neighbor of last July laid the foundations of her domicile a foot
or more above the soil. And what a mass of straws and twigs she did
collect together! How coarse and careless and aimless at first—a mere
lot of rubbish dropped upon the tangle of dry limbs; but presently
how it began to refine and come into shape in the centre! till there
was the most exquisite hair-lined cup set about by a chaos of coarse
straws and branches. What a process of evolution! The completed nest
was foreshadowed by the first stiff straw; but how far off is yet that
dainty casket with its complement of speckled eggs! The nest was so
placed that it had for canopy a large, broad, drooping leaf of yellow
dock. This formed a perfect shield against both sun and rain, while it
served to conceal it from any curious eyes from above,—from the cat,
for instance, prowling along the top of the wall. Before the eggs had
hatched the docken leaf wilted and dried and fell down upon the nest.
But the mother bird managed to insinuate herself beneath it, and went
on with her brooding all the same.
Then I arranged an artificial cover of leaves and branches which
shielded her charge till they had flown away. A mere trifle was this
little bob-tailed bird with her arts and her secrets, and the male with
his song, and yet the pair gave a touch of something to those days and
to that place which I would not willingly have missed.
I have spoken of nature as a stage whereon the play, more or less
interrupted and indirect, constantly goes on. One amusing actor upon
that stage one season, upon my own premises, was a certain male
bluebird. To the spectator it was a comedy, but to the actor himself I
imagine it was quite serious business. The bird and his mate had a nest
in a box upon an outhouse. In this outhouse was a window with one pane
broken out. At almost any hour in the day from spring to early summer,
the male bird could be seen fluttering and pecking against this window
from the outside. Did he want to get within? Apparently so, and yet he
would now and then pause in his demonstrations, alight in the frame of
the broken pane, look intently within, and after a moment resume his
assault upon the window. The people who saw the actions of the bird
were at a loss how to interpret them. But I could see at once what was
the matter. The bird saw its image in the mirror of the glass (the dark
interior helped the reflection) and was making war, as he supposed,
upon a rival. Only the unyielding glass kept him from tweaking out
every saucy blue feather upon the spot! Then he would peep in through
the vacant pane and try to determine where his rival had so suddenly
disappeared. How it must have puzzled his little poll! And he learned
nothing from experience. Hundreds of times did he perch in the broken
pane and sharply eye the interior. And for two months there did not
seem to be an hour when he was not assaulting the window. He never lost
faith in the reality of the bird within, and he never abated one jot
his enmity toward him. If the glass had been a rough surface he would
certainly have worn his beak and claws and wings to mere stubs. The
incident shows the pugnacious disposition of the bluebird, and it shows
how shallow a bird's wit is when new problems or conditions confront
it. I have known a cock-robin to assault an imaginary rival in a garret
window, in the same manner, and keep up the warfare for weeks.
On still another occasion similar antics of a male bluebird greatly
disturbed the sleep of my hired man in the early morning. The bird with
its mate had a nest in a box near by the house, and after the manner
of the bluebirds was very inquisitive and saucy about windows; one
morning it chanced to discover its reflected image in the windows of
the hired man's room. The shade, of some dark stuff, was down on the
inside, which aided in making a kind of looking-glass of the window.
Instantly the bird began an assault upon his supposed rival in the
window, and made such a clattering that there was no more sleep inside
that room. Morning after morning the bird kept this up till the tired
plowman complained bitterly and declared his intention to kill the
bird. In an unlucky moment—unlucky for me, who had morning work to be
done—I suggested that he leave the shade up and try the effect. He did
so, and his morning sleep was thenceforth undisturbed.
A Western correspondent writes me that she once put a looking-glass
down on the floor in front of the canary bird's cage. The poor canary
had not had any communion with his own kind for years. "He used often
to watch the ugly sparrows—the little plebeians—from his aristocratic
gilded palace. I opened his cage and he walked up to the looking-glass,
and it was not long before he made up his mind. He collected dead
leaves, twigs, bits of paper, and all sorts of stray bits, and began
a nest right off. Several days after in his lonely cage he would take
bits of straw and arrange them when they were given him."
XI
A LIFE OF FEAR
As I sat looking from my window the other morning upon a red squirrel
gathering hickory nuts from a small hickory, and storing them up in
his den in the bank, I was forcibly reminded of the state of constant
fear and apprehension in which the wild creatures live, and I tried to
picture to myself what life would be to me, or to any of us, hedged
about by so many dangers, real or imaginary.
The squirrel would shoot up the tree, making only a brown streak from
the bottom to the top; would seize his nut and rush down again in the
most precipitate manner. Half way to his den, which was not over three
rods distant, he would rush up the trunk of another tree for a few
yards to make an observation. No danger being near, he would dive into
his den and reappear again in a twinkling.
Returning for another nut, he would mount the second tree again for
another observation. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he would spin
along the top of the ground to the tree that bore the nuts, shoot up it
as before, seize the fruit, and then back again to his retreat.
Never did he fail during the half hour or more that I watched him
to take an observation on his way both to and from his nest. It was
"snatch and run" with him. Something seemed to say to him all the time:
"Look out! look out!" "The cat!" "The hawk!" "The owl!" "The boy with
the gun!"
It was a bleak December morning; the first fine flakes of a cold,
driving snowstorm were just beginning to sift down, and the squirrel
was eager to finish harvesting his nuts in time. It was quite touching
to see how hurried and anxious and nervous he was. I felt like going
out and lending a hand. The nuts were small, poor pig-nuts, and I
thought of all the gnawing he would have to do to get at the scanty
meat they held. My little boy once took pity on a squirrel that lived
in the wall near the gate, and cracked the nuts for him, and put them
upon a small board shelf in the tree where he could sit and eat them at
his ease.
The red squirrel is not so provident as the chipmunk. He lays up stores
irregularly, by fits and starts; he never has enough put up to carry
him over the winter; hence he is more or less active all the season.
Long before the December snow the chipmunk has for days been making
hourly trips to his den with full pockets of nuts or corn or buckwheat,
till his bin holds enough to carry him through to April. He need not,
and I believe does not, set foot out of doors during the whole winter.
But the red squirrel trusts more to luck.
As alert and watchful as the red squirrel is, he is frequently
caught by the cat. My Nig, as black as ebony, knows well the taste
of his flesh. I have known him to be caught by the black snake and
successfully swallowed. The snake, no doubt, lay in ambush for him.
This fear, this ever present source of danger of the wild creatures, we
know little about. Probably the only person in the civilized countries
who is no better off than the animals in this respect is the Czar of
Russia. He would not even dare gather nuts as openly as my squirrel.
A blacker and more terrible cat than Nig would be lying in wait for
him and would make a meal of him. The early settlers in this country
must have experienced something of this dread of apprehension from the
Indians. Many African tribes now live in the same state of constant
fear of the slave-catchers or of other hostile tribes. Our ancestors,
back in prehistoric times, or back of that in geologic times, must
have known fear as a constant feeling. Hence the prominence of fear in
infants and children when compared with the youth or the grown person.
Babies are nearly always afraid of strangers.
In the domestic animals also, fear is much more active in the young
than in the old. Nearly every farm boy has seen a calf but a day or two
old, which its mother has secreted in the woods or in a remote field,
charge upon him furiously with a wild bleat, when first discovered.
After this first ebullition of fear, it usually settles down into the
tame humdrum of its bovine elders.
Eternal vigilance is the price of life with most of the wild
creatures. There is only one among them whose wildness I cannot
understand, and that is the common water turtle. Why is this creature
so fearful? What are its enemies? I know of nothing that preys upon
it. Yet see how watchful and suspicious these turtles are as they sun
themselves upon a log or a rock. Before you are fairly in gunshot of
them, they slide down into the water and are gone.
The land turtle, or terrapin, on the other hand, shows scarcely a trace
of fear. He will indeed pause in his walk when you are very near him,
but he will not retreat into his shell till you have poked him with
your foot or your cane. He appears to have no enemies; but the little
spotted water turtle is as shy as if he were the delicate tidbit that
every creature was searching for. I did once find one which a fox had
dug out of the mud in winter, and carried a few rods and dropped on the
snow, as if he had found he had no use for it.
One can understand the fearlessness of the skunk. Nearly every creature
but the farm-dog yields to him the right of way. All dread his terrible
weapon. If you meet one in your walk in the twilight fields, the
chances are that you will turn out for him, not he for you. He may
even pursue you, just for the fun of seeing you run. He comes waltzing
toward you, apparently in the most hilarious spirits.
The coon is probably the most courageous creature among our familiar
wild animals. Who ever saw a coon show the white feather? He will face
any odds with perfect composure. I have seen a coon upon the ground,
beset by four men and two dogs, and never for a moment losing his
presence of mind, or showing a sign of fear. The raccoon is clear grit.
The fox is a very wild and suspicious creature, but curiously enough,
when you suddenly come face to face with him, when he is held by a
trap, or driven by the hound, his expression is not that of fear, but
of shame and guilt. He seems to diminish in size and to be overwhelmed
with humiliation. Does he know himself to be an old thief, and is that
the reason of his embarrassment? The fox has no enemies but man, and
when he is fairly outwitted, he looks the shame he evidently feels.
In the heart of the rabbit fear constantly abides. How her eyes
protrude! She can see back and front and on all sides as well as a
bird. The fox is after her, the owls are after her, the gunners are
after her, and she has no defense but her speed. She always keeps well
to cover. The northern hare keeps in the thickest brush. If the hare or
rabbit crosses a broad open exposure it does so hurriedly, like a mouse
when it crosses the road. The mouse is in danger of being pounced upon
by a hawk, and the hare or rabbit by the snowy owl, or else the great
horned owl.
A friend of mine was following one morning a fresh rabbit track through
an open field. Suddenly the track came to an end, as if the creature
had taken wings—as it had after an unpleasant fashion. There, on
either side of its last foot imprint, were several parallel lines in
the snow, made by the wings of the great owl that had swooped down and
carried it off. What a little tragedy was seen written there upon the
white, even surface of the field!
The rabbit has not much wit. I once, when a boy, saw one that had
been recently caught, liberated in an open field in the presence of a
dog that was being held a few yards away. But the poor thing lost all
presence of mind and was quickly caught by the clumsy dog.
A hunter once saw a hare running upon the ice along the shore of one of
the Rangeley lakes. Presently a lynx appeared in hot pursuit; as soon
as the hare found it was being pursued, it began to circle, foolish
thing. This gave the lynx greatly the advantage, as it could follow in
a much smaller circle. Soon the hare was run down and seized.
I saw the same experiment tried with a red squirrel with quite opposite
results. The boy who had caught the squirrel in his wire trap had a
very bright and nimble dog about the size of a fox, that seemed to be
very sure he could catch a red squirrel under any circumstances if only
the trees were out of the way. So the boy went to the middle of an open
field with his caged squirrel, the dog, who seemed to know what was up,
dancing and jumping about him. It was in midwinter; the snow had a firm
crust that held boy and dog alike. The dog was drawn back a few yards
and the squirrel liberated. Then began one of the most exciting races
I have witnessed for a long time. It was impossible for the lookers-on
not to be convulsed with laughter, though neither dog nor squirrel
seemed to regard the matter as much of a joke. The squirrel had all his
wits about him, and kept them ready for instant use. He did not show
the slightest confusion. He was no match for the dog in fair running,
and he discovered this fact in less than three seconds; he must win,
if at all, by strategy. Not a straight course for the nearest tree,
but a zigzag course; yea, a double or treble zigzag course. Every
instant the dog was sure the squirrel was his, and every instant he was
disappointed. It was incredible and bewildering to him. The squirrel
dodged this way and that. The dog looked astonished and vexed.
Then the squirrel issued from between his hind legs and made three
jumps toward the woods before he was discovered. Our sides ached with
laughter, cruel as it may seem.
It was evident the squirrel would win. The dog seemed to redouble his
efforts. He would overshoot the game, or shoot by it to the right
or left. The squirrel was the smaller craft and could out-tack him
easily. One more leap and the squirrel was up a tree, and the dog was
overwhelmed with confusion and disgust.
He could not believe his senses. "Not catch a squirrel in such a field
as that? Go to, I will have him yet!" and he bounds up the tree as high
as one's head, and then bites the bark of it in his anger and chagrin.
The boy says his dog has never bragged since about catching red
squirrels "if only the trees were out of reach!"
When any of the winged creatures are engaged in a life and death race
in that way, or in any other race, the tactics of the squirrel do not
work; the pursuer never overshoots nor shoots by his mark. The flight
of the two is timed as if they were parts of one whole. A hawk will
pursue a sparrow or a robin through a zigzag course and not lose a
stroke or half a stroke of the wing by reason of any darting to the
right or left. The clew is held with fatal precision. No matter how
quickly nor how often the sparrow or the finch changes its course, its
enemy changes, simultaneously, as if every move was known to it from
the first.
The same thing may be noticed among the birds in their love chasings;
the pursuer seems to know perfectly the mind of the pursued. This
concert of action among birds is very curious. When they are on
the alert a flock of sparrows, or pigeons, or cedar-birds, or snow
buntings, or blackbirds, will all take flight as if there was but one
bird, instead of a hundred. The same impulse seizes every individual
bird at the same instant, as if they were sprung by electricity.
Or when a flock of birds is in flight, it is still one body, one
will; it will rise, or circle, or swoop with a unity that is truly
astonishing.
A flock of snow buntings will perform their aerial evolutions with
a precision that the best-trained soldiery cannot equal. Have the
birds an extra sense which we have not? A brood of young partridges
in the woods will start up like an explosion, every brown particle
and fragment hurled into the air at the same instant. Without word or
signal, how is it done?
XII
LOVERS OF NATURE
I
We love nature with a different love at different periods of our lives.
In youth our love is sensuous. It is not so much a conscious love as it
is an irresistible attraction. The senses are keen and fresh, and they
crave a field for their exercise. We delight in the color of flowers,
the perfume of meadows and orchards, the moist, fresh smell of the
woods. We eat the pungent roots and barks, we devour the wild fruits,
we slay the small deer. Then nature also offers a field of adventure;
it challenges and excites our animal spirits. The woods are full of
game, the waters of fish; the river invites the oar, the breeze, the
sail, the mountain-top promises a wide prospect. Hence the rod, the
gun, the boat, the tent, the pedestrian club. In youth we are nearer
the savage state, the primitive condition of mankind, and wild nature
is our proper home. The transient color of the young bird points its
remote ancestry, and the taste of youth for rude nature in like manner
is the survival of an earlier race instinct.
Later in life we go to nature as an escape from the tension and
turmoil of business, or for rest and recreation from study, or seeking
solace from grief and disappointment, or as a refuge from the frivolity
and hypocrisies of society. We lie under trees, we stroll through
lanes, or in meadows and pastures, or muse on the shore. Nature
"salves" our worst wounds; she heals and restores us.
Or we cultivate an intellectual pleasure in nature, and follow up some
branch of natural science, as botany, or ornithology, or mineralogy.
Then there is the countryman's love of nature, the pleasure in cattle,
horses, bees, growing crops, manual labor, sugar-making, gardening,
harvesting, and the rural quietness and repose.
Lastly, we go to nature for solitude and for communion with our own
souls. Nature attunes us to a higher and finer mood. This love springs
from our religious needs and instincts. This was the love of Thoreau,
of Wordsworth, and has been the inspiration of much modern poetry and
art.
Dr. Johnson said he had lived in London so long that he had ceased to
note the changes of the seasons. But Dr. Johnson was not a lover of
Nature. Of that feeling for the country of which Wordsworth's poetry,
for instance, is so full, he probably had not a vestige. Think of
Wordsworth shut up year in and year out—in the city! That lover of
shepherds, of mountains, of lonely tarns, of sounding waterfalls,
"Who looked upon the hills with tenderness,
And made dear friendships with the streams and groves."
Dr. Johnson's delight was in men and in verbal fisticuffs with them,
but Wordsworth seems to have loved Nature more than men; at least he
was drawn most to those men who lived closest to Nature and were more a
part of her. Thus he says he loved shepherds, "dwellers in the valleys,"
"Not verily
For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills
Where was their occupation and abode."
Your real lover of nature does not love merely the beautiful things
which he culls here and there; he loves the earth itself, the faces of
the hills and mountains, the rocks, the streams, the naked trees no
less than the leafy trees,—a plowed field no less than a green meadow.
He does not know what it is that draws him. It is not beauty, any more
than it is beauty in his father and mother that makes him love them.
It is "something far more deeply interfused,"—something native and
kindred that calls to him. In certain moods how good the earth, the
soil, seems! One wants to feel it with his hands and smell it—almost
taste it. Indeed, I never see a horse eat soil and sods without a
feeling that I would like to taste it too. The rind of the earth, of
this "round and delicious globe" which has hung so long upon the great
Newtonian tree, ripening in the sun, must be sweet.
I recall an Irish girl lately come to this country, who worked for
us, and who, when I dug and brought to the kitchen the first early
potatoes, felt them, and stroked them with her hand, and smelled
them, and was loath to lay them down, they were so full of suggestion
of the dear land and home she had so lately left. I suppose it was a
happy surprise to her to find that the earth had the same fresh, moist
smell here that it had in Ireland, and yielded the same crisp tubers.
The canny creature had always worked in the fields, and the love of
the soil and of homely country things was deep in her heart. Another
emigrant from over the seas, a laboring man, confined to the town, said
to me in his last illness, that he believed he would get well if he
could again walk in the fields. A Frenchman who fled the city and came
to the country said, with an impressive gesture, that he wanted to be
where he could see the blue sky over his head.
These little incidents are but glints or faint gleams of that love of
Nature to which I would point,—an affection for the country itself,
and not a mere passing admiration for its beauties. A great many people
admire Nature; they write admiring things about her; they apostrophize
her beauties; they describe minutely pretty scenes here and there;
they climb mountains to see the sun set, or the sun rise, or make long
journeys to find waterfalls, but Nature's real lover listens to their
enthusiasm with coolness and indifference. Nature is not to be praised
or patronized. You cannot go to her and describe her; she must speak
through your heart. The woods and fields must melt into your mind,
dissolved by your love for them. Did they not melt into Wordsworth's
mind? They colored all his thoughts; the solitude of those green,
rocky Westmoreland fells broods over every page. He does not tell us
how beautiful he finds Nature, and how much he enjoys her; he makes us
share his enjoyment.
Richard Jefferies was probably as genuine a lover of Nature as was
Wordsworth, but he had not the same power to make us share his
enjoyment. His page is sometimes wearisome from mere description and
enumeration. He is rarely interpretative; the mood, the frame of mind,
which Nature herself begets, he seldom imparts to us. What we finally
love in Nature is ourselves, some suggestion of the human spirit, and
no labored description or careful enumeration of details will bring us
to this.
"Nor do words
Which practiced talent readily affords,
Prove that her hand has touched responsive chords."
It has been aptly said that Jefferies was a reporter of genius, but
that he never (in his nature books) got beyond reporting. His "Wild
Life" reads like a kind of field newspaper; he puts in everything, he
is diligent and untiring, but for much of it one cares very little
after he is through. For selecting and combining the things of
permanent interest so as to excite curiosity and impart charm, he has
but little power.
The passion for Nature is by no means a mere curiosity about her, or
an itching to portray certain of her features; it lies deeper and is
probably a form of, or closely related to, our religious instincts.
When you go to Nature, bring us good science or else good literature,
and not a mere inventory of what you have seen. One demonstrates, the
other interprets.
Observation is selective and detective. A real observation begets
warmth and joy in the mind. To see things in detail as they lie about
you and enumerate them is not observation; but to see the significant
things, to seize the quick movement and gesture, to disentangle
the threads of relation, to know the nerves that thrill from the
cords that bind, or the typical and vital from the commonplace and
mechanical—that is to be an observer. In Thoreau's "Walden" there is
observation; in the Journals published since his death there is close
and patient scrutiny, but only now and then anything that we care to
know. Considering that Thoreau spent half of each day for upward of
twenty years in the open air, bent upon spying out Nature's ways and
doings, it is remarkable that he made so few real observations.