CHAPTER XXXVIII

ANNELIDS AND COELENTERATES

The important class of the annelids contains those creatures which we

generally call worms. There are a great many of these, but we shall only

be able to mention one or two.

THE COMMON EARTHWORM

This worm is really a most interesting as well as a most useful animal.

The way in which it crawls is decidedly curious. On the lower part of

every one of the rings of which its body is made up, with the sole

exception of the head, are four pairs of short, stiff, little bristles,

projecting outward from the skin. The worm really hitches itself along

by means of these bristles. First it takes hold of the ground with those

underneath the front rings, then it draws up its body and takes hold

with those underneath the hind ones, and then it pushes its head forward

and repeats the process; and so on, over and over again.

If you take a worm and pass it between your finger and thumb from the

tail-end toward the head, you can feel these little bristles quite

easily.

A worm does not often leave its burrow, however, but generally keeps the

tip of its body just inside the entrance, so that it can retreat in a

moment in case of danger.

Worms make their burrows in a very odd manner, for they actually eat

their way down into the ground, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of

earth until their bodies can contain no more. Meanwhile they have been

absorbing nourishment from this soil; but presently they come up to the

surface and pour out the mold which they have swallowed in the form of

what we call a worm-cast, after which they go down again and swallow

more, and so on until the burrow is sufficiently deep.

You will be surprised, we think, to hear how much earth is swallowed by

the worms in this way. Just think of it. Every year, in every acre of

agricultural land all over the country, worms bring up from below, on an

average, and spread over the surface in the form of worm-casts, no less

than fourteen tons of earth, or about seven large cartloads!

This is why worms are such useful creatures. They are always, as it

were, digging and plowing the soil. After a time the earth at the

surface becomes exhausted. Nearly all the nourishment is sucked out of

it by the roots of the plants. But the worms are always bringing up

fresh, rich, unused soil from below, and spreading it over the surface

in the form of what farmers call a top-dressing. They are doing, in

fact, exactly what we do when we dig our gardens or plow our

fields--burying the used-up soil that it may rest, and bringing up fresh

mold to take its place.

But, besides turning the soil over, they manure it; for almost every

night from early spring to late autumn worms are busy dragging down

leaves into their burrows. With some of these leaves they line their

tunnels, with some they close the entrances, and on some they feed. And

most of them decay before very long and turn into leaf-mold, which is

just about the very best manure that there is. So you see, the worms do

not merely turn the soil over, they enrich it as well, and help very

largely indeed to keep it in such a condition that plants can continue

to grow in it.

THE LUGWORM

The similar lugworm lives in sandy mud on the sea-shore; and when the

tide is out you may often see its casts in thousands. It is very largely

used by fishermen as bait. When it is carefully washed it is really

quite a handsome creature, for sometimes it is deep crimson in color,

and sometimes dark green, while on its back are twenty-six little

scarlet tufts, arranged in pairs, which are really the gills by which

the worm breathes.

The burrows of the lugworm are not quite like those of the earthworm,

for as its tunnels through the sand it pours out a kind of glue-like

liquid, which very soon hardens and lines the walls, so as to form a

kind of tube and prevent the sides from falling in.

THE TEREBELLA

This worm forms very much stronger tubes. It is common on many parts of

our coasts. But it is not very easily found, for at the slightest alarm

it retreats to the very bottom of its burrow, which nearly always runs

under large stones and rocks.

The terebella makes its tube by means of the little feelers, or

tentacles, which spring from the front part of its body. These have a

most wonderful power of grasp, and one after another little grains of

sand are seized by them, and carefully arranged in position. And when

the tube is quite finished, the animal constructs a little tuft of sandy

threads, so to speak, round the entrance, which you may often see in the

pools left among the rocks by the retreating tide.

THE SEA-MOUSE

Looking far more like a hairy slug than a worm, the sea-mouse also

belongs to the class of the annelids. You can easily find this creature

by hunting in muddy pools among the rocks just above low-water mark; and

most likely you will consider it as one of the dingiest and most

unattractive-looking animals that you have ever seen. But if you rinse

it two or three times over in clean water till every atom of mud has

been washed out of its bristly coat, you may change your opinion. For

now you will see all the colors of the rainbow playing over it--crimson,

purple, orange, blue, and vivid green--just as if every hair were a

prism. It would be difficult, indeed, to find any creature more

beautiful in the waters of the sea. This bristly coat is really a kind

of filter, which strains out the mud from the water that passes to the

gills.

LEECHES

Leeches, too, are annelids, living in fresh water instead of salt water.

They are famous for their blood-sucking habits, and when we examine

their mouths through a microscope we find that they are provided with

three sets of very small saw-like teeth, which are set in the form of a

triangle. When a leech wants to suck the blood of an animal, it fastens

itself to the skin of its victim by means of its sucker-like lips, and

then saws out a tiny triangular piece of skin. That is why it is so

difficult to stop the bleeding after a leech has bitten one. An actual

hole is left in the skin, which does not heal over for some little time.

And a great deal of blood is generally taken by the leech itself, which

will go on sucking away until its body is stretched out to at least

double its former size.

That is rather a big meal to take, isn't it? But then such meals come

very seldom. Indeed, when a leech has once gorged itself thoroughly with

blood, it will often take no more food at all for a whole year

afterward!

Leeches lay their eggs in little masses, called cocoons, which they

place in the clay-banks of the pools in which they live. In each of

these cocoons there are from six to sixteen eggs.

We now come to the last great class of animals about which we shall be

able to tell you--that of the coelenterates. It contains three most

interesting groups of creatures.

JELLYFISHES

You may have seen plenty of jellyfishes if at any time you have been

staying at the seaside, for they are often flung up on the beach by the

retreating tide. But if you were to go and look for them two or three

hours after seeing them, on a bright sunny day, you would find that they

had disappeared. All that would be left of them would be a number of

ring-like marks in the sand, with just a few threads of animal matter in

the middle of each. The reason would be that they had evaporated! That

sounds rather strange, doesn't it? But the fact is that the greater part

of the body of a jellyfish is nothing but water! It is quite

true that if you cut it in half the water does not run away. But then

that is equally true of a cucumber; and cucumbers, too, are made almost

entirely of water. The reason is the same in both cases. The water is

contained in a very large number of tiny cells; and when you cut either

the animal or the vegetable across, only a few of these cells are

divided, and only a small quantity of the water escapes.

Round the edge of the disk of a jellyfish which has just been flung up

by the waves you will find a number of long, slender threads. These are

its fishing-lines, with which it captures its prey, and they are made in

a very curious manner. All the way along they are set with a double row

of very tiny cells, in each of which is coiled up an extremely sharp and

slender dart. These cells are so formed that at the very slightest touch

they fly open, and the little darts spring out; and, besides this, the

darts are poisoned. So as soon as any small creature swims up against

these threads a number of the venomed darts bury themselves in its body,

and the poison acts so quickly that in a very few seconds it is dead.

Then other threads come closing in all round it, and in a very short

time it is forced into the mouth and swallowed.

Some jellyfishes are so poisonous that they are most dangerous even to

man. Only one of these, however, is found in the North Atlantic, almost

all the jellyfishes that one finds lying about on the beach being

perfectly harmless. But if, when you are bathing, you see a

yellowish-brown jellyfish about as big as a soup-plate swimming near you

in the water, be sure to get out of its way as fast as you possibly can;

for if its threads should touch any part of your body, you are almost

sure to be very badly stung. There is very little doubt, indeed, that

many swimmers have been killed by these creatures; while thousands of

unwary bathers have been laid up for days, or even weeks, from the

effects of their poison.

SEA-ANEMONES

What beautiful creatures are these--just like flowers growing under the

sea! Some are like dahlias, some like chrysanthemums, and some

like daisies, of all shades of crimson, and purple, and orange, and

green, and it is very hard to believe that they are really living

animals.

The tentacles of these creatures, which look so like the petals of

flowers, are set with little cells containing poisoned darts, just like

the fishing-threads of the jellyfishes. They can be spread out or drawn

back into the body at will, and when they have all been withdrawn the

anemone seems to be nothing more than a shapeless lump of colored jelly.

Anemones spend the greater part of their lives clinging to the surface

of a rock at the bottom of the water, the broad base of the body acting

just like a big sucker. They can crawl about, however, at will, and

sometimes they will rise to the surface of the sea, turn upside down,

hollow their bodies into the form of little boats, and then float away,

perhaps for quite a long distance.

But few sea-anemones are seen on our eastern coast, because, except in

the cool north, there are few rocks. On the warmer and rockier shores of

California and northward, however, these lovely creatures occur in great

variety.

CORALS

Last upon our list come those most wonderful little creatures which are

known as corals.

These are often called coral insects, but that is a great mistake. For

they have nothing to do with insects at all, and are as different from

them in every way as they can possibly be. They are properly called

polyps, and we can best describe them, perhaps as very small

sea-anemones. But they have one property which the anemones do not

possess, namely, the power of extracting lime out of the sea-water and

building it up round themselves in the form of coral.

These creatures may be roughly divided into two groups, the one

consisting of the simple corals, which only live together in very small

numbers, and the other of the reef-builders, which live in vast

colonies, and build up masses of coral of enormous size. The latter are

by far the more interesting, and the way in which they build up

immense banks of coral is very wonderful indeed.

Remember, first of all, that these animals multiply in two different

ways--sometimes by eggs, and sometimes by little buds, so to speak,

which grow out of the body of the parent. The polyps which hatch out

from eggs swim about for some little time quite freely. But after a few

days they fasten themselves down to the surface of a submerged rock, and

after that they never move again. Other polyps soon come and settle down

by them, and before very long there will be thousands upon thousands of

the little animals all growing, as it were, close together, and all

gradually building up coral underneath and round the margins of their

bodies.

When they reach their full size they begin to multiply by "budding."

Baby polyps sprout out all over their bodies, and these, instead of

swimming about for a few days like those which are hatched from eggs,

remain fixed where they are for the whole of their lives. Then they, in

their turn, begin to deposit coral, and as they have nowhere else to put

it they place it on the bodies of their parents, which before very long

are completely covered in. Now, you see, there is a second layer of

coral on the top of the first. Then in due course of time a third layer

is formed upon the second, and a fourth layer upon the third, each

generation being built in by the one that comes after it, till at last

the coral bank rises above the surface of the water. Then the work has

to stop; for these little creatures cannot live unless the waves can

constantly break over them. But although the bank cannot be raised

higher it can still be extended on all sides; and so the little polyps

go working on, year after year, till at last the results of their labor

are almost too wonderful to realize.

CORAL BANKS

These coral banks take three different forms.

First, there are the fringing reefs. These are great banks of coral

surrounding the shores of a tropical island, or running for long

distances on the coasts of the mainland. The island of Mauritius, for

example, is entirely surrounded by a fringing reef. These reefs

often spread out for miles into the sea, and they are only broken here

and there by narrow passages, where some river or stream is flowing out.

For the polyps cannot live in fresh water.

Next, there are barrier reefs. These are great walls of coral at a

distance from the shore, with deep water between the two. For the polyps

are unable to work at a greater depth than about thirty fathoms, or one

hundred and eighty feet, below the surface; and it often happens that

while there is deep water close to the shores of a tropical island,

there is shallow water farther out. In such a case the polyps have to

build out at sea, instead of close into the land, and there is a kind of

moat between the coral bank and the shore. In this case the bank is

called a barrier reef, and sometimes it is of enormous size. The Great

Barrier Reef, for instance, runs for no less than 1250 miles along the

northeast coast of Australia.

Then, thirdly, there are coral islands, or atolls. There are thousands

of these wonderful islands in the Pacific and the Indian oceans, and

others are still being slowly pushed up out of the sea. They always take

the form of more or less circular rings, in the center of which is a

lake of sea-water called a lagoon. The coral bank of which they consist

is seldom more than a few hundred feet wide, but sometimes the islands

are very large indeed. The biggest of all is ninety miles long and sixty

miles broad, while several others are not very much smaller. Soon after

they rise to the surface of the sea a kind of soil is deposited upon

them, made up partly of powdered coral, ground up by the action of the

waves, and partly of decaying vegetable matter which has been flung up

on them. Then sea-birds bring mud upon their feet from the mainland, or

from another island at a distance, and leave some of it behind them when

they settle down to rest; and in that mud are seeds of plants, which

soon begin to sprout and grow. So in a very few years the island is

covered with low vegetation. Then one day, perhaps, a floating cocoanut

is flung up, and that, too, takes root and grows, so that in course of

time there is a palm-tree. Other palm-trees, of course, follow; and the

result is that the first glimpse which a traveler gets of a coral island

is nearly always that of a row of palm-trees upon the horizon.

The simple corals live in almost all parts of the ocean. Some of them

are occasionally dredged up off our coasts, and can live in very cold

water. But the reef-builders are only found in warm seas, and are never

found working far outside the boundaries of the tropics.

How wonderful it seems that tiny creatures such as these polyps, which

really do not appear to be much more than little lumps of living jelly,

should be able to build up these vast masses of coral from out of the

depths of the sea! One cannot help wondering what the results of their

work will be if the world should last for a few thousand years longer.

It would really seem that by that time the tropical seas will be choked

up with coral islands, and the lagoons inside them will be filled up

with coral too; so that not merely islands, but continents, will have

been raised from the ocean by some of the smallest and weakest and most

insignificant of all living animals!

[Illustration: NORTH AMERICAN SEED-EATING SONG-BIRDS

1. Scarlet Tanager, or Black-winged Redbird. 2. Song Sparrow.

3. Baltimore Oriole. 4. Rose-breasted Grosbeak. 5. Cowbird.

6. Cardinal Grosbeak. 7. Purple Finch. 8. Indigo Finch.

All are adult males.]

WALKS WITH A NATURALIST

Suggestions for Teacher and Pupil in Nature Study

I

SPRING

Let us suppose that we are taking four country walks together, and

trying to use, in actual experience in the field, the information we

have been reading. The first shall be in the spring, the second in

summer, the third when autumn leaves are falling, and the last in

midwinter. We will go along the field-path, follow the lane through the

woods to the creek, then down the stream to the road, and so homeward.

There is plenty to be seen, this bright spring morning. The birds are

very busy, of course, for they have nests to build, and eggs to lay, and

little ones to take care of; so they are hard at work from the very

first thing in the morning till the very last thing at night. Almost

every sparrow that we see has a feather or a piece of straw in its beak,

and the robin which has just flown out of that tree with a terrified

squall has already finished building, and was most likely sitting upon

her eggs. Yes, there is her nest, you see, right on the lowest limb,

with four greenish blue eggs.

See that catbird, all lead-color, with a black cap. See her dodge into

that bush just beyond us. It is just the place for her nest; and, sure

enough, here it is. It is a rough affair, but she mews as pitifully at

us as if it were the finest of homes, and half a dozen other birds are

already screaming their sympathy. Let us just look at the eggs, and

remember that they are a deep polished green, and then walk on, for the

poor mother is very unhappy. We have no use for the eggs, and it

would be shameful to rob her; and, besides, we should thus destroy the

coming lives of four catbirds, who will be too useful as insect-hunters

in our gardens to be wasted.

This path is dusty, and we notice a great many pinhole doors of the

little black ants. The ants are running in and out of them, and if we

should carefully dig up the ground we would find a labyrinth of narrow

passages, here and there widening into chambers, and so learn that these

tiny holes are entrances to an ant-city whose streets are all subways.

Here are some larger ants--three times as big--a regular procession of

them going and coming out from under that half-buried stone, winding

through the grass, and then trotting up and down this tree-trunk. A lot

of them go out along that low limb. Let us climb upon the fence, and try

to see what it is that attracts them. Ah! This is the secret. Clustered

thickly on the bark are hundreds of minute green creatures, smaller than

pinheads. They are busily sucking the sap from the bark, and seem to

interest the ants greatly, for they are stroking these bark-lice

(aphids) with their feelers, and if we had a magnifying-glass we could

see that they were licking up a honey-like liquid which oozes out of two

short tubes on the back of each aphid.

A little distance beyond the ant's apple-tree a young maple stretches

one of its branches out to the sunlight just above our heads, where the

sharp eyes which young naturalists must keep wide open when they walk

abroad will notice a bird's nest hung under the shelter of its broad

outermost leaves. It is one of the loveliest nests in the world. A slim,

graceful, olive-green little bird glides out from beneath the

maple-leaves as we approach, perches near by and watches us silently.

Though she does not mew and scream as did the catbird, she is just as

anxious, you may be sure. Be easy, dear little vireo--for we know your

name--we shall not ruin your home. Let us pull the branch gently down a

little. Now we can see that the nest is a round hammock, woven of

grapevine bark and spider-web, and hung by its edges. It seems too

fragile to hold the weight of the mother, slight as she is; and in it

are three white eggs with a circle of pink and purple dots around their

larger ends. But here is also a fourth egg, much larger, grayish

white, and speckled all over with brown.

That is the egg of the cowbird, a sort of purple, brown-headed blackbird

which you may almost always see in pastures where there are cattle. The

cowbirds, like the European cuckoos, never build any nests of their own,

but put their eggs into those of other birds, and leave them to be

hatched. And they are very fond of choosing the nest of a vireo. One

would think that the mother would notice at once that a strange egg had

been placed in her nest, and would throw it out. But she never seems to

do so, but sits on the cowbird egg as well as on her own, so that in

course of time she hatches out three or four little vireos and one young

cowbird. Then what do you think the stranger does? Why, as soon as the

mother vireo goes out to look for caterpillars for food, it begins to

wriggle underneath the other little birds, and soon shoves them out of

the nest, one after another. Still more strange is it, that when the

vireo comes back she never seems to care that her own little ones are

all lying dead on the ground below, but gives all the food that they

would have eaten to the cowbird. And the greedy cowbird eats it all!

Until it is fledged she feeds it in this way, and takes the greatest

care of it, and even after it has left the nest and is able to fly about

she will come and put caterpillars into its beak.

Look at the trunk of this tree. Why has so much of the bark fallen away

from the wood? And what is this curious pattern engraved, as it were,

upon the wood--a broad groove running downward, and a number of smaller

grooves branching out from this on each side?

Ah! that is the work of a very odd little beetle, with a black head and

reddish-brown wing-cases. About eighteen months ago, probably, a mother

beetle came flying along, settled on the tree, and bored a hole through

the bark, just big enough for her to pass through. Then she began to

burrow downward between the bark and the wood, cutting the central

groove which you see in the pattern. As she did so she kept on laying

eggs, first on one side of the groove and then on the other, in the

short branch-tunnels, which she cut out as she went along. In this way

she laid, perhaps, eighty or ninety eggs altogether. When the last had

been laid she turned round, climbed up her burrow again, passed into the

hole by which she came in, and--died in it! And by so doing she blocked

up her burrow with her dead body, and so prevented centipedes and other

hungry creatures from getting in and eating up her eggs.

Early in the following spring all the eggs hatched, and out came a

number of hungry little grubs with hard, horny heads and strong, sharp

little jaws. Every one of these grubs at once began to make a burrow of

its own, boring away at right angles to the groove made by the mother

beetle, and cutting away the fibers which bind the bark to the wood. The

consequence was, of course, that by the time they were fully grown quite

a big piece of bark had been cut away. And very likely if we were to

come and look at the tree again in two years' time we should find that

the whole of the trunk had been completely stripped.

"Then these little beetles are very mischievous?" Oh, no, they are not;

for they never touch a healthy tree. They only attack those trees which

are sickly or diseased.

Here we are on the banks of the stream. Let us make our way home by the

path which lies beside it.

Ah! Did you see that flash of blue and white and orange that went

darting by, almost like a streak of many-colored light, sounding a loud

rattling call as he flew? It was a kingfisher, and if we stand quite

still for a minute or two, without moving so much as a finger, we shall

very likely see him again. Yes, there he is, sitting on that branch

overhanging the stream, and peering down into the water beneath. He is

watching for little fishes, upon which he feeds. There, he has caught

sight of one, and down he drops into the water, splashes about for a

moment or two, and then rises with a minnow in his beak. Back he flies

to his perch, slaps the little fish against the branch once or twice to

kill it, jerks it up into the air, catches it head foremost as it falls,

and then swallows it with one big gulp. A moment later he is peering

down into the water again on the lookout for another.

That hole in the face of the steep bank across the stream is the doorway

of the kingfisher's home. If we could get there, and should try to dig

it, we would find it a hard task; for from that round door a tunnel runs

into the ground probably six or eight feet, and ends in a

chamber where lie half a dozen pure white eggs, resting upon the bones

of fishes and scraps of every sort, which make a very ill-smelling place

for the young kingfishers to be born in; but they do not mind that.

The butterfly that has just floated by is a small tortoise-shell, and it

has lived through the winter, which kills nearly all of the butterfly

tribe. That is why its wings are faded and chipped, for it had six or

eight weeks of active life before it hid itself away, last of all, in a

hollow tree, and entered upon a six-months' slumber. Sometimes, on a

warmer day than usual, these and certain other butterflies will be

roused up, and will flutter about in the sunshine, so that now and then

you may capture a tortoise-shell even in the Christmas holidays.

The warm May sunshine is enticing out many a minute insect--gnats and

flies especially. Dancing companies of small sulphur yellow and other

companies of blue butterflies whirl about one another over the rapidly

growing grass.

Have you noticed among the May flowers how many are yellow? There are

dandelions, and yellow violets, and the modest fivefinger low in the

herbage, while above them tower great tufts of wild mustard and indigo,

the buttercups, the marsh-marigold, and many another.

The frogs and toads are less noisy than a month ago, and one sees fewer

masses and strings of eggs in the roadside ditches than in April; but in

their place the pools swarm with tadpoles, and it will be well worth

your while to keep watch of their growth. Try to find out what they eat,

and what eats them. Observe when the tail begins to disappear, and how

it is lost; when the legs begin to appear, and which pair first shows

itself. You may learn a lot of interesting facts about frogs and toads

before the summer is done, if you are diligent.

In this stream are a few turtles. Can you tell when and where they lay

their eggs? Keep careful watch of the little sandy beaches, and perhaps

you may see one digging a hole in which to bury her set of sixty or so,

leaving the sun to supply a better warmth than she could give them.

May is a month of activity for snakes. They have thrown off the

stiffness and drowsiness of their long winter torpidity, and, grown

thin after five months of fasting, are running about in search of food.

Let the frogs and toads, the beetles and young ground-sparrows and

mice--also weak from their winter trials--take heed, for the swift

blacksnake or sly garter, or rapacious water-snake will seize them

before they have time to squeal!

The water in the stream is still cool, but the fishes are struggling up

the current, pickerel are spawning in the weedy shallows, and among the

pebbles of the bottom a host of young creatures are beginning to grow

vigorous.

None among them is more active than the larval caddis-flies, or

case-worms, as anglers call them. Here is a caddis-fly now, its gauzy

wings folded tentwise over its back. All its earlier life was spent in

the water, and when it was a grub it lived in a very curious case, which

it made by cutting up a rush into short lengths, and sticking them

together by means of a kind of natural glue. When once a caddis-grub has

made one of these cases it never gets out of it again, but drags it

about wherever it goes. And if you try to pull it out you will find that

you cannot do so without killing it. For at the end of its body it has a

pair of strong little pincers, with which it holds on so firmly and so

doggedly to its case that you might actually pull it in two without

forcing it to loose its hold.

There are different kinds of caddis-flies, however, and the grub of one

kind fastens grains of sand together to make a case, while that of

another sticks two dead leaves face to face, and lives between them.

It would be an interesting task for a boy or girl to see how many

different kinds of caddis-flies, judging by their cases, lived in the

stream, and to keep them alive in an aquarium, and watch their behavior

and changes.

II

SUMMER

A walk in midsummer is a stroll through what seems a quiet world

compared with the noise and brightness of May. Then every leaf was green

and crisp, every bird in full song, and the world seemed to have

an air of gay youth, like a vigorous boy or girl full of eagerness and

activity.

Now as July draws toward its end the eagerness has subsided and the

year, like a lad grown a little older and more serious, has settled down

to regular work. Had our walk been taken before breakfast, we should

have heard no end of birds singing, it is true; but about the time the

dew dried from the grass most of them ceased their music. One reason,

besides the noonday heat, is that they are too busy to sing, for the

husband and father--and he is the singer of the family--must now help

his mate feed her young. We fear, however, he is not a very good

provider after the fledglings quit the nest, leaving most of their

support and schooling to the mother. At this season one may often come

upon and watch a little family group of this kind, and perhaps we may do

so.

Meanwhile let us sit down for a moment on this grassy bank--not too near

that fence-post, for do you not see twined about it that vine with the

reddish hairy stem, and the shining leaves in groups of threes? That is

the poison-ivy, which may cause an itching rash to break out upon your

skin if you touch it. You must learn to recognize and avoid this

"ivy"--which is not a true ivy, but a kind of climbing sumach--before

you go poking around in the fields, or you will be sorry. Do you notice

the delicious beeswax-like odor in the air? That comes from the big

yellow branches of blossoms on another and perfectly harmless kind of

sumach--that scraggly sort of bush just beyond the fence.

See how the bees are humming about it--some of them honey-bees from a

farmer's hive, others big bumblebees and small burrowing kinds. All are

in search of the minute drops of sweet liquid which each of the tiny

flowers in the blossom-head contains, and which turns into honey after

it has been carried a little while in the insect's crop, or lower part

of the throat, where it lodges. Then it is suitable to be really

swallowed, or to be coughed up and fed to the young bees at home, or

stored away in the cells of such bees as store up honey, for many wild

bees do not make such stores.

Besides its nectar, however, every flower contains a quantity of small

particles, like dust, which are produced in the heads of the little

thread-like interior parts of the blossom called the stamens; and in

order that the flower shall turn to a seed it is needful that some

grains of this dust, or pollen, shall fall upon another hollow part

called the pistil, and so pass down into its base. It is much better

that the pollen of one flower shall get into the pistil of another than

into its own. The wind manages this to some extent--especially for the

grasses--by shaking or blowing the loose pollen out of one flower and

into another.

But the bees help this process greatly, and so may be said to pay for

the sweets they use. Watch this one buzzing in front of that clump of

jewelweed. Suddenly the loud humming ceases, and the bee crowds herself

into the hanging, bell-like blossom, searching for the nectar. Now she

is backing slowly out, and you may see how her furry body is

half-powdered with yellow dust. That is pollen; and when she dives into

another "jewel" she will brush some of it off against the pistil there,

which is right in her way, and is very glad to accept her gift. So the

bees and other insects humming about the flowers in this hot sunshine

are not only getting their living but helping the plants to keep

vigorous and produce lots of healthy seed.

Now let us move on. The sky is filled with swallows. There are the

fork-tailed ones that make their nests inside the barn; the

square-tailed ones that form their curious bottle-shaped nests of mud on

the outside, under the eaves; and the purple martins that live in our

bird-house in the garden. They are darting and dashing and skimming

about in mid-air as though they did not know what it is to be tired; and

if only they were a little closer we should see that every one of them

has its mouth wide open. The reason is that these birds have very sticky

tongues, and that all the time they are in the air they are chasing

flying insects, bothersome gnats and mosquitoes among the rest. As soon

as one of these insects is touched by the tongue, it sticks to it. Then,

without swallowing it, the bird tucks it away in the upper part of its

throat, and goes off to hunt for another. After a time it has quite a

ball of little bugs packed away in this curious manner, and can carry no

more; so it flies off to its nest, and divides them among its little

ones.

Do you see that small olive-green bird sitting very erect on that

fence-post? There--it suddenly springs into the air, flutters up and

down for just half a moment, and then returns to the post. It is a

flycatcher, and for hours together it will go on catching insects just

in that same way. As it alights it tells us its name, calling

_Phoe-e-be, Phoe-e-be_ in a sad sort of voice, though there is

no reason to think it is sorrowful at all. If we should go down to that

bridge over the stream in the valley we would find its solid nest of

moss and mud among the stones of one of the piers.

The woodland path is not so good a place for birds as are more open

spaces; but one hears here the distant cooing of a dove, the

_chip-chur-r-r_ shout of the scarlet tanager, as red as fire

everywhere except on its black wings and tail, and often the tapping of

a woodpecker. There is one at work now on that tall dead stub. If you

want to see him you must keep perfectly still, for if he notices that he

is watched he begins to think some harm may follow, and either flies

away or stops work, scrambling around the trunk and peering out from

behind it with one eye to see what you mean to do next. See how firmly

he clings to the trunk. If you were close enough you could see that two

of the large-clawed toes at the end of his short strong legs and feet

were straight forward and two straight backward; and that he is also

propping himself up by means of his short stiff little tail, which is

bent inward, and really serves as a kind of natural camp-stool! Now he

is pecking away at the bark with his strong chisel-like beak, and making

the chips fly in all directions. Most likely the grub of some burrowing

beetle is lying hidden in the wood below, and he is trying to dig it

out. But he will not have to dig down to the very bottom of its tunnel,

for he has a very long slender tongue with a brush-like tip; and this

tip is very sticky. And with this, after he has enlarged the mouth of

the burrow, he will lick out the little grub which is lying hidden away

within it.

Now let us make our way to the path by the side of the stream.

What a number of galls there are on these oak-trees--some on the leaves,

some hanging down from the twigs in clusters, like currants, and some

growing on the twigs themselves! Do you know what causes them?

Well, a very tiny fly pricks a hole in a leaf, or a young shoot, by

means of a kind of sharp sting at the end of her body, and in that hole

she places an egg, together with a very small drop of a peculiar liquid.

This liquid has an irritating effect on the leaf, or twig, and causes a

swelling to grow; and when this has reached its full size, and become

what we call a gall, a little grub hatches out of the egg, and begins to

feed upon it. Sometimes there are several grubs in one gall. If we were

to cut one of those large red and white "oak-apples" to pieces, probably

we should find as many as a dozen, each lying curled up in a hollow

which it had eaten out.

If a naturalist had to choose some one place in which to carry on his

outdoor studies, he could find none better than the course of a small

rural river, and a year's work would not exhaust it. Just now, in

midsummer, he would be most interested in the nesting of the sunfish and

minnows. Let us steal quietly to the brink, where the turf forms a

little bank, a foot or so high, to which the bottom slopes up in clear

sand and gravel, with here and there a clump of bulrushes. Let us lie

down and scan this bottom through the clear water rippling gently by,

keeping very quiet, so as not to alarm any fishes which may swim near,

for they are the very fellows we wish to see.

Here comes a little one--a common shiner--no, a golden one--stealing

cautiously toward an open space. A much smaller fish--not so big as your

little finger--shoots past him and stops as suddenly as if it had run

against a wall, then an instant later is off again so swiftly you can

hardly see it move. No wonder it is called Johnny Darter! Meanwhile the

shiner, a minnow in a scale-armor of burnished gold, moves slowly on.

Where is he aiming? Ah! look over there. Do you see that low ring of

sand, about as large as a dinner-plate, running about some clear gravel,

as though the plate were strewn with small pebbles?

That is a nest of a sunfish; and look! did you see the swoop of that

gray shadow from the bulrushes? The shiner turned and fled like a bright

streak through the water; and now the gray shadow is poised over the

dish-like nest, and we see that it is the blue-eared sunfish, or

"punkin-seed," as you say the boys call it when they go a-fishing.

See how with its breast-fins it fans the gravel among which its eggs are

lying. They are so small and transparent that we cannot see them, but

they are there, and must be kept clean. So the fish stirs the water and

the current sweeps away everything which may have lodged there while the

owner was away for a few minutes. But he never goes far, for he must

guard his treasures against enemies like the shiner and other fishes,

salamanders, water-bugs, and the like, which would eat them if they

dared.

Butterflies innumerable greet us and dance along the roadside, as if to

see us safely home. Many are small and yellow, or white and yellow, with

handsomely bordered wings, and they are greatly interested in the

clover. Then we see plenty of little blues, very regular in outline, and

with them various coppers, distinguished by their orange and brown

colors, each with a coppery tinge and set off by black markings. The

hair-streaks are brown, too, with delicate stripes for ornaments on the

lower surface, which are shown neatly when the wings are closed upright

above the back. Did you know this was one of the distinctive marks of a

butterfly? A moth never holds its wings on high in that fashion.

But it is the larger butterflies that first catch the eye, such as the

monarch and the viceroy, the fritillaries, fox-red and black, with

trimmings of silver; the red admiral, and other anglewings, beautiful in

outline as well as in colors; the delicately pretty meadow-browns, and

the magnificent swallowtails and mourning-cloaks.

Don't you think it would be interesting and delightful to study these

exquisite creatures?

III

AUTUMN

It is a bright warm day in October; and once more, as we go for our

ramble, everything seems changed. The autumn flowers are blooming, the

autumn tints are in the leaves; and again there are different animals,

and different birds, and different insects almost everywhere around us.

We hardly take ten steps before there is a sudden commotion in a clump

of tall grass by the path, and a red-backed mouse leaps almost over our

toes and dives down a little hole which otherwise we should not have

noticed. Doubtless he carried a mouthful of grass-seeds to add to his

granary under ground. All over the country mice and gophers and

squirrels are doing the same thing. There's a big gray squirrel, now,

scratching a hole in the ground as busily as a terrier who thinks he

smells a mole. Suddenly he stops, drops a hickory-nut into the little

grave, paws the dirt and leaves over it, pats them down, and canters

away. All day he is burying nuts so that when, next winter, the trees

are bare, he may dig them up and feed upon their meat. Sometimes he

doesn't need to, or forgets, and then a tree may spring up. Many a fine

hickory or chestnut was planted in this way by squirrels.

[Illustration: CHICKADEE AND WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH.]

What is that red squirrel doing under the chestnut-tree by the side of

the lane? He is hard at work collecting chestnuts, stuffing his big

cheeks with them and carrying them away to hide for use next winter. He

seems to realize that although he will sleep in his bed under the stone

fence almost the whole time from Thanksgiving to Easter, he will wake up

now and then, on warm days, and will feel dreadfully hungry. But then

there will be little to be found in the way of food. So he is now

gathering nuts and acorns and dry mushrooms, and hiding them away so as

to be prepared. Some he puts in a hole in the trunk of a tree, others in

crevices in the stone wall; others he takes into his hole underground,

where his cousin, the saucy chipmunk, stores all of _his_ savings.

Notice how the pretty little animal uses his bushy tail as he scampers

along a branch. Do you see that he holds it stretched out behind him,

and keeps on turning it slightly first to one side and then to the

other? The fact is that it helps him to keep his balance. When a man

walks upon the tight rope he generally carries in his hands a long pole,

which is weighted at each end with lead. Then if he feels that he is

losing his balance, he can almost always recover it again by tilting up

his pole. The squirrel's tail serves _him_ as a sort of

balancing-pole, and by turning it a little bit to one side, or a little

bit to the other, he can run along the slenderest branches at full speed

without any danger of falling.

Everywhere we go we hear the whirring of grasshoppers, the chirping of

black crickets, and the shrill declarations of the katydids. A blind man

who could not see the scarlet of the maples, the deep crimson and purple

of sumachs, the pepperidge and the blackberry thickets, or the golden

glow in the birches as the sunlight strikes through them, would know the

season of the year by the sounds.

How do the insects make their noise--for one can hardly call it singing?

That will be a good subject for you to look up in your books. The air is

filled with the droning and humming of other insects; how are these

sounds produced?

We notice the insect-noises more, perhaps, because other animals are so

quiet. It is rare to hear the croak of a frog, or the piping of a

tree-toad or the note of a bird. What has become of the birds? When we

see a few they are in flocks, and seem very intent on traveling

somewhere. The truth is they are gathering in companies and journeying

away to the south, where winter, with its cold and snow and hunger,

cannot follow them. Next spring they will come back again, to spend the

summer with us.

Only those birds remain which can live upon seeds, or pick up rough fare

along the sea-shore. A band of small winged friends are flitting about

among the weeds ahead of us. Do you not know them? Look closely. Aren't

the canary-like form and black wings familiar? You would say they were

goldfinches if they were more yellow, wouldn't you? Now you see that

that is what they are, but in an olive dress. The fact is that all birds

molt their feathers twice a year. In spring the new feathers come out in

bright colors, and in autumn there worn gay coats are lost, and feathers

of duller hue take their place. Thus the brilliant yellow and black

goldfinch of summer becomes a quiet Quaker in winter. Such a change is

very advantageous to the birds--how, you may study out for yourselves.

Butterflies are scarce, too, but these have died, not run away, as the

birds are doing. One sees a good many sluggish caterpillars, however;

and sharp eyes may begin to find cocoons hanging from the bushes, or

tucked into crevices of bark, or plastered against rocks and the boards

of old fences. If you were to keep account of all the different kinds

you could find, you would soon have a long list; and if you were to

learn how to keep them properly and care for the butterflies and moths

which will come out of them in the spring, you could start an admirable

cabinet.

Here is a patch of milkweed. Examine each plant thoroughly because there

may be a gift for you hidden among the leaves. You have found "something

pretty," you say? What is it like? "Like a green thimble, with rows of

gold buttons on it." That is a pretty accurate description; only your

thimble is closed at the top, where it hangs by a short thread, and it

is heavy and alive, for it is the lovely chrysalis of the milkweed

butterfly. Next summer you must learn the appearance of that species,

which you can easily do, for it is one of our largest and commonest

ones.

Where the milkweeds grow you are pretty sure to see also masses of

goldenrod, and towering high above them the great, flowering pillars of

joepye-weed. Such clumps are good hunting-places for autumnal insects.

There gather the soldier-beetles, brilliant in uniforms of yellow and

black. They are sometimes so numerous as to bend down the plants by

their weight, and are in constant motion, crawling about the blossoms,

or flying from spray to spray. Here, too, come locust-boring beetles,

black with a line of yellow V's on the back, whose eggs are laid in the

soft inner bark of locust-trees; and fat short-winged blister-beetles,

or oil-beetles, which leave such a bad odor on the hands when touched.

This is due to an acrid oil which oozes out of the joints of the

beetle's legs when it is handled and thinks itself in danger. It is a

protection, for it both smells and tastes so nasty that no bird will

ever attempt to eat an oil-beetle. And its body is so very big because

it lays such an enormous number of eggs. How many eggs do you think an

oil-beetle will lay? Why, something like thirty thousand! She lays them

in batches in little holes in the ground, and a few days afterward a

tiny little grub hatches out of each egg, and begins to hunt about for

some flower that bees are likely to visit. When it finds one, it climbs

up the stem, hides among the petals, and waits. Then as soon as a bee

settles upon the flower it springs upon her and clings to her hairy

body. The bee is very busy collecting nectar and pollen, and the grub is

very tiny; so she never seems to notice that the long-legged little

creature is clinging to her, and carries it back with her to her nest.

Then the grub lets go, and proceeds to eat all the "bee-bread" which the

bee had stored up so carefully for her own little ones.

How is it that all the trees, bushes, and plants are covered with

threads of spider's silk, which often annoys us by getting on our hands

or faces? Let us help you to an answer. This is the time of year when

spiders are most numerous and most active; and many a spider trails

behind it a thread of gossamer wherever it goes, and leaves it there. On

many of the plants, bushes, trees, and fences you may see, if you look

closely, very small spiders resting. Those little spiders have been

taking a journey through the air--a sort of balloon trip. During the

summer a number of spiders, all living near one another, had big

families--a hundred or more in each. Perhaps you noticed in July and

August spiders dragging about large white bundles: they were packets of

eggs from which the young hatched. So many coming into the world

together made it difficult to find food. So, one by one, the little

spiders climbed low bushes or tall plants, and perched themselves on the

tips of the topmost leaves. Then each poured out from the end of its

body a slender thread of silk, which floated straight up in the warm air

rising from the heated ground.

At last each little spider had seven or eight feet of thread rising up

into the air above it. Then suddenly it loosed its hold of the leaf, and

mounted into the air at the end of its own thread, higher, and higher,

and higher, till it had risen several hundreds of feet into the air.

Then it met a gentle breeze traveling slowly overhead, and traveled

along with it, mile after mile, still resting on its thread. And when it

wanted to come down, all that it had to do was to roll up the thread

till there was not quite enough left to support it, and so it came

floating gently down to the ground below. Then, having no more use for

the thread, it broke loose from it and left it lying like a fallen

telegraph wire across the tops of the bushes and fences and other

things, where our faces brush against it.

What a pretty green fly this is sitting upon the fence, with delicate

gauzy wings looking like the most delicate lacework!

Yes, that is a lacewing fly. Just notice what wonderful eyes it has.

They look like little globes of crimson fire, and it is quite difficult

to believe that a tiny lamp is not alight inside the head. This fly lays

its eggs in a most curious way. Settling on a twig, she pours out a drop

of a kind of thick gum from the end of her body. Then, jerking her body

suddenly upward, she draws out this gum into a slender thread, which

hardens as soon as it comes into contact with the air; and just as she

lets go she fastens an egg to the tip. She then lays another egg in the

same manner, and then another, and then another, and so she goes on till

she has laid quite a little cluster of eggs--perhaps ninety or a hundred

altogether. You would not think that they were eggs if you were to see

them. You would be almost sure to think that the little cluster was a

tuft of moss. Indeed, for a great many years even botanists thought that

these eggs were a kind of moss, and put pictures of them in books of

botany accordingly!

Look at these odd little black and white spiders. How jerkily they run;

never moving more than an inch or so at a time, then stopping to rest,

and then generally darting off again in a different direction. They are

hunting-spiders, and are so called because they hunt for insects instead

of trying to catch them in a web. You may see one of these spiders

"stalking" a fly very much as a cat creeps up to a bird, and then

suddenly springing upon it and leaping into the air with its victim firm

in its grip.

Slowly the days grow shorter, the rains come more frequently, flowers

wither, and the herbage shrivels. Insects die off, the birds one by one

disappear quietly, or gather in flocks to journey southward, and the

woods grow quiet and gray.

IV

WINTER

As we look out of the window on a landscape of snow, or of half-bare

earth, frozen roads, and leafless trees, the world seems lifeless. But

one who starts out for a walk, anxious to discover whether all nature is

really dead, will soon find that it is very much alive, though much of

it is buried in slumber. Let us test it.

As we take the well-accustomed path we cannot but contrast the bareness

and silence with the activity and color and cheerful noise about us when

a few weeks ago we strolled this way. The thought saddens and

discourages us a little, when suddenly there comes to our ears

"_Chick-chick-a-dee-dee!_ Saucy note,

Out of sound heart and merry throat,

As if it said: 'Good day, good sir!

Fine afternoon, old passenger!

Happy to meet you in these places

Where January brings few faces.'"

There is the singer--half a dozen of them in fact--fluffy little gray,

black-capped birds not much bigger than a man's thumb, dodging busily

about the limbs of that old apple-tree, swinging with desperate clutch

at the tip of a twig, hanging head downward to get at a morsel on the

under side of the bough, and chattering all the time as though cold

weather were no hardship at all.

What do they find to eat? Keep your eyes on one, and see if you cannot

guess. He is pecking here and there at the bark, and swallowing

something so minute we cannot recognize it. But do you not remember how,

last summer, we watched the procession of ants climbing this very tree

to get honey from a "herd" of aphids on the branches? Those bark-lice

are still there, each hidden under a sort of scale, like a winter

blanket; and it is these that the chickadees are pulling off and eating.

It takes a great many of them to make a meal, and the birds must keep

very busy. Perhaps that is one reason why they seem so happy. A busy

person is usually a cheerful one.

When you meet a winter group of these merry tomtits it is well to wait

quietly for a little while, since you are pretty sure to find others

following them. There! do you hear that sharp tapping? Turn your head

and you will see a small woodpecker with its checkered black and white

coat, and a broad white stripe down the back, hewing away at the thick

bark of that oak. He is tremendously in earnest, and let us hope he

finds a good fat grub.

Gliding down the next tree-trunk comes something which for an instant we

take for a mouse--it is so bluish and furtive; but it is a bird--a

nuthatch--which has a straight slender bill almost like a woodpecker's,

and which digs into the cracks and crannies for eggs and hiding grubs of

small insects, now and then smashing a thin-shelled acorn for the wormy

meal it contains, or tearing to pieces the fuzzy cocoon of a

tussock-moth. It has an odd habit of working almost always head

downward, and now and then lifts its head and squeaks out a sharp

_nee-nee-nee_, as though it said "Never-mind-me. 'Tain't cold!"

Quite likely on the next tree a brown creeper--sedate brown little lady

of a bird--is gliding about the trunk, very daintily picking and

searching with her long slender and curving beak for similar hidden

food. She is a dear little creature.

Even prettier are the kinglets that often form one of this little

company of winter workers. They are the smallest of all American birds

except the hummers, and are olive green with tiny crowns of gold and

rubies, as one might say. They have the activity and nimbleness of the

chickadees, and toward spring cheer us with a brilliant song. These

lovely pygmies are cousins of the wrens; and one may sometimes see

flitting about the brush a real wren, which in summer flies away to the

far north, letting us hear for a few days in March, before he leaves,

specimens of the exquisite song with which he will make the Canadian

woods ring when next June he meets his mate and builds his nest among

the great pines and spruces.

Most of our birds, you know, flee southward, when cold weather

approaches, but some, like the crow, many birds of prey, as hawks and

owls, some game-birds, such as Bob White and the grouse, several of the

seed-eating sparrow tribe, and some others, such as the little fellows

we have been watching, stay with us, because they find plenty of food.

If we should go out every day of the winter we could make a long list of

these by the time All Fools' day came around. To it might be added a

goodly list of birds whose proper home is in Northern Canada, but which

in midwinter come south to a country which is less snowy if not less

cold. The snowbirds, with their satiny feet and ivory bills, dressed

like gentlemen in lead-colored coats and white vests, to which you toss

crumbs from the breakfast table every morning, are in this class.

Doubtless we shall see others as we turn down the wooded lane that leads

to the creek.

Here among these bushes is a good place to look for cocoons of moths and

butterflies. One is pretty sure to see at once a few of those of the big

Promethea moth folded within a large leaf, the stem of which is lashed

by silk threads to its twig so that it will not fall or be blown away.

Very likely on the same bush will hang a similar big cocoon, but this

one fastened all along the under side of the twig, so that it is

hammock-shaped. Search about among the heaped-up leaves beneath the

bush, and you may find the cocoons of the great Polyphemus silkworm-moth

and of that exquisite pale-green luna-moth which flits like a ghost to

our lighted windows on summer nights.

But these are the giants of their race. Hundreds of smaller cocoons and

chrysalids--papery, fuzzy, leathery, or naked and varnished to keep out

the damp, may be discovered in the crevices of the old fence, upon and

beneath the rough bark of trees, rolled up in leaves little and big, and

buried in the ground, where the moles hunt for them when the ground is

not frozen too hard, and the skunks dig them up.

How about the moles and the skunks? Well, the moles are by no means as

active as in summer, though they move around somewhat under the frozen

layer of top-soil, in search of the earthworms which have been driven

deep down by the frost. As for the skunks, they, like the woodchucks,

the chipmunks, and the red squirrels, are deeply sleeping in underground

beds; but plenty of four-foots are wide awake. See how that gray

squirrel is making the snow fly as he paws his way down to the nut he

buried three months ago! Only the tip of the plume of his tail waves

above the drift.

Do you see that double row of holes punched in the snow? Every country

boy knows them as the track of a rabbit, and would tell you how fast the

rabbit was going. But what embroidered on the glistening snow-sheet this

lovely chain that extends wavily from this tree to that stone wall? A

weasel. Little cares he for cold, in his white ermine coat; and many's

the careless sparrow, and snugly tucked-in mouse that falls to his quick

spring and sharp white teeth. The weasel's nearest cousin, the mink, is

working for his living, too, these winter days, haunting the warm

spring-holes in hope of catching eels or other fish. Perhaps we shall

see some signs of his work along the creek.

And now we have come to the end of the last of our rambles. But don't

think that we have seen nearly all that there is to be seen. If we had

been able to spend a little more time in the fields, or the lane, or the

wood, or on the banks of the stream, we should have noticed a great many

more animals and birds and reptiles and insects, quite as curious and

quite as interesting as any of those which we have met with. And if we

had taken a dozen rambles together instead of only four, each time we

should have found fresh creatures to look at, and fresh marvels to

wonder at, and fresh beauties to admire. For wherever we go nature

always has something new to show us; and the world is full of wonderful

sights for every one who has eyes to see.

NATURE-STUDY AT THE SEASIDE

Introduction

Many very curious and interesting creatures are to be found on the

seashore, and we dare say you would like to know something about them.

So let us take, in thought, four rambles along the shore together. First

we will go for a stroll on the sandy beach, which is left quite dry for

some little time when the tide goes down. Next, we will pay a visit to

the stretches of mud just above low-tide mark, left bare in the coves

for perhaps a couple of hours twice each day. For our third ramble we

will wander about among the rocks, and examine the creatures which are

crawling about on them, or burrowing into them, or hiding underneath the

great masses of seaweed with which they are covered. And then, lastly,

we will search in the pools which lie between the rocks, where we shall

probably find some of the most interesting animals of all.

We will suppose that these walks are on our Atlantic coast, for we have

not time now to explore the shores of the Pacific and describe its

animals, many of which are very different from those of the Eastern

coast.

I

ALONG THE SANDY BEACH

As all the coast of the United States south of New York, and Cape Cod

and Long Island besides, are formed of soil and pebbles ground off the

tops and sides of the Appalachian ranges of mountains, the ocean beaches

and the bottom of the sea near shore are all of sand, constantly swept

by currents, and moved by storms. On such a plain of shifting sand not

many plants or animals can live save those which are able to swim or to

bury themselves; and not nearly so long a list can be made as among the

rocks which give root-hold and shelter, or where the bottom is muddy, as

we shall see later; yet a walk will enable us to find a good many things

about which you ought to know something.

Here, for instance, are a lot of shells, the hard outer coats of the

soft boneless creatures we call mollusks, such as you know very well on

land as snails. When you have filled your little basket, if we asked you

to sort them into two kinds, you would be almost sure to put those which

consist of two pieces, attached together, into one pile, and those which

are in one solid piece, and more or less twisted like a snail, into the

other. This would mark a real division, for the first heap would have

the clam-like mollusks which we call bivalves, and the second would have

those coiled gastropod mollusks that we may call sea-snails.

The bivalves scattered along the beach are all dead and mostly broken,

for they have been washed up from muddy places; but many of the

sea-snails may be found alive and belong here on the sand, and so we may

look first at them.

Here is a big one to begin with which the southern fishermen call a

conch and the northern oystermen a winkle. It is shaped like a pear, and

pushing out of its shell a very tough muscular part of its body called

the foot, it plows along in the sand, or even burrows into it, small end

first, searching for food, which consists of animal matter, either dead

or alive. It finds this by its sense of smell, and when it comes to it,

thrusts out of its head, near the forward end of the foot, a long

ribbon-like tongue, covered with hundreds of minute flinty teeth, and

rasps away the flesh. Winkles are numerous everywhere and are of great

service in devouring dead fish, etc., which would pollute the water; but

they also eat a great quantity of oysters, as we shall see presently.

You will find two kinds, and should note how their shells differ.

Very likely you will find among the long rows of dead eel-grass and

drift-stuff marking the reach of high tides a twisted string of most

curious objects, each about as big as a cent, feeling as if made

of yellow paper and strung together like a necklace on a stiff cord.

These are the eggs of a conch, or more truly, the egg-cases, for in each

cent-like capsule was placed an egg. You can prove it by opening some of

them. In the dry ones you will probably find only dead young shells,

hardly bigger than pin-heads, which have hatched from the eggs; but now

and then you may pick up a soft and elastic set, and in these, which are

alive, or have only lately been torn from the weeds in deep water and

thrown upon the beach, you will find much larger baby conchs, which by

and by would have found a way out and begun to travel about.

We have already picked up several different sorts of slender, twisted

sea-snails of small size, and a few as big as a walnut and almost as

round, save for the circular opening out of which the animal pushes its

foot. His name is Natica, and he is one of the worst foes of the clam,

whose shell he bores. Here, half buried in the wet sand at the edge of

the gentle surf, is a living one, and we can see the grooved trail

behind him showing where he has traveled. We will pick him up, and see

how hastily he shrinks back into the armor of his shell, and shuts his

door with a plate growing upon the tip-end of his foot. All these

sea-snails have such a plate, sometimes thin and horny like this one,

sometimes thick and shell-like; and if you try to pry it away you will

have to tear it to pieces, for the frightened animal will not let go its

strong hold. He knows better than to open his door and let you pick him

out. Even if you did you would have to tear his body out piecemeal, for

he would by no means uncoil it from around the central post of his house

and let himself be dragged out whole. This door is a good protection,

then, against the claws of crabs and the nibbling teeth of fishes and

various small parasites which would like to get at him. It is called an

operculum.

Just lift up some of that seaweed and stuff which the waves have piled

up. Why, the sand underneath it is simply alive with sandhoppers,

besides various jumping and crawling insects, sand-bugs, spiders, etc.

But the sandhoppers are most numerous--there must be a hundred, all

skipping about so actively that it is quite difficult to follow their

movements. They were feeding upon the seaweed, and their sharp

little jaws are so powerful that if you were to tie up a few sandhoppers

in your handkerchief and carry them home, you would be almost sure to

find that they had nibbled a number of little holes in it by the time

that you got there! But surely such little creatures as sandhoppers

cannot do very much good, even by eating decaying seaweed. Ah! but there

are so many of them! Wherever the shore is sandy they live in thousands,

and even in millions. If you walk along the edge of the sea, sometimes,

when the tide is rising, you will see them skipping about in such vast

numbers that the air looks as if it were filled with a kind of mist for

a foot or eighteen inches from the ground. And though many of the

shore-birds feed upon them, and some of the land-birds do so, too, and

the shore-crabs eat a very great many, yet their numbers never seem to

grow less.

These sandhoppers are small cousins of the crabs with which we shall get

acquainted when we go to the mud-flat; and a search would find many

others, such as beach-fleas of various kinds. Here and there are strange

grooves, and--look! one of them is growing longer under our very eyes.

Dig away the sand just ahead of it, and see what you can find. There it

is--a small ivory-like creature, about twice as big as a pumpkin-seed.

It is a sand-bug, or hippa, and it burrows along just under the surface,

searching for minute particles of food among the grains and letting the

sand fall in behind it, for it does not mean to make a tunnel.

One of the waste objects you tossed aside was a piece of wood which the

waves have flung up, and which no doubt once formed part of a wrecked

vessel.

"And I don't wonder!" some one exclaims, "if all the timbers were as

rotten as that!"

The bit of timber is certainly ruined--but what has happened to it? It

is full of long round burrows, each about big enough to admit a

lead-pencil, and so close together that the walls between them are very

little thicker than paper; and every burrow seems to be lined with a

kind of glaze.

That is the work of a curious creature known the world over as the

ship-worm, which often does a great deal of mischief by burrowing into

the hulls of ships and the timbers supporting wharfs and harbor-side

buildings. It has a soft round body no bigger than a piece of stout

string, and often nearly a foot in length. But it is really a

shell-bearing mollusk, like the cockle and the clam. And if you were to

look closely at the fore end of its body you would see its bivalve

shells, although they are so very small that they might easily be

mistaken for jaws.

When first this animal hatches from the egg it is not in the least like

its parents. It is just a little round-bodied creature covered almost

all over with hairs, by waving which up and down it manages to swim

about in the water. But it does not keep its shape very long, for if you

were to look at it about thirty-six hours later you would find that it

was oval instead of round. Twenty-four hours later still it would be

almost triangular, while next day it would be almost round again. And so

it would go on changing its form day after day, till at last it fastened

itself down by its fleshy foot to a piece of sunken timber and began to

burrow in it. And then at last it would take the form of its parents.

The birth and growth of most of the bivalves is similar to this; and it

must be remembered that these changing larval forms are hardly large

enough to see.

Another timber-destroyer all along the New England coast is the gribble,

a crustacean related to the sandhoppers, which is not bigger than a

grain of wheat, and looks like a pill-bug. It devours wood wherever it

finds it under water, and will gradually honeycomb and weaken until they

fall to pieces the bases of piles, boat-stairs, and other timbers under

water which are not sheathed with copper or filled with creosote.

Therefore it is much hated.

A sandy beach is not the place for crabs in general, but there is one

kind which we ought to find here. There is one now, but one might wager

something that you can't discover it in its hiding-place unless shown to

you. Do you see those two little round objects on short stems sticking

half an inch out of the sand by that old winkle-shell? Yes? Well, please

go and get one or both of them. What! is it alive? some sort of crab,

buried in the sand? All right--pick it up, but look out it doesn't nip

you! Those claws are powerful, for with them the crabs must seize and

firmly hold struggling, slippery fish and other animals, until it can

subdue and eat them. Notice how the hind legs are flattened into strong

paddles to enable it to swim swiftly upon its prey. In spite of these

fierce qualities we call this one a lady-crab, because of its richly

ornamented costume--greenish yellow profusely marked with purple rings.

It spends most of its time crawling or swimming in the sea where the

bottom is sandy and the water shallow, but now and then comes ashore and

buries itself in the dry sand, all but its stalked eyes, as we found

this one.

A smaller, lighter-colored, and more square-bodied cousin of this

crustacean, called the ghost-crab, is very common on southern beaches,

where it digs slanting burrows deeply into the sand. Prof. A. G. Mayer

tells us that it is a scavenger, feeding on dead animals, and also

catching and eating beach-fleas. It is at night that they are most

active. "As they flit rapidly about in the moonlight their popular name

of ghost-crab seems remarkably appropriate. As one approaches they dash

off with great rapidity, and will often rush into the water, although

the gray snappers are swimming close along the shore in order to devour

them."

What have you found now? It appears to be a horseshoe-shaped skillet, or

frying-pan, made of brown parchment, with a long spike loosely hinged to

one side for a handle, and a big crab lying on its back in the pan. No

wonder you are surprised. The first white men who came to this country

were equally so, for nothing of the sort is to be seen in any other part

of the world, except in the Malayan islands. If we search we are likely

to find one alive and creeping about, and then we shall see that the

skillet is a broad shield covering the back of an animal, and that what

we thought was the crab inside it, is its body and legs. When you come

to study natural history more deeply you will learn many very

interesting things about this strange inhabitant of our beaches, which

is known as a horseshoe-crab, or king-crab, and also as limulus. It is

the sole remnant of a great tribe of sea-animals called trilobites,

which became extinct ages ago.

One more curiosity must be mentioned before we quit this first short

walk upon the open beach--what the fishermen call the mermaid's-purse,

of which, see, you have found several.

It is an egg, but you never would have suspected it, would you? Examine

it. It is about two inches long, and made of a hard, black, leathery

substance, and at each of the four corners there is a little projection

about an inch in length. It is the empty egg of a skate--a fish of the

shark tribe with a broad, flat body and a long whip-like tail--from

which one of these curious fishes has just escaped. How do you think it

got out of the egg when the time came for it to be hatched? Just look at

this empty case, and you will see. At one end there is a slit running

across it almost from one side to the other, made in such a manner that

the little fish could easily push its way out, while none of its enemies

could push their way in. So the baby skate lay in its cradle in safety

till the time came for it to pass out into the sea.

But here is an egg made in just the same way, with one little

difference. Instead of having a short straight projection at each

corner, it has a long, coiled, twisted one, much like the tendril of a

grapevine. That is the egg of one of the small sharks called dogfish,

which are so called because they swim about in parties or packs of fifty

or sixty together, driving herring and other fishes before them, as dogs

drive deer. The skin of a dogfish is as rough as a piece of sandpaper.

When the eggs of this fish are first laid, the twisted projections at

the ends coil themselves round the stems of weeds growing at the bottom

of the sea, and hold them so firmly that they cannot be washed away; and

at each end there is a small hole, so that a current of water may always

flow through this egg-case and over the little fish inside--something of

just as much importance to it as is a supply of air to a land-baby.

II

SEARCHING THE SHORE AT LOW TIDE

The shore of the eastern United States, at least south of New York, is

formed of a line of long narrow islets whose outer beaches, and the

sea-floor for miles out, are pure sand. They support very little life,

as has been said. Behind them, however, are shallow bays and sounds, in

which the water, though salt, is usually warm and still; mud gathers

upon the sand, and eel-grass and other water-weeds grow in abundance.

Here is excellent ground for naturalists, old or young, and in a single

walk you can discover enough to surprise you greatly. We must go when

the tide is low, and it will be a good idea to take our rubber boots, so

that we may not be afraid of the wet mud. We will also take a small

spade or strong trowel, and some boxes and bottles.

What a lot of clam-shells are lying about the shore! There are two

kinds, the soft clam and the hard clam; but none of them are alive.

How is this? We have already learned, you will remember, that the clams

are bivalves; that is, the shell is in two pieces, hinged together by an

elastic ligament over the back, and covering each side of the animal.

The soft body is attached to each shell by a strong muscle, by which the

creature can pull the shells tight together, and so cover itself

completely. When it wishes, however, it lets the shells spring open

somewhat, so that it may put out from between their lower edges its

muscular "foot," and perhaps move about, while out of the front end it

stretches a double-barreled tube, called its siphon. Down one of the

tubes is sucked a stream of water which not only bathes the animal's

gills, or breathing organs, but carries minute floating particles of

food into its stomach, after which the waste water is forced out of the

other tube.

Now you will understand what we shall see, and are ready for the answer

to our question. You never find live clams crawling about the sand,

because they live buried in the mud.

Now let us put on our boots and look about on the surface of the wet

mud. Do you see ahead of us those little jets of water come spouting up

into the air as if squirted out of tiny syringes? Every one of these

little jets is thrown up by a soft clam, which lies perhaps several

inches deep in the mud, with its siphon stretched up to the surface and

held full of water, waiting for the tide to come in and refresh it. When

it feels the jarring of our footsteps it squirts the water out; and

you must dig deep and fast if you want to catch it. This is what those

men are doing out there on the flat--digging out clams with long spades,

and filling their baskets for market. Thousands of little ones lie in

the mud, not yet big enough to eat.

The soft clam is a shapeless sort of mollusk, with a thin chalky shell,

not at all pretty; but the hard clam, or quahog, is thick-shelled and

regular in outline; and in an end-on view takes the shape of an ace of

hearts, like the Venus-shell, or the cockle, which is so commonly eaten

in Europe. This species likes much deeper water than the soft clam, and

is gathered mostly from boats, by a kind of rake; but we shall no doubt

find a few up here. Do you see that scratch in the mud? It looks like a

trail, and there at the end is the traveler himself, standing upright in

the mud like a half-buried wedge.

This shows another difference between the two clams; for while the soft

clams and their relatives, such as the pretty razor-fish, and the "old

maid" of English bays, never leave the burrow where they begin life, the

quahogs slowly wander about all the time. As for the scallops, they

fairly skip and jump.

What are scallops? Well, we shall hardly see much of them, for they live

in deep water; but their half-shells are to be seen cast up everywhere,

for they also are bivalves. Our common ones are usually about the size

of a silver dollar, and fan-shaped, the thin shell ribbed like the

sticks of a fan, and the margin crinkled, and they are variously

colored, but mostly in tints of reddish and yellow.

Several small bivalves and sea-snails may be added to our collection

from this uncovered bay-bottom, and here and there spaces are fairly

sprinkled with little blackish fellows about the size of hazelnuts. When

we have gathered a handful we shall find we can sort out three or four

kinds.

A very curious denizen of the tide-flats of our Southern States is the

pinna, a large bivalve with thin horny shells shaped like a slightly

opened fan, which lies deeply buried, point down. The edges of its shell

come just at the surface, and are exceedingly sharp, so that barefooted

persons have to be very careful how they step where pinnas are common,

as on the Gulf coast of Florida, and it is no wonder the people there

call them razor-fish. Lying there in the mud, with its shells parted,

and a current of water always sucking down what we may call its throat,

it forms a regular trap for little fishes and other small creatures. The

instant one swims between the shells, they close and the unfortunate

curiosity-seeker finds himself in a prison from which there is no escape.

When a young pinna settles down in its place it at once anchors itself

to some rock or fixed thing below it by throwing out from near its

lower, narrow end a bunch of very strong threads, which hold it down so

firmly that it takes a very hard pull to tear them away. This

anchor-cable is called a byssus.

A short distance from us a narrow stream wriggles through the salt

marsh, and we can get into a rough little boat and paddle down toward

that old wharf whose weedy piles are covered with interesting things,

which we may examine now that the ebbing tide has left them uncovered

for a few hours. The peaty banks, with their growth of harsh salt-grass

and algæ, will keep our eyes busy as we float along the black and

winding creek.

Now we shall get acquainted with some of the crabs. Look sharply down

into the water and you will see the large "blue" crabs which we buy in

the market, and eat, swimming near the bottom or crawling over the mud

near the banks. There is one, now. He doesn't look very blue, nor very

appetizing, does he? His back is brown and muddy, to be sure; but his

big claws and lower plates have much more blue upon them than has any of

the other large crabs, and so he gets the distinguishing name.

But, you say, you have heard of "hard-shell" and "soft-shell" crabs, and

want to know the difference? It is simply a difference of condition. If

you will turn to page 397, you will find described that extraordinary

process by which crabs grow, by throwing off their stiff old skins and

expanding to fill the elastic new one which has formed underneath.

Before this change, the creature is a "hard-shell" in fishermen's

language, and just afterward, when he is large and tender, he is

naturally a "soft-shell"; and then is the time to eat him.

Notice how the black masses of peat along the banks are honeycombed with

holes, as if somebody had been pushing down the point of his umbrella.

They are the homes of little fiddler-crabs, which scuttle into them by

the hundred as we approach, and then creep up to peer out after we have

passed by, and make sure it is safe to go abroad again. In other holes

live two other sorts of burrowing crabs. One is the little mud-crab

(_Panopæus_), which is a peaceful cousin of the fiddler; and the

other is the sand-crab (_Ocypoda_) whose peculiarity it is to be

perfectly sand-colored, so that it is almost impossible to see him until

he moves; consequently he is commonly found only in the sandy places.

As we float nearer to the mouth of our winding creek, we begin to notice

bunches of mussel-shells, clinging closer to each other than grapes in a

bunch; and when we try to pick one up we find it quite immovable. In

fact, they are anchored to the roots of the grasses, and to each other,

by a bunch of byssus threads from each mussel, like those of the pinna;

and these threads are so strong that they can hold the mussels firm

against the beating of the waves, so that a shore which is thickly

covered with mussels is safe from wearing away. You may see an example

of this in the tideway at the mouth of this very creek, and masses of

mussels strengthen the supports of that wharf we are approaching. If you

were to go near the town of Bideford, England, you would see a bridge of

twenty-four arches, which runs across the Torridge River close to the

place where it joins the Taw. Now that bridge is held together by

clusters of mussels! The force of the stream is so great, that if mortar

is used to repair the bridge it is very soon washed away. So from time

to time large boat-loads of mussels are taken to the spot and shot into

the water, and they fasten themselves so firmly to the bridge by means

of their byssus threads, that they actually hold together the stones of

which it is built!

These binding mussels are mostly of the smooth, dark-blue sort which are

found on both sides of the Atlantic, and in Europe are gathered and

eaten. When our people become a little wiser and more economical, we

also will take advantage of this great stock of excellent food right at

our doors.

But in the bunches which are scratching the side of the boat as we glide

along close to the bank are some which are much larger, though smooth,

like the edible mussels. They are an American species. Then here and

there in peat you may see a sort whose shell is rough, with ridges

spreading out toward the large end, and these you may call

horse-mussels.

Now we have got down to the boat-landing toward which we have been

lazily drifting, and we will twist the chain around one of the piles

that support it, and stop long enough to take a look at one of them.

Most of the time each pile is under water, and therefore is overgrown

with a thick "fur" of plants and animals.

You will see that most of this fur consists of seaweeds, but their

leaves are often the resting-place of several sorts of lowly animals.

Indeed, you must look sharp to make sure whether some of the feathery

tufts that droop from a dank old post, or spray out so beautifully in

the ripples at its foot, are plants or animals. We will not talk about

that just now, but wait till we take our excursion to the rocky shore,

where we shall find barnacles and corallines and sea-mats and polyps

bigger and better than here.

But do you see between those green fronds that roundish yellow object

about as big as a filbert? Touch it gently. Did you see tiny jets of

water squirt out of two little nozzles on its surface? That gives it the

name of sea-squirt. Into one of the nozzles, when the tide comes over

it, is constantly sucked a current of sea-water which passes into a

stomach-like cavity, where the minute particles of food in the water are

caught and digested; then the water passes on through another cavity

where the blood receives its oxygen, as in our lungs or a crab's or

fish's gills, and then rushes out. So this little object is a real

animal, with heart, blood, stomach, and something in the way of

nerves--enough, at any rate, to feel your touch, shrink, and squirt out

all the water in its bag-like body.

There are a good many kinds and forms of these ascidians, as naturalists

call them, some larger, some waving about on the summit of stalks like

lily-buds, and some clustered into colonies grown together, which form

bands around the stems of plants, or make masses called "sea-pork" by

the fishermen, or float in chains, by millions, on the surface of the

open sea.

Here, too, are small red and yellow sponges; some coarse little

sea-anemones, etc.; and wandering over the whole, feeding upon one or

another of these, and cleaning the polyps and polyzoans off the algæ,

are a sort of marine daddy-long-legs, called no-body crabs, because they

seem all legs and look crab-like.

It isn't very sweet-smelling under this damp old wharf, where the rising

tide is beginning to bathe the piles, and one after another plants and

animals are expanding as they feel the refreshment of the water around

them; and we will move away as soon as we have dug a few things out of

the mud, soon be hidden by the tide.

Let us run the bow of our boat up on that soft black slope, and see what

we can find by leaning over the side. Just look at this hairy object,

for instance, which has been left by the retreating waves. It seems like

a big brown slug covered with bristles and is not very pleasant to

handle; but you needn't be afraid of it, and you mustn't be squeamish.

Just dip up some water in that pail, and rinse it till you have washed

every scrap of mud from its bristly coat, and then look at it in the

sunlight. Do you think it is dull and dingy now? Did you ever see a more

beautiful creature? This animal is called the sea-mouse, although really

it is a kind of sea-worm and if you will turn back to page 429 you will

find it described. The reason why its coat is always so dirty is that

the bristly hairs which cover it act as a sort of filter, and strain out

the mud from the water which is passing to the gills. But these hairs

have another use as well. Each one is really a sort of slender spear,

with a barbed tip, the edges being set with a number of sharp little

points, all directed backward, forming a capital protection from such

creatures as the fishes, a great many of which would be glad to feed

upon sea-mice if it were not for their coating of spines.

Do you see those twisted little coils of muddy sand scattered about on

the mud? Those are the casts of lugworms, which are made in the same way

as the casts of earthworms seen in our garden-paths on damp mornings;

in fact, these lugs are just marine earthworms (see page 427), and like

them eat their way down into the mud, swallowing mouthful after mouthful

for the sake of nourishing particles in it, and then voiding the useless

remainder.

Perhaps you wonder how it is that the burrows of the lugworms remain

open. Why doesn't the mud close in behind the animal? The fact is that

the worm is always pouring out from its skin a sticky slime which

quickly becomes quite hard and firm. And this binds the sandy mud

together as the worm forces its way down, and forms a kind of lining to

its burrow, just like the brickwork with which we line our railway

tunnels.

You would scarcely suspect what interesting and often beautiful worms

lie buried in the mud or muddy sand of sea-beaches and salt marshes.

They occur elsewhere, too, as upon weedy rocks, while a great many kinds

dwell upon or within the bodies or coverings of other animals, from

whales to periwinkles and crabs.

Most of the beach-worms belong to the highest class of the tribe, called

annelids because their bodies are made up of ring-like segments (a

little ring in Latin is _annellus_), as you can easily see by

examining one of the angleworms you dig in the garden for fish-bait. The

red lugworm, or "red thread," as it is often called, is another plain

example of this structure.

Digging down by low-water mark we are likely to unearth one or more of

the ribbon-worms which, when they are large, seem rather terrible. Their

bodies are flat, so that when they swim they move through the water like

a floating ribbon, and they have been found five or ten feet long and as

wide as your palm. Such big ones are rare, however, and we are more

likely to have to deal with one two or three feet long and less than an

inch broad. They are active creatures, burrowing into and through the

mud in search of other worms upon which they feed, and which they seize

by thrusting out a sticky proboscis. There is also a smaller one, pink

in color, while the bigger species is yellowish.

Though we may not dig up a ribbon, we are pretty sure to turn out a

nereis, or clam-worm, as the fishermen call it--a reddish creature a

foot or two long, looking like a centipede, for there is a pair of

minute feet on each ring, and every foot is feathered with a gill. This

also is a ravenous enemy of all other worms or animals it can overcome;

and young clams, limpets, starfish, and other protected creatures must

be thankful for their armor when it comes crawling near them. Its rich

green and salmon coat has no charm in their eyes, you may be sure. But

the nereis itself must have its fears, for it is not only hunted by

ribbon-worms, by a big active annelid called "four-jawed," and by

winkles and dog-whelks, but is well liked by various fishes; and, last

misfortune of all, it is constantly sought by fishermen for bait. In

spite of all this, clam-worms of all kinds remain immensely numerous all

along the coast. On calm summer nights they leave their burrows, swim up

to the surface at high tide, and cast out vast numbers of eggs, from

which presently hatch little pear-shaped larvæ, which swim about a short

time, when the few that have survived settle down, change to the

worm-like form, and burrow into the mud.

When we come to explore the rocky places, and peer into the still pools

left by the ebb-tide among the reefs and boulders, we shall make the

acquaintance of some other worms that display themselves in such places

as in a natural aquarium.

III

ON THE ROCKY LEDGES

There are practically no rocks on our Southeastern coast, so that we

must imagine ourselves now somewhere in New England--let us say on the

southern shore of Rhode Island. All along the north side of Long Island

Sound, about Buzzards and Narragansett bays, and then from Boston Harbor

right up to Labrador, the shore is rock, with many headlands, reefs, and

islets, separated by shallow coves or by swift tidal runways. This is

good hunting-ground for the seaside naturalist, and one visit to the

space left uncovered at low tide will be no more than a glance at what

might easily keep us busy and interested a whole summer through.

As the water ebbs away, the tops of the ledges and boulders emerge like

the hairy heads of some sea-monsters, for they are mostly overgrown with

long tresses of olive-brown rockweed and green ribbons of sea-cabbage,

(_Ulva_), which trail, wet and shining, down their sides. Step

carefully, for it is all extremely slippery. Do you hear that continual

popping under your feet? That means that you are crushing the little

bladder-like swellings strung like big beads on the stems of the

rockweed. They are filled with air, and keep the long and heavy stems

and leaves of the weed afloat, as you may see if you look down where it

is swishing back and forth in the lapping waves. These plants must be

exceedingly strong to resist the pulling and pounding of the surf in a

storm; and their power to keep afloat by means of these gas-filled

"bladders" is of assistance, not only in enabling them to hold together,

but to form a breakwater which protects the rocks and ledges they cover

from being beaten to pieces by the surf.

Underneath and upon these masses of seaweed hide a great quantity and

variety of small plant and animal life, some of which we shall be able

to find and study, though a large part of it requires more thorough work

than we have time for, and the aid of a microscope.

But first let us look at some of the bare places, where there is no

seaweed. Here is a black rock with white patches of rough little things

growing upon it by the hundred. They are not mollusks, however, but

rock-barnacles (see page 407), which English boys call acorn-shells.

They are small and distant cousins of the crabs.

The story of these barnacles is a very curious one. When first they

hatch from the eggs which older barnacles have cast out into the sea,

they are not in the least like their parents, but are queer little

round-bodied creatures, smaller than pin-heads, with six feathery legs

by which they paddle about, one round black eye, and two feelers. Every

two or three days they throw off their skins, as caterpillars do, and

appear in the new ones which have formed underneath; and every time they

do this they change their shape, so that sometimes they are round, and

sometimes oblong, and sometimes almost triangular!

At last they reach their full size. Then they cling with their feelers

to the first rock, log, or other hard thing they come to, and pour out a

drop or two of a very strong cement, which hardens around them and

fastens them firmly down. After this they never move again; but a day or

two later they change their skins once more, and appear as perfect

acorn-shells.

Now look at one of them carefully through this magnifying-glass. Do you

see that there is a little hole in the top of the shell, which is made

of several pieces? That is the hole through which the animal inside

fishes for food. If you were to watch it when the rocks are thinly

covered with water, you would see that it kept poking out a net-like

scoop, and then drawing it in again. This net really consists of the

hairy legs; and as they wave to and fro in the water they collect the

tiny scraps of decaying matter on which the little creature feeds. They

also bear the gills by which the barnacle refreshes its blood.

You must be very careful not to knock your hand against these shells

when you are hunting about among the rocks, for their edges are so sharp

that they cut almost like knives.

"Another sort of barnacle," you say you have found? No: there _are_

other sorts--the strange goose-barnacle, for instance, which attaches

itself to the bottoms of ships--but what you have found is one of the

limpets, and that is not a crustacean, but a gastropod mollusk. It is

shaped like a tiny rough mountain, or rather like a volcano, for you see

there is a hole in its summit; and we call it the keyhole limpet on

account of the shape of that hole. Pick it up. Oh! you can't, eh? Of

course not. Pull and push as hard as you like, you won't be able to move

it, nor can the heaviest waves wash it off.

Would you like to know why?

Well, the reason is that a limpet clings to a rock by turning the whole

lower surface of its body into one big sucker; it presses it tightly

against the rock and then lifts the middle part. The consequence is that

a chamber is formed in which there is nothing at all--no water, not even

air; and, as happens when you lift a brick with a small leather sucker,

the weight of the atmosphere presses down upon it so strongly

that no force you can bring to bear will pull it off.

However, a limpet is not gripping the rock all the time with such vigor;

he would literally be tired to death, and starved to death, too, if he

didn't ease up most of the time. It is only when he is alarmed by a

touch that he clamps down. If you want to get him free, just wait till

he loosens up, then hit him a sudden sharp blow on one side with a stick

or stone, and knock him off. Then you will be able to examine the soft

body and see how he is built.

Limpets are vegetable-feeders, and when the water is still, or absent,

they creep slowly about the rock, nibbling the tiny vegetation on its

surface. Another interesting fact in limpet-life is told on page 421.

Another kind of limpet is very common on those rocky shores, which is

shaped somewhat like a loose round-toed slipper or a French

_sabot_. This is the slipper-limpet, or half-deck, as fishermen

call it.

On the lower rocks near the water, and hidden in among the wet seaweeds,

lie many small spiral gastropods which we call periwinkles. Two of the

commonest kinds are littorinas, marked with fine lines and colors in

various ways. Another, reddish with chestnut bands, is named

_Lacuna_; and you may pick up several kinds of small blackish ones,

such as _Bittium_, or of light-colored ones, as _Rissoa_,

which is prettily mottled; while numerous in some places is the

purple-shell or _Purpura_, which is interesting because it belongs

to the European shores as well as to ours, and because from it the

ancients gathered some of their purple dye, although another mollusk

(the murex) furnished most of it. But in old times the coast people,

both of old England and New England, obtained from this little mollusk

an indelible violet ink with which to mark their clothes.

Would you like to see a little of this dye?

Very well, you can easily do so. Look! Hold the purpura over this sheet

of white paper, and give the animal a little poke with the head of a

pin. There! It has squirted out a drop of liquid upon the paper. It does

not look much like purple dye, does it? It looks very much more like

curdled milk. But lay it in the sunshine and notice what

happens. Do you see? It is turning yellow. Now a blue tinge is creeping,

as it were, into the yellow, and turning it to green. The blue gets

stronger and stronger, till the green disappears. And at last a crimson

tinge creeps into the blue, and turns it to purple.

Another curious thing about the purpura is the way in which it lays its

eggs. It fastens them down to the surface of the rock by little stalks,

so that they look like tiny egg-cups with eggs inside them; therefore

when these eggs hatch, several little purpura come out of each cup.

All the small periwinkles feed upon the algæ, but with the purpura,

which seems to live mainly on young barnacles, we come to a lot of

flesh-eaters--small mollusks of prey, as we might say.

There are several spiral sorts, mostly from one to two inches long,

whitish and heavily ribbed, which are sometimes called dog-whelks; but

the worst one, which lives by thousands on the beds of planted oysters

scattered all along the shore of Long Island Sound, is known to the

oystermen as the drill, or borer. It is particularly fond of the flesh

of oysters, and cares nothing for their shells, as it carries in its

mouth a drilling instrument (see page 419) by which it can bore a round

hole through the poor oyster's armor. In this way it destroys many

thousands of dollars' worth of valuable oysters every year.

It was pretty certain we should find a starfish down near low-water

mark, and here is a fine one.

Starfishes are among the oddest of sea-animals; for one reason, because

they have so many legs. Perhaps you did not know they had any legs at

all; certainly you can see none when you pick up a dead specimen on the

beach. The fact is that a starfish keeps its legs inside its body, where

there are a lot of organs protected by its hard, limy hide; and when it

wants to use them it pokes them out through little holes on its under or

grooved side, and fills them with water.

You would like to see its legs, no doubt. Very well; you shall. This

starfish is still alive: we can easily see that, for when we pick it up

its rays stand stiffly out; but if it were dead they would be quite soft

and flabby, and would hang down. So we will put it into a shallow pool

of clear sea-water, and see what happens. There! did you notice that it

moved one of its rays? See, the one in front is being slowly pushed

forward. Now the rays behind are being drawn up; and now that they have

taken a fresh hold the front one is being pushed forward again. The

starfish is really walking! What will it do when it comes to a stone?

Why, walk over it! What will it do when it comes to rock? Why, climb up

it! Now take the starfish out of the water. Turn it over on its back.

There! do you see? On the lower surface of every ray are hundreds of

little fleshy objects waving about in the air. Those are its "feet," or

at least its means of walking; and each has a sort of cup at the end

which acts as a sucker. By means of these the starfish can cling tightly

to the surface of a stone. So by using first the little sucker-legs on

one or two of its rays, and then those on the others, the starfish is

able to crawl about quite easily.

The starfishes live upon animal food--mainly other mollusks, which they

kill in a very curious manner. When, in crawling about, they come upon a

whelk or clam or oyster, they creep over it and clasp it in their five

arms in a murderous embrace from which there is no escape. Even if the

creature can move off, its captor clings to it with its hundreds of tiny

suckers, and rides along with it like that Old Man of the Sea in

Sindbad's story.

Now if you look again at our specimen you will see on its under side, a

small pit in the center of its body, closed by five points. This is the

mouth, and the points are sharp. As soon as the starfish has a grip upon

its victim the mouth opens and there is gradually pushed out a strong

membrane which is the creature's great loose stomach. This envelops the

animal, shell and all, or as much of it as possible, and soon begins

actually to digest the flesh. When the meal is finished the starfish

draws back its stomach and leaves only the empty shell of its prey.

These voracious starfish are a worse enemy to the cultivated oysters

than are the drills; and, having an abundance of food on the thickly

planted beds, they become extremely numerous, so that it costs the

owners of the beds much money each year to gather them off the beds by

means of a sort of great rake called the tangles. Otherwise the oysters

would soon be wholly destroyed. The men used simply to tear to pieces

what they caught and throw them overboard again; but they soon learned

that this was worse than useless, because each half, or even a single

arm, would not only go on living but would reproduce all the missing

parts; so that in trying to kill one starfish they had brought to life

two or perhaps even five, which was very discouraging. Nowadays,

therefore, all captured starfishes are brought ashore and left there,

and often are made use of by being ground up with oyster-shells,

fish-bones, etc., into an excellent fertilizer.

What is that greenish-gray object covered all over with spikes? It is

clinging in a little hollow of the rock, half hidden in seaweed of the

same color.

Ah! that is a sea-urchin, and although it looks so very unlike them it

is really a kind of first cousin to the starfishes. Here is a dead one

from which the spines have been knocked off. Just look at it carefully,

and you will see that it is very much like a starfish rolled up into a

ball. See, you can trace the five rays quite easily, and if you look at

it through a strong magnifying-glass you will find that its surface is

pierced in hundreds of places with tiny holes through which it can poke

out little sucker-feet, just as the starfishes do.

Look again at the shell from which the spines have been knocked away. Do

you see that it is covered all over with little pimples? Now on every

one of these pimples a spine was fastened by a kind of ball-and-socket

joint, the pimple being the ball, and the socket lying inside the base

of the spine; and by means of special muscles the animal could move the

spines about, just as though it were a kind of hedgehog. In fact, this

is the reason why it is called sea-urchin, for urchin is an old name for

hedgehog. So, when a sea-urchin crawls about, it does so partly with its

sucker-feet, and partly with its spines as well.

Sometimes, however, these creatures use their sucker-feet for quite a

different purpose. They poke them out as far as they can from among

their spines, and then take hold of little stones, small pieces of

broken shell, and other bits of rubbish which they find at the bottom

of the sea, and cling to them very tightly. The consequence is that you

cannot see the animal at all, for it is quite concealed by this curious

covering, and unless you were to take it out of the water, you would

never have the least idea what it really was.

Now look at the mouth of this spiky sea-urchin. You will find it in the

very middle of the lower part of the body. Do you see what great teeth

it has? There are five of them arranged in a circle as in the mouth of a

starfish, and they are made in just the same way as the front teeth of a

rat or a rabbit, that is, they never stop growing all through the life

of the animal, so that as fast as they are worn away from above they are

pushed up from below, and thus always keep just the proper length and

sharpness.

Sea-urchins are rather few and small along the shores of southern New

England, but more numerous northward, and on rocky bottoms offshore. On

the offshore bottom there lives also a queer sort whose shells are often

cast up and are well known to the children as sand-dollars.

These are about the size and shape of one of mother's cookies, and are

covered with a stiff brown fur of short spines. On one side--the under

one--is the little mouth, and around it the faint outlines of five

radiating arms, each sketched, as it were, by a double row of

"pin-pricks" where the almost invisible feet are pushed out. These

sand-dollars are creeping about at the bottom in myriads where the water

is a few fathoms deep; and storms cast up thousands upon the beaches or

into the tide-pools, where very likely we may find some in the course of

our next visit to the ocean-side.

IV

BETWEEN TIDE-MARKS

We must start early on our walk today, as soon as the tide falls away

from the piece of rocky shore we have in mind, so that we may have

plenty of time; for the field which we have left until the last is

the richest the seaside naturalist has to explore.

As the sea sinks away it uncovers not only the weedy ledges which we

studied the other day, but also spaces between them of low rocks and

loose stones half sunk in mud and sand. There is much to interest the

botanist, too, but he will have to look out for himself. We have more

than enough to do to look after the animals.

Many dead shells are lying about, showing the various species of

shell-fish which inhabit this shore or the waters of the offing. Some of

them we already know, and others we can never expect to get alive except

by dredging. Such are the scallops, which rarely come up as far as

low-water mark, in spite of their wandering habits; and the jingleshells

or goldshells, although these, like the young oysters to which they are

closely related, may usually be found clinging to stones, where they

seem swollen scales or "blisters" of thin amber, or gold-colored horn.

There is one--let us examine it. We can't pick it off, or even pry it

off; but when we slip a knife-blade slowly beneath it, it comes loose,

and we discover that this queer creature is a bivalve mollusk looking

(and tasting) like an oyster, and with a small flat shell underneath the

bulging top one. In this undershell is a large hole, through which

passes a stout stony stalk which anchors this creature as firmly as an

oyster is fixed by the cementing of its undershell to whatever it has

attached itself when young.

The jingleshells are extremely numerous all along the coast south of

Cape Cod, wherever the water is no more than about seventy feet deep,

especially in Long Island Sound; and the oystermen gather them from the

beaches and from their dredgings, and scatter their shells over the

floor of the sound as "seats" for young oysters. They are especially

useful for this purpose because they are so slight and brittle that

when, as often happens, two or three minute oyster-larvæ settle down on

one of these shells, they will, as they grow, break it apart by the

strain, and then each oyster, relieved from the crowding of its mates,

will form a round, nicely shaped shell instead of a narrow or misshapen

one, and consequently be more valuable when it comes to be dredged up,

after a couple of years or so, and offered for sale.

This rough space between tide-marks is a fine place for crabs. We have

seen some of these creatures already, elsewhere; and our book (see

Chapter XXXV) has already instructed us as to the general

characteristics of crustaceans. Here, scrambling about the ledges just

under water, are big rock and Jonah crabs, but not so many of them as

you might see in Maine. Both are eaten when "soft-shells," but are not

so good as the blue crab. Here, too, are lively and pugnacious fiddlers

and some green or stone crabs, wonderfully active little creatures,

which in England are sent to market, but on this side of the ocean are

used only for bait.

Still more comical and interesting is one of the spider-crabs, which may

be called thornback. It has a little body, but very long legs, so that a

big male thornback might cover eighteen inches in the stretch of its

legs.

Do you see how long his great claws are, and how his back is covered all

over with tiny hooked spines? It is quite easy to understand why the

name of thornback was given to him. But how is it that all those tufts

of seaweed are growing on the upper part of the shell?

Well, the answer is a very odd one. The crab planted them there himself!

The fact is that when he is lying down at the bottom of a pool he does

not want to be seen, for fear that the animals upon which he preys

should take alarm, and escape before he can catch them. So he actually

pulls up a number of little sprigs of seaweed, and plants them on his

back one after the other, pressing the roots down with his claws till at

last they are held quite firmly by the little hooked spines with which

his shell is covered! Then as long as he keeps quite still he is

perfectly invisible, and his victims may even crawl over him without

suspecting that they are in any danger.

Stranger still, if a thornback crab which has covered his back with

seaweeds should be placed in a tank in which sponges are growing, he

will soon find out that he is not nearly so well hidden as he would like

to be, and will get very uneasy. Before long he will discover what the

reason is, and will actually pull all the sea weed off his shell, and

plant sponges on it instead.

Here, too, scampering and rattling about among the pebbles, are lots of

hermit-crabs, dragging after them the shells in which they have

ensconced their soft hind bodies, as is described on page 402. And under

the stones--turn them over and you will see--are dozens of strange

little half-transparent creatures which you might easily believe were

insects, but which really are diminutive cousins of the crabs and

crayfish named amphipods and isopods, and so forth. You may find under

some stone one of the tubes made by a certain species, composed of

grains of sand glued together by sticky threads much like spiders' silk.

These minute crustaceans exist in vast multitudes near the surface of

the ocean at certain seasons, and form the principal food of the

whalebone-whales, which gulp them down wholesale. Some of them, also,

are parasitic on fishes.

But what is the curious little creature clinging flat upon this rock

among the weeds? It looks like some sort of pill-bug half an inch long,

doesn't it?