we must contrive, as best we can, to unite the two errands,--study and
reverie: using our eyes and ears, but not abusing them; and, on the
other hand, giving free play to fancy and imagination, without
permitting ourselves to degenerate into impotent dreamers. Every walker
ought to be a faithful student of at least one branch of natural
history, not omitting Latin names and the very latest discoveries and
theories. But, withal, let him make sure that his acquaintance with
out-of-door life is sympathetic, and not merely curious or scientific.
All honor to the new science and its votaries; we run small risk of too
much learning; but it should be kept in mind that the itch for finding
out secrets is to be accounted noble or ignoble, according as the spirit
that prompts the research is liberal or petty. Curiosity and love of the
truth are not yet identical, however it may flatter our self-esteem to
ignore the distinction. One may spend one's days and nights in nothing
else but in hearing or telling some new thing, and after all be no
better than a gossip. It would prove a sorry exchange for such of us as
have entered, in any degree, into the feeling of Wordsworth's lines,--
"To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"--
and I believe the capacity for such moods to be less uncommon than many
suppose,--it would be a sorry bargain, I say, for us to lose this
sensitiveness to the charm of living beauty, though meanwhile we were to
grow wiser than all the moderns touching the morphology and histology of
every blossom under the sun.
"Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail against her beauty?"
Not we, certainly; but we will be bold to add, with Tennyson himself,--
"Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first."
In treating a theme of this kind, it is hard not to violate Nature's own
method, and fall into a strain of exhortation. Our intercourse with her
is so good and wholesome, such an inexhaustible and ever-ready resource
against the world's trouble and unrest, that we would gladly have
everybody to share it. We say, over and over, with Emerson,--
"If I could put my woods in song,
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void."
But this may not be. At best, words can only hint at sensations; and the
hint can be taken only by as many as are predestined to hear it. As I
have said, the doctrine is esoteric. How are those who have never felt
the like to understand the satisfaction with which I recall a certain
five or ten minutes of a cool morning in May, a year or more ago? I was
drawing towards home, after a jaunt of an hour or two, when I came
suddenly into a sheltered and sunny nook, where a bed of the early
saxifrage was already in full bloom, while a most exquisite little
bee-fly of a beautiful shade of warm brown was hovering over it,
draining the tiny, gold-lined chalices, one by one, with its long
proboscis, which looked precisely like the bill of a humming-bird. An
ordinary picture enough, as far as words go,--only a little sunshine, a
patch of inconspicuous and common flowers, and a small Bombylian without
even the distinction of bright colors. True; but my spirit drank a
nectar sweeter than any the insect was sipping. And though, as a rule,
an experience of this sort were perhaps better left unspoken,--
"A thought of private recollection, sweet and still,"
yet the mention of it can do no harm, while it illustrates what I take
to be one of the principal advantages of the saunterer's condition. His
treasures are never far to seek. His delight is in Nature herself,
rather than in any of her more unusual manifestations. He is not of that
large and increasingly fashionable class who fancy themselves lovers of
Nature, while in fact they are merely admirers, more or less sincere, of
fine scenery. Not that anything is too beautiful for our rambler's
appreciation: he has an eye for the best that earth and heaven can
offer; he knows the exhilaration of far-reaching prospects; but he is
not dependent upon such extraordinary favors of Providence. He has no
occasion to run hither and thither in search of new and strange sights.
The old familiar pastures; the bushy lane, in which his feet have
loitered year after year, ever since they began to go alone; an
unfrequented road; a wooded slope, or a mossy glen; the brook of his
boyish memories; if need be, nothing but a clump of trees or a grassy
meadow,--these are enough for his pleasure. Fortunate man! Who should be
happy, if not he? Out of his own doorway he steps at will into the
Elysian fields.
BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY.
Gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live.--MILTON.
Speak to me as to thy thinkings.--SHAKESPEARE.
It happened to me once to spend a long summer afternoon under a
linden-tree, reading "Middlemarch." The branches were loaded with
blossoms, and the heavy perfume attracted the bees from far and near,
insomuch that my ears were all the time full of their humming.
Butterflies also came, though in smaller numbers, and silently. Whenever
I looked up from my book I was sure to find at least one or two
fluttering overhead. They were mostly of three of our larger sorts,--the
Turnus, the Troilus, and the Archippus (what noble names!), beautifully
contrasted in color. The Turnus specimens were evidently the remnant of
a brood which had nearly passed away; their tattered wings showed that
they had been exposed to the wear and tear of a long life, as
butterflies reckon. Some of them were painful to look at, and I
remember one in particular, so maimed and helpless that, with a sudden
impulse of compassion, I rose and stepped upon it. It seemed an act of
mercy to send the wretched cripple after its kindred. As I looked at
these loiterers, with their frayed and faded wings,--some of them half
gone,--I found myself, almost before I knew it, thinking of Dorothea
Brooke, of whose lofty ideals, bitter disappointments, and partial joys
I was reviewing the story. After all, was there really any wide
difference between the two lives? One was longer, the other shorter; but
only as one dewdrop outlasts another on the grass.
"A moment's halt, a momentary taste
Of Being from the well amid the waste,
And lo! the phantom caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from."
Then I fell to musing, as I had often done before, upon the mystery of
an insect's life and mind.
This tiger swallow-tail, that I had just trodden into the ground,--what
could have been its impressions of this curious world whereinto it had
been ushered so unceremoniously, and in which its day had been so
transient? A month ago, a little more or a little less, it had emerged
from its silken shroud, dried its splendid party-colored wings in the
sun, and forthwith had gone sailing away, over the pasture and through
the wood, in quest of something, it could hardly have known what. Nobody
had welcomed it. When it came, the last of its ancestors were already
among the ancients. Without father or mother, without infancy or
childhood, it was born full-grown, and set out, once for all, upon an
independent adult existence. What such a state of uninitiated,
uninstructed being may be like let those imagine who can.
It was born adult, I say; but at the same time, it was freer from care
than the most favored of human children. No one ever gave it a lesson or
set it a task. It was never restrained nor reproved; neither its own
conscience nor any outward authority ever imposed the lightest check
upon its desires. It had nobody's pleasure to think of but its own; for
as it was born too late to know father or mother, so also it died too
soon to see its own offspring. It made no plans, needed no estate, was
subject to no ambition. Summer was here when it came forth, and summer
was still here when it passed away. It was born, it lived upon honey, it
loved, and it died. Happy and brief biography!
Happy and brief; but what a multitude of questions are suggested by it!
Did the creature know anything of its preëxistence, either in the
chrysalis or earlier? If so, did it look back upon that far-away time as
upon a golden age? Or was it really as careless as it seemed, neither
brooding over the past nor dreaming of the future? Was it aware of its
own beauty, seeing itself some day reflected in the pool as it came to
the edge to drink? Did it recognize smaller butterflies--the white and
the yellow, and even the diminutive "copper"--as poor relations;
felicitating itself, meanwhile, upon its own superior size, its
brilliant orange-red eye-spots, and its gorgeous tails? Did it mourn
over its faded broken wings as age came on, or when an unexpected gust
drove it sharply against a thorn? Or was it enabled to take every
mischance and change in a philosophical spirit, perceiving all such
evils to have their due and necessary place in the order of Nature? Was
it frightened when the first night settled down upon it,--the horrible
black darkness, that seemed to be making a sudden end of all things? As
it saw a caterpillar here and there, did it ever suspect any
relationship between the hairy crawling thing and itself; or would it
have been mortally offended with any profane lepidopteran Darwin who
should have hinted at such a possibility?
The Antiopa butterfly, according to some authorities a near relative of
the tiger swallow-tail, has long been especially attractive to me
because of its habit of passing the winter in a state of hibernation,
and then reappearing upon the wing before the very earliest of the
spring flowers. A year ago, Easter fell upon the first day of April. I
spent the morning out-of-doors, hoping to discover some first faint
tokens of a resurrection. Nor was I disappointed. In a sunny stretch of
the lonely road, I came suddenly upon five of these large
"mourning-cloaks," all of them spread flat upon the wet gravel, sucking
up the moisture while the sun warmed their wings. What sight more
appropriate for Easter! I thought. These were some who had been dead,
and behold, they were alive again.
Then, as before under the linden-tree, I fell to wondering. What were
they thinking about, these creatures so lately born a second time? Did
they remember their last year's existence? And what could they possibly
make of this brown and desolate world, so unlike the lingering autumnal
glories in the midst of which, five or six months before, they had
"fallen asleep"? Perhaps they had been dreaming. In any event, they
could have no idea of the ice and snow, the storms and the frightful
cold, through which they had passed. It was marvelous how such frail
atoms had withstood such exposure; yet here they were, as good as new,
and so happily endowed that they had no need to wait for blossoms, but
could draw fresh life from the very mire of the street.
This last trait, so curiously out of character, as it seems to us,
suggests one further inquiry: Have butterflies an æsthetic faculty? They
appreciate each other's adornments, of course. Otherwise, what becomes
of the accepted doctrine of sexual selection? And if they appreciate
each other's beauty, what is to hinder our believing that they enjoy
also the bright colors and dainty shapes of the flowers on which they
feed? As I came out upon the veranda of a summer hotel, two or three
friends exclaimed: "Oh, Mr. ----, you should have been here a few
minutes ago; you would have seen something quite in your line. A
butterfly was fluttering over the lawn, and noticing what it took for a
dandelion, it was just settling down upon it, when lo, the dandelion
moved, and proved to be a goldfinch!" Evidently the insect had an eye
for color, and was altogether like one of us in its capacity for being
deceived.
To butterflies, as to angels, all things are pure. They extract honey
from the vilest of materials. But their tastes and propensities are in
some respects the very opposite of angelic; being, in fact, thoroughly
human. All observers must have been struck with their quite Hibernian
fondness for a shindy. Two of the same kind seldom come within hail of
each other without a little set-to, just for sociability's sake, as it
were; and I have seen a dozen or more gathered thickly about a precious
bit of moist earth, all crowding and pushing for place in a manner not
to be outdone by the most patriotic of office-seekers.
It is my private heresy, perhaps, this strong anthropomorphic turn of
mind, which impels me to assume the presence of a soul in all animals,
even in these airy nothings; and, having assumed its existence, to
speculate as to what goes on within it. I know perfectly well that such
questions as I have been raising are not to be answered. They are not
meant to be answered. But I please myself with asking them,
nevertheless, having little sympathy with those precise intellectual
economists who count it a waste to let the fancy play with insoluble
mysteries. Why is fancy winged, I should like to know, if it is never to
disport itself in fields out of which the clumsy, heavy-footed
understanding is debarred?
BASHFUL DRUMMERS.
He goes but to see a noise that he heard.
SHAKESPEARE.
At the back of my father's house were woods, to my childish imagination
a boundless wilderness. Little by little I ventured into them, and among
my earliest recollections of their sombre and lonesome depths was a
long, thunderous, far-away drumming noise, beginning slowly and
increasing in speed till the blows became almost continuous. This,
somebody told me, was the drumming of the partridge. Now and then, in
open spaces in the path, I came upon shallow circular depressions where
the bird had been dusting, an operation in which I had often seen our
barnyard fowls complacently engaged. At other times I was startled by
the sudden whir of the bird's wings as he sprang up at my feet, and went
dashing away through the underbrush. I heard with open-mouthed wonder of
men who had been known to shoot a bird thus flying! All in all, the
partridge made a great impression upon my boyish mind.
By and by some older companion initiated me into the mystery of setting
snares. My attempts were primitive enough, no doubt; but they answered
their purpose, taking me into the woods morning and night, in all kinds
of weather, and affording me no end of pleasurable excitement. Once in a
great while the noose would be displaced (the "slip-noose," we called
it, with unsuspected pleonasm), and the barberries gone. At last, after
numberless disappointments, I actually found a bird in the snare. The
poor captive was still alive, and, as I came up, was making frantic
efforts to escape; but I managed to secure him, in spite of my trembling
fingers, and then, though the deed looked horribly like murder, I killed
him (I would rather not mention how), and carried him home in triumph.
Many years passed, and I became in my own way an ornithologist. One by
one I scraped acquaintance with all the common birds of our woods and
fields; but the drumming of the partridge (or of the ruffled grouse, as
I now learned to call him) remained a mystery. I read Emerson's
description of the "forest-seer:"--
"He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrushes' broods;
And the shy hawk did wait for him;"
and I thought: "Well, now, I have seen and heard the woodcock at his
vespers; I have found the nest of the tawny thrush; the shy hawk has sat
still on the branch just over my head; but I have _not_ seen the
partridge drum in the woods. Why shouldn't I do that, also?" I made
numerous attempts. A bird often drummed in a small wood where I was in
the habit of rambling before breakfast. The sound came always from a
particular quarter, and probably from a certain stone wall, running over
a slight rise of ground near a swamp. The crafty fellow evidently did
not mean to be surprised; but I made a careful reconnoissance, and
finally hit upon what seemed a feasible point of approach. A rather
large boulder offered a little cover, and, after several failures, I one
day spied the bird on the wall. He had drummed only a few minutes
before; but his lookout was most likely sharper than mine. At all
events, he dropped off the wall on the further side, and for that time I
saw nothing more of him. Nor was I more successful the next time, nor
the next. Be as noiseless as I could, the wary creature inevitably took
the alarm. To make matters worse, mornings were short and birds were
many. One day there were rare visiting warblers to be looked after;
another day the gray-cheeked thrushes had dropped in upon us on their
way northward, and, if possible, I must hear them sing. Then the pretty
blue golden-winged warbler was building her nest, and by some means or
other I must find it.
Thus season after season slipped by. Then, in another place, I
accidentally passed quite round a drummer. I heard him on the right, and
after traveling only a few rods, I heard him on the left. He must be
very near me, and not far from the crest of a low hill, over which, as
in the former instance, a stone wall ran. He drummed at long intervals,
and meanwhile I was straining my eyes and advancing at a snail's pace
up the slope. Happily, the ground was carpeted with pine needles, and
comparatively free from brush and dead twigs, those snapping nuisances
that so often bring all our patience and ingenuity to nought. A section
of the wall came into sight, but I got no glimpse of the bird. Presently
I went down upon all fours; then lower yet, crawling instead of
creeping, till I could look over the brow of the hill. Here I waited,
and had begun to fear that I was once more to have my labor for my
pains, when all at once I saw the grouse step from one stone to another.
"Now for it!" I said to myself. But the drumming did not follow, and
anon I lost sight of the drummer. Again I waited, and finally the fellow
jumped suddenly upon a top stone, lifted his wings, and commenced the
familiar roll-call. I could see his wings beating against his sides with
quicker and quicker strokes; but an unlucky bush was between us, and
hoping to better my position, I moved a little to one side. Upon this,
the bird became aware of my presence, I think. At least I could see him
staring straight at me, and a moment later he dropped behind the wall;
and though I remained motionless till a cramp took me, I heard nothing
more. "If it had not been for that miserable bush!" I muttered. But I
need not have quarreled with an innocent bush, as if it, any more than
myself, had been given a choice where it should grow. A wiser man would
have called to mind the old saw, and made the most of "half a loaf."
Another year passed, and another spring came round. Then, on the same
hillside, a bird (probably the same individual) was drumming one April
morning, and, as my note-book has it, "I came within one" of taking him
in the act. I miscalculated his position, however, which, as it turned
out, was not upon the wall, but on a boulder surrounded by a few small
pine-trees. The rock proved to be well littered, and clearly was the
bird's regular resort. "Very good," said I, "I will catch you yet."
Five days later I returned to the charge, and was rewarded by seeing the
fellow drum once; but, as before, intervening brush obscured my view. I
crept forward, inch by inch, till the top of the boulder came into
sight, and waited, and waited, and waited. At last I pushed on, and lo,
the place was deserted. There is a familiar Scripture text that might
have been written on purpose for ornithologists: "Let patience have her
perfect work."
This was April 14th. On the 19th I made the experiment again. The
drummer was at it as I drew near, and fortune favored me at last. I
witnessed the performance three times over. Even now, to be sure, the
prospect was not entirely clear, but it was better than ever before, and
by this time I had learned to be thankful for small mercies. The grouse
kept his place between the acts, moving his head a little one way and
another, but apparently doing nothing else.
Of course I had in mind the disputed question as to the method by which
the drumming noise is produced. It had seemed to me that whoever would
settle this point must do it by attending carefully to the first slow
beats. This I now attempted, and after one trial was ready, off-hand, to
accept a theory which heretofore I had scouted; namely, that the bird
makes the sound by striking his wings together over his back. He
brought them up, even for the first two or three times, with a quick
convulsive movement, and I could almost have made oath that I heard the
beat before the wings fell. But fortunately, or unfortunately, I waited
till he drummed again; and now I was by no means so positive in my
conviction. If an observer wishes to be absolutely sure of a thing,--I
have learned this by long experience,--let him look at it once, and
forever after shut his eyes! On the whole, I return to my previous
opinion, that the sound is made by the downward stroke, though whether
against the body or against the air, I will not presume to say.
A man who is a far better ornithologist than I, and who has witnessed
this performance under altogether more favorable conditions than I was
ever afforded, assures me that his performer _sat down_! My bird took no
such ridiculous position. So much, at least, I am sure of.
When he had drummed three times, my partridge quit his boulder (I was
near enough to hear him strike the dry leaves), and after a little
walked suddenly into plain sight. We discovered each other at the same
instant. I kept motionless, my field-glass up. He made sundry nervous
movements, especially of his ruff, and then silently stalked away.
I could not blame him for his lack of neighborliness. If I had been shot
at and hunted with dogs as many times as he probably had been, I too
might have become a little shy of strangers. To my thinking, indeed, the
grouse is one of our most estimable citizens. A liking for the buds of
fruit-trees is his only fault (not many of my townsmen have a smaller
number, I fancy), and that is one easily overlooked, especially by a man
who owns no orchard. Every sportsman tries to shoot him, and every
winter does its worst to freeze or starve him; but he continues to
flourish. Others may migrate to sunnier climes, or seek safety in the
backwoods, but not so the partridge. He was born here, and here he means
to stay. What else could be expected of a bird whose notion of a lover's
serenade is the beating of a drum?
OUT-DOOR BOOKS,
Both Prose and Poetical.
=Agassiz, Alexander and Elizabeth C.= Seaside Studies in Natural History.
Illustrated. 8vo, $3.00.
=Agassiz, Prof. Louis.= Methods of Study in Natural History. With
Illustrations. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50.
Geological Sketches. First Series. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, gilt
top, $1.50.
Geological Sketches. Second Series. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50.
=Bailey, Prof. L. H., Jr.= Talks Afield, about Plants and the Science of
Plants. With 100 Illustrations. 16mo, $1.00.
=Bamford, Mary E.= Up and Down the Brooks. In Riverside Library for Young
People. Illustrated. 16mo, 75 cents.
=Barrows, Samuel J. and Isabel C.= The Shaybacks in Camp. Ten Summers
under Canvas. With Map of Lake Memphremagog. 16mo, $1.00.
=Burroughs, John.= Works. Each volume, 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
Wake Robin. New Edition, revised. Illustrated.
The Same. _Riverside Aldine Edition._ 16mo, $1.00.
Winter Sunshine. New Edition, revised.
Birds and Poets, with other Papers.
Locusts and Wild Honey.
Pepacton, and other Sketches.
Fresh Fields.
Signs and Seasons.
Birds and Bees. Essays by JOHN BURROUGHS. With introduction by MARY E.
BURT. In Riverside Literature Series. 16mo, paper, 15 cents, _net_.
Sharp Eyes, and other Papers. By JOHN BURROUGHS. In Riverside Literature
Series. 16mo, paper, 15 cents, _net_. The above two pamphlets, 16mo,
boards, 40 cents, _net_.
=Cary, Alice.= Pictures of Country Life. Short Stories. 12mo, $1.50.
=Cooper, James Fenimore.= Cooper Stories. Narratives of Adventure selected
from COOPER'S Works. Stories of the Prairies. Stories of the Woods.
Stories of the Sea. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo, $1.00 each; the set,
$3.00.
=Cooper, Susan Fenimore.= Rural Hours. New Revised Edition, abridged.
16mo, $1.25.
=Dodge, Col. Theodore A.= Patroclus and Penelope. A Chat in the Saddle.
With 14 Phototypes of the Horse in motion. 8vo, half roan, gilt top,
$3.00.
_Popular Edition._ With Illustrations in outline. Crown 8vo, half roan,
$1.25.
=Edwards, W. H.= The Butterflies of North America. Containing life-size
figures carefully colored by hand from nature, with descriptive
letter-press.