,
and I had fairly settled back to my work and forgotten the incident,
when the same visitor, or another just like her, again appeared, this
time clearing the window-sill in her flight, and landing directly upon
my drawing-board, across which she sped, half creeping, half in flight,
and tugging her green caterpillar as before--longer than herself--which
she held beneath her body.
"This time I shall learn your secret," I thought. "Two such challenges
as this are not to be ignored." So I concluded this time to observe her
progress carefully. In a moment she had reached the right-hand edge of
my easel-board, from which she made a short flight, and settled upon a
large table in the centre of the room, littered with its characteristic
chaos of professional paraphernalia--brushes, paints, dishes, bottles,
color-boxes, and cloths--among which she disappeared. It was a hopeless
task to disclose her, so I waited patiently to observe the spot from
which she would emerge, assuming that this, like the window-sill and my
easel, was a mere way-station on her homeward travels. But she failed to
appear, while I busied my wits in trying to recall which particular item
in the collection had a _hole_ in it. Yes, there _was_ a spool among
other odds and ends in a Japanese boat-basket. That must be it! But on
examination the paper still covered both ends, and I was again at a
loss. What, then, can be the attraction on my table? My wondering
curiosity was immediately satisfied, for as I turned back to the board
and resumed my work I soon discovered another wasp, with its caterpillar
freight, on the drawing-board. After a moment's pause she made a quiet
short flight towards the table, and what was my astonishment to observe
her alight directly upon the tip of the very brush which I held in my
hand, which, I now noted for the first time, had a hole in its end! In
another moment she disappeared within the cavity, tugging the
caterpillar after her!
[Illustration]
My bamboo brushes! I had not thought of them! By mere chance a few
years since I happened upon some of these bamboo brushes in a Japanese
shop--large, long-handled brushes, with pure white hair nicely stiffened
to a tapering point, which was neatly protected with a sheathing cover
of bamboo. A number of them were at my elbow, a few inches distant, in a
glass of water, and on the table by the vase beyond were a dozen or so
in a scattered bundle.
Normally each of these brushes is closed at the end by the natural pith
of the bamboo. I now find them _all_ either open or otherwise tampered
with, and the surrounding surface of the table littered with tiny balls,
apparently of sawdust. I picked up one of the nearest brushes, and upon
inverting it and giving it a slight tap, a tiny green worm fell out of
the opening. From the next one I managed to shake out seven of the
caterpillars, while the third had passed beyond this stage, the aperture
having been carefully plugged with a mud cork, which was even now moist.
Two or three others were in the same plugged condition, and
investigation showed that no single brush had escaped similar tampering
to a greater or less extent. One brush had apparently not given entire
satisfaction, for the plug had been removed, and the caterpillars, eight
or ten in number, were scattered about the opening. But the
dissatisfaction probably lay with one of these caterpillars rather than
with the maternal wasp, who had apparently failed in the full dose of
anæsthetic, for one of her victims which I observed was quite lively,
and had probably forced out the soft plug, and in his squirming had
ousted his luckless companions.
[Illustration]
The caterpillars were all of the same kind, though varying in size,
their length being from one-half to three-quarters of an inch. To all
appearances they were dead, but more careful observation revealed signs
of slight vitality. Recognizing the species as one which I had long
known, from its larva to its moth, it was not difficult to understand
how my brushes might thus have been expeditiously packed with them. Not
far from my studio door is a small thicket of wild rose, which should
alone be sufficient to account for all those victimized caterpillars.
This species is a regular dependent on the rose, dwelling within its
cocoon-like canopy of leaves, which are drawn together with a few silken
webs, and in which it is commonly concealed by day. A little persuasion
upon either end of its leafy case, however, soon brings the little
tenant to view as he wriggles out, backward or forward, as the case may
be, and in a twinkling, spider-like, hangs suspended by a web, which
never fails him even in the most sudden emergency.
I can readily fancy the tiny hornet making a commotion at one end of
this leafy domicile and the next instant catching the evicted
caterpillar "on a fly" at the other. Grasping her prey with her legs and
jaws, in another moment the wriggling body is passive in her grasp,
subdued by the potent anæsthetic of her sting--a hypodermic injection
which instantly produces the semblance of death in its insect victim,
reducing all the vital functions to the point of dissolution, and then
holds them suspended--literally prolongs life, it would sometimes seem,
even beyond its normal duration--by a process which I might call ductile
equation. This chemical resource is common to all the hornets, whether
their victims be grasshoppers, spiders, cicadæ, or caterpillars. In a
condition of helpless stupor they are lugged off to the respective dens
provided for them, and then, hermetically sealed on storage, are
preserved as fresh living food for the young hornet larva, which is left
in charge of them, and has a place waiting for them all. The
developments within my brush-handles may serve as a commentary on the
ways and transformations of the average hornet.
[Illustration]
One after another of the little green caterpillars is packed into the
bamboo cell, which is about an inch deep, and plugged with mud at the
base. From seven to ten of the victims are thus stored, after which the
little wasp deposits an egg among them, and seals the doorway with a
pellet of mud. The young larva, which soon hatches from this egg, finds
itself in a land of plenty, surrounded with living food, and, being
born hungry, he loses no time in making a meal from the nearest victim.
One after another of the caterpillars is devoured, until his larder,
nicely calculated to carry him to his full growth, is exhausted. Thus
the first stage is passed. The second stage is entered into within a few
hours, and is passed within a silken cocoon, with which the white grub
now surrounds itself, and with which, transformed to a pupa, it bides
its time for about three weeks, as I now recall, when--third stage--out
pops the mud cork, and the perfect wasp appears at the opening of the
cell. I have shown sections of one of my brushes in the three stages.
This interesting little hornet is a common summer species, known as the
solitary hornet--one of them--_Odynerus flavipes_. The insect is about a
half-inch in length, and to the careless observer might suggest a
yellow-jacket, though the yellow is here confined to two triangular
spots on the front of the thorax and three bands upon the abdomen.
Like the wren among birds, it is fond of building in holes, and will
generally obtain them ready-made if possible. Burroughs has said of the
wren that it "will build in anything that has a hole in it, from an old
boot to a bombshell." In similar whim our little solitary hornet has
been known to favor nail-holes, hollow reeds, straws, the barrels of a
pistol, holes in kegs, worm-holes in wood, and spools, to which we may
now add bamboo brushes.
[Illustration]
Ovid declared and the ancient Greeks believed that hornets were the
direct progeny of the snorting war-horse. The phrase "mad as a hornet"
has become a proverb. Think, then, of a brush loaded and tipped with
this martial spirit of Vespa, this cavorting afflatus, this testy
animus! There is more than one pessimistic "goose-quill," of course,
"mightier than the sword," which, it occurs to me in my now charitable
mood, might have been thus surreptitiously voudooed by the war-like
hornet, and the plug never removed.