sight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he held
his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to
a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the
heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction,
he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made
rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead
of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so near
that, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at me
through his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not take
it into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face with
that ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did not
believe myself in any danger, and quickened my steps, being now highly
curious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he broke into a
kind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had not previously
seen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him disabled in the
wing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is "never known to
run, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative assertions are always
at the maker's risk.
He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, till
there could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; but
even then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rods
further on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue his
frog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhanced
by the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, and
absolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly planted
cranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat me
thus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other's
freaks and oddities, it was _his way_, I suppose. He might have behaved
otherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by no means
certain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an occurrence
which happened a month or so afterward.
I was crossing the beach at Nahant with a friend when we stole upon a
pair of golden plovers, birds that both of us were very happy to see.
The splendid old-gold spotting of their backs was plain enough; but
immature black-bellied plovers are adorned in a similar manner, and it
was necessary for us to see the rumps of our birds before we could be
sure of their identity. So, after we had scrutinized them as long as we
wished, I asked my companion to put them up while I should keep my glass
upon their backs and make certain of the color of their rumps as they
opened their wings. We were already within a very few paces of them, but
they ran before him as he advanced, and in the end he had almost to
tread on them.
The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, I
suppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident that
he cannot be in the habit of allowing men to chase him along the beach
at a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added that, in the
present instance, my companion had a gun in his hand.
Possibly all these birds would have behaved differently another day,
even in what to us might have seemed exactly the same circumstances.
Undoubtedly, too, it is easier, as an almost universal rule, to approach
one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are
almost certain to be a few timorous souls,--a few wider-awake and better
instructed souls, let us rather say,--who by their outcries and hasty
flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But it
is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birds
have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a
"character." It would be worth something to know what was passing behind
those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at the
curious fellow--curious in two senses--who was keeping after him so
closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only a
little set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; a
little inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields," just for
principle's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, in
whom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, and
upon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creature
is taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that he
will most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is
nothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious
bird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject for
wonder.
FLOWERS AND FOLKS.
"To know one element, explore another,
And in the second reappears the first."
EMERSON.
Every order of intelligent beings naturally separates the world into two
classes,--itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no doubt a
feeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were translated into
human speech, might read, "Birds and nature." We, in our turn, say, "Man
and nature." But such distinctions, useful as they are, and therefore
admissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to mislead. Birds and
men are alike parts of nature, having many things in common not only
with each other, but with every form of animate existence. The world is
not a patchwork, though never so cunningly put together, but a garment
woven throughout.
The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sided
significance, is even yet only beginning to be understood; but its
bearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to be
evident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology has
convinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out of
the spirit of the familiar line,--
"The proper study of mankind is man,"--
whatever the author of the line may have himself intended by his
apothegm. To become acquainted with the peculiarities of plants or birds
is to increase one's knowledge of beings of his own sort.
There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany,--a study of
the human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically done, the
work would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a better
opinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves. Some
wholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter of
course. "We all do fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all the
goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." There are no
household words more familiar than such texts. But the work of which I
am thinking will deal not so much with our likeness to tree and herb as
with the likeness of tree and herb to us; and furthermore, it will go
into the whole subject, systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it is
open even to an amateur to offer something, in a general and discursive
way, upon so inviting a theme, and especially to call attention to its
scope and variety.
As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at
my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a
handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help
pronouncing the thistle beautiful,--a close bunch of minute rose-purple
flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty
is a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association.
The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself out
to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of some
venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons
(if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and no
doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensive
traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pities
the poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How they must envy its
happier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the cattle, and can hardly
be blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as the greedy creatures pass
it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods
and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither
school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its
gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is
a great thing to wear an armor of prickles!
"The human nature of plants,"--have I any reader so innocent as not to
feel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be one
so favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his Christian
townsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the more
easily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. They
escape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable people
suffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them for
assistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let alone. Yet
they, too, like their floral representatives, have a good side. If they
do not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may actually "do
a handsome thing," as the common expression is; but they cannot put off
their own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand that receives
it, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what should we do
without this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of him?) there will
be no great mourning.
Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itself
against attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance no
exceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeed
a hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, the
rose? On this point there may be room for a diversity of opinion; but
for one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed, lest, through the
recklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the commonest of our
wayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose a
patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician manners. As every one sees,
people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractive
social qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenance
everything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they may
formerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or less
upon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with the
queen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but are
for its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make it
easier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it on
the stalk." In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, like
the holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, that
people are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualities
than for the presence of one or two bad ones.
Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, I
should make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the bramble. The
latter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us
off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms,
it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country
insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his
preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the
human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,--excellent people in
their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful
weighing of consequences. Judging them not by their manners, but by
their fruits, we must set them on the right hand. It would go hard with
some of the most pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of a
few thorns and prickles were reckoned inconsistent with a moderately
good character.
As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood,"
they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,--"All is fair in
war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their
enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the
reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness
of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it
may be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying them
liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a nice
one, and I gladly leave it for subtler casuists than I to settle.
How refreshing to turn from all these, from the thistle and the bramble,
yea, even from the rose itself, to gentle spirits like the violet and
anemone, the arbutus and hepatica! These wage no war. They are of the
original Society of Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Their
defense is with their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks of
such flowers as representative of any order of grown people, or whether
to everybody else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking of
it, they have always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail,
"of such is the kingdom of heaven." They pass away without losing their
innocence. Ere the first heats of summer they are gone.
Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate blooms, though they are
overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser
growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing
that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than are the purple
gerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and the
woodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even
the faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form,
perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to
praise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the one
of the narrow leaves (_Gerardia tenuifolia_), its longer and slighter
flower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady
to whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when she
said, "They look like fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they
love a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of
woods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I
know not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes
of our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a
woman who might worthily be set in their company,--a person whose sweet
and wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to
suggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common
flesh and blood.
What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties and
egotists like our multitudinous asters and golden-rods! These, between
them, almost take possession of the world for the two or three months of
their reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is beauty for, if
not to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first into solid heads,
then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of hiding their
constellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light shine!" is the
word they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the roadside, till the
casual passer-by can see scarce anything else! If he does not see
_them_, it is not their fault.
For myself, I am far from wishing them at all less numerous, or a jot
less forward in displaying their charms. Let there be variety, I say.
Because I speak well of the violet for its humility, I see no reason why
I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too,
plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in
those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the
only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves
according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity
of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes
offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier as
well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which is
amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which is
curious.
A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that
climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left
home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and
golden-rods (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordance
with Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficult
genera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in my
eye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but by
and by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar _Solidago
squarrosa_, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance and
manner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flower
underneath, which on a second glance proved to be the closed gentian.
This grew in hiding, as one might say, in the shadow of its taller and
showier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, were
patches of the linnaea, which had been at its prettiest in June, but even
now, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. What
should a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn
forsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, but
not a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, and
each the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to the
others. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are few
harder genera (among flowering plants) than _Solidago_; if he would
investigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plants
upon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision
seems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers
him a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for
delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnaea will never cease
to be one of his prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety.
It would be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should be of identical
tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a
tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.
The flower of Linnaeus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears a
man who seems, as we say, _sui generis_. This familiar phrase, by the
bye, is literally applicable to _Linnaea borealis_, a plant that spreads
over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preserves
its own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland or
in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the
mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same,--a genus of
one species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon its
originality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan.
The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like
some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to
circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and
ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade
into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations
that even our great special student of the _Compositae_ pronounces the
accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor
beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it
a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,--to be true to one's
ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting
one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and
the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each
its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty
which it was foreordained to be.
I spoke of the linnaea's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering
time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the
world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright,
summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest
member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself
beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and
therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it
sends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant
bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes
and goes.
The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very
commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day,
late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and
clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and
there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving
back the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while,
an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now that
all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if
he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the
apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,--these and things like
them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years
and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a
reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a
prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we
know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal
blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season
past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is
true of the violet will prove true also of the man?
It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest
flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men
play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would
succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those
who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen
to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and
elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of
transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won
by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of
diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own
nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it
is the meek that inherit the earth.
Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but
still more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We could
get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for the
lower use is often first, in order both of time and of necessity; but we
are never in doubt as to their relative place in our esteem. One serves
the body, the other the soul; and we reward the one with money, the
other with affection and reverence. And our estimation of plants is
according to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the body are
good,--good even to the point of being indispensable; but as we make a
difference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and between
the common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so maize and
potatoes are never put into the same category with lilies and violets.
It must be so, because man is more than an animal, and "the life is more
than meat."
Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for
utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know
as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and
aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of
sticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds,
blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment
of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is
to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the
rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the
flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a
verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The
tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.