(NOVEMBER)
All-cheering plenty, with her flowing horn
Led yellow Autumn, wreathed with nodding corn.
--_Burns: "Brigs of Ayr."_
There's silence in the harvest field,
And blackness in the mountain glen,
And clouds that will not pass away
From the hill tops for many a day;
And stillness round the homes of men.
--_Mary Howitt: "Winter."_
THE AUTUMN STORES AND THE LONG WINTER NIGHT
When the caveman was still living from hand to mouth; before he had even
got as far as his first crooked stick for a plough, and when Mrs. Cave
couldn't have canned a bean or a berry to save her life, even if she had
had the cans, a certain little farmer already knew how to get root
crops in the Fall and clean them and cut them and put them away in his
little barn under the ground for Winter use.
Several of these forehanded folk we have already met--the beaver and the
chipmunk, among others--but since we are now at the end of the harvest
year I thought we might spend this evening--the last but one, I am sorry
to say, that we shall be together--in a little chat about these thrifty
brothers of the wild, and how some of them are going to spend the long
Winter that begins in the Autumn and lasts until Spring.
I. LITTLE GRANARIES UNDER THE GROUND
I was going to begin by saying that one of the most _fore_-handed of
them all has _six_ feet, but as that would be almost as bad as a pun, I
decided not to. You would have known, of course, that by people with six
feet I meant the insects.
ANTS THAT THRESH AND STORE
Among the six-legged farmers, you may be sure, there have always been
many who took thought for the morrow--the ants, for example. One can
believe almost anything of ants. If that sluggard had gone to the ant,
as wise King Solomon told him to, and learned all their ways, he would
have found, among other things, how one species harvests the seeds of
the plant known as the "shepherd's-purse," by twisting off the pods with
its hind legs. These members of the ant family store grains of oats,
nettle, and other plants. They pick up all the seeds they can find that
the Autumn winds have already threshed for them, but they're not the
least like that lazy man who wouldn't have the corn that was offered by
kind neighbors to keep him from starving, because it wasn't shelled. If
they don't find enough seeds on the ground when it comes time to think
about the Winter stores they climb up and gather in the seeds
themselves. On the shepherd's-purse, for example, the ant climbs up,
selects a well-filled pod which is not sufficiently dried to have had
its seeds threshed out by the winds, takes the pod in its little jaws
and then--watch him--turns round and round on his hind legs until he
twists it off! Then with it he carefully moves down the stem, like a
baggageman carrying a big trunk from the third apartment; only the
baggageman carries the trunk in front of him or on his shoulders, while
the ant backs his way down. Sometimes two ants work together, one
twisting, the other cutting away the fibres with its teeth. Sometimes
they drop the pods to companions waiting below, and these other helpers
never run off with it, but carry it to the common granary; for ants
always play fair.
[Illustration: HOW THE ANTS WORK IN DIGGING OUT THEIR GRANARIES]
And they have granaries, these ant farmers--hundreds of them, made just
for that, each about the size of father's watch.
[Illustration: THE INSIDE OF THE GRANARY
Underneath the dome of the ant house you see in the previous picture,
are flat chambers like these, connected by galleries, in which the grain
is stored. One is prepared not to be surprised at anything about ants,
but listen to this: The Agricultural Ants not only gather and store this
grain, but they actually plant and cultivate it. They sow it before the
wet season in the Fall, keep it weeded, and gather it in June of the
following year. Seems incredible, doesn't it? But I'm only telling you
what McCook, an ant student, recognized everywhere as a reliable
observer, saw these six-footed Texas farmers actually do.]
Now here's a thing; you stow away a lot of seeds in a little hill where,
of course, there's moisture, and what's going to happen? Those seeds are
going to sprout and grow and spoil, and this, of course, destroys their
value as food. Then what are you going to do? Of course, a human farmer
would put his grains in a dry granary where they couldn't sprout, but
you see the ants haven't any granary of that sort; nothing but those
little holes in the moist ground. Just what they do to these seeds has
not been discovered. They do something that keeps them from either
spoiling or sprouting. But, when they get ready for these seeds to grow,
they let them grow; not so that they can raise a crop, but for the same
reason that the Chinaman lets the barley sprout that he uses in making
chop-suey; so that it will be nice and soft to eat. This growing digests
the starch in the seeds into sugar. When the sprouts have grown as far
as the ants want them to, they gnaw the stalk a little, and cut off the
roots with their mandibles. When this sugar-making has gone on long
enough the ants bring all the plants out into the sun and let them lie
there until they are nice and dry. Then they put them in their barns,
and as long as Winter lasts they live on this sweet flour, grinding it
in their mouth mills as they go along.
Why, it's like living on cookies, almost! Only the ants have been used
to this steady diet of sweets for ages, and it doesn't hurt _their_
little stomachs as it would ours.
[Illustration: CLEANING UP AFTER THE DAY'S WORK
While the Agricultural Ants don't take a bath after the day's work they
do the next best thing. They give each other a kind of massage, and they
evidently find it very enjoyable. You know how the cat loves to be
stroked, dogs and horses to be patted, and little pigs to have their
backs scratched. The ants below are giving each other a massage (left,
abdomen; right, legs and sides). The lady above who seems to be braiding
her back hair, is cleaning her antennae.]
This particular kind of a farming ant is called the Attabara, but
there's another kind more wonderful still. If we want to call on them by
their scientific names--these remarkable little creatures I'm going to
tell about now--we'll have to go to Texas and ask if the _Pogononyrmex
barbatus_ family are at home.
"Oh, to be sure," says the gentleman who first introduced them to
scientific society,[25] "just come with me."
[25] Rev. H. S. McCook: "The Agricultural Ant of Texas."
So he takes us over into Texas and shows us the ants at work. They
destroy every plant on their little farms except that known as ant-rice.
Compared to the size of the ants themselves, these grain-fields are
giant forests, far bigger than the Sequoia Forests of California. The
ants watch for rain at harvest-time as anxiously as a farmer, and on the
first sunny day, they do their cutting and hurry the grain into the
barn. Then on later sunny days, they bring it out to dry before finally
storing it away.
"Well," you say, "is there anything left that these farmers _don't_ do?"
I can't think of anything except the planting. One observer says that
they do actually plant the seeds, and Doctor McCook says, he wouldn't be
surprised if they did, but he never saw them do it.
[Illustration: THE OLD HOME PLACE
This is the farm of some Agricultural Ants in Texas. See the granary and
the roads leading to it? They collect and store the seeds of a plant
which from this fact is called "ant-rice." It looks like oats and tastes
like rice. All plants growing around the nest--which is also called the
granary--the ants cut away, so clearing a space for 10 or 12 feet. Roads
5 inches broad near the nest, but narrowing as they recede, are made for
hundreds of feet in different directions.]
In tropical America there is a species of ant that raises "mushrooms";
at least a kind of fungus that passes for mushrooms with the ants. They
don't exactly set the mushrooms out, but they save time by planting both
the mushrooms and the leaves that make them as one and the same job.
This is how they do it. They climb the trees, cut circular pieces of
leaf with their scissor-like jaws and carry them back to low, wide
mounds in the neighborhood of which they allow nothing to grow; the
purpose being, as it is supposed, to ventilate the galleries of their
homes by keeping a clear space about the mound.
HOW THE ANTS RAISE MUSHROOMS
The leaves are used as a fertilizer on which grow a small species of
mushrooms. The leaves are first left out to be dampened by the rain, and
are carried into the ants' cellars before they are quite dry. In very
dry weather the ants work only during the cool of the day and at night.
Occasionally inexperienced ants bring in grass or unsuitable leaves, but
these are carried out and thrown away by older members of the family.
But you see how valuable all these leaves are to the soil.
[Illustration: ANTS CARRYING LEAVES FOR THE MUSHROOM CELLAR
You'd never guess what the ants are going to do with those leaves! Read
what it says on this page about these six-legged epicures.]
MR. HAMSTER'S THRESHING HARVESTER
Of course, we always expect the ants to do extraordinary things, but one
of those four-legged farmers I mentioned in the beginning of the
chapter anticipated the principle of the very latest type of
threshing-machine. It's a fact. This remarkable little animal
threshing-machine is called the hamster. He is found in Europe east of
the Rhine and in certain portions of Asia. He does both his cutting and
threshing in his field; something the Gauls did in the days of the
Romans in a crude way, but which men of our day have only got to doing
in recent years. He pulls down the wheat ear, cuts it off between his
teeth, and then threshes it by drawing the heads through his mouth. The
grain falls right into sacks as fast as it is threshed; just as it does
in those huge, combined reapers and threshers that you see on our big
wheat farms. Mr. Hamster's sacks are his cheek-pouches, one on each
side. When these are filled, this little threshing-machine turns itself
into an auto, a commercial truck, and off it goes with its load of
wheat to the little barn hidden in the ground. These cheek-pouches, by
the way, reach from the hamster's cheeks clear back to his shoulders,
and both of these pouches will together hold something like a thousand
grains of wheat. He empties them by holding his paws tight against the
side of his face and then pushing forward. Rather a clever unloading
device, too; don't you think so? Just as good for Mr. Hamster's purposes
as the endless-chain system at the Buffalo grain elevator that Mr.
Kipling admired so much.
And in the mere matter of the amount of grain handled, the work of the
hamster is not to be laughed at. The peasant farmers are very glad to
find a hamster granary, which, of course, they promptly take possession
of by due process of law:
"The good old rule, the simple plan
That they shall take who have the power,
And they shall hold who can."
One of Mr. Hamster's neighbors, the field-rat of Hungary and Asia,
stores his grain right in the house--the place where he lives with his
family. Mr. Hamster, however, has his barns separate from his home.
Sometimes he has one, sometimes two; and the older members of the
community may have four or five.
II. MR. VOLE AND HIS ROOT CELLAR
The farmer I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, who is so
thrifty about his root crops and so neat, belongs to the Vole family. He
lives away over in Siberia and his full name is _Arvicola economus_. In
gathering his crop of roots, he first digs a little trench around them
and lays them bare. Then he cleans them off nicely so as not to fill his
storehouse with dirt; cuts them up in sizes convenient for carrying, and
then hauls them home and piles them up in little cellars made specially
for them.
He only takes one piece at a time, walking along backward and pulling it
after him with his teeth. He travels long distances in this fashion,
going around tufts of grass, stones, and logs that lie in the way. When
he gets home, he backs in the front door and into the living-room, and
then into the barns which are back of the living-room. There are
several of these and they are at the end of a long crooked passage.
Some of the Vole family make a specialty of wheat. One species of these
wheat harvesters used to be common in Greece. He made such a nuisance of
himself--from the Greek farmer's standpoint--that the Greeks had a
special god to get after him; Apollo Myoktonos, "Apollo, Destroyer of
Mice."[26] For the vole is just a kind of field-mouse. The runs of these
wheat-harvesting voles are eight to twelve inches below the ground, and
are connected with the surface by vertical holes. The end of the run is
enlarged into a big room for the nest, and there are special rooms
leading from the main runway that are used for the storing of the grain.
These voles do their harvesting in the evening. Standing on their hind
legs and holding to the stock with their little paws as a beaver clasps
a tree, they cut off the wheat head with their teeth. They work very
fast.
[26] Strictly speaking, I presume this was the same Apollo who
carried the sun about in his chariot, and "Destroyer of Mice" was
one of his many nicknames.
HOW DID THESE FARMERS LEARN TO STORE?
Neither the voles nor any other of these interesting farmers and
warehousemen used to get much credit for what they did. The fact that
they helped themselves to some of the good things of earth annoyed Man,
of course, and then, when it came to the matter of intelligence,
conceited Mr. Man said: "Oh, _that's_ just _instinct_." But nowadays
when scientists have begun to study to find out what "instinct" really
is, it is thought that man's brother animals, although they are born
with more knowledge of how to do things--with more of what we call
"instinct"--have also learned by experience just as man did. It is
argued that the storing habit was forced on animals wherever the climate
cut off the food-supply for a time--either because it was too cold or
too hot. The idea of putting something by for a rainy day appealed
particularly to the burrowers because they are a timid lot. Not being
able to defend themselves very well against their enemies they were
obliged to pack up what they could and hurry to some hidden
eating-place. That is where the cheek-pouches, which many of them have,
come in handy. They are also very industrious, and as the seeds and nuts
on which they lived began to ripen, they just couldn't resist the
impulse to gather and gather and gather more than they could possibly
eat at the time. So, as a result of this habit, food piled up in their
underground homes. Then, as they were kept indoors by cold weather or by
their enemies, they took to eating more and more from the pantry shelf,
and thus the members of the family that were the busiest and, therefore,
had the most to eat would naturally survive and leave children of a
similar disposition, while the less thrifty would die off.
III. THE LONG WINTER SLEEP
Some of these forehanded people, instead of putting their Winter supply
of food in the ground, put it on their bones. That is to say, before
turning in for the Winter, they get as fat as can be and then live on
this fat until Spring. A great advantage of this system of storage is
that it is particularly pleasant work--you eat and eat and enjoy your
meals, that's all. Another advantage is that you can't be robbed of your
store as easily as the hamster, for example, frequently is. You carry it
right with you wherever you go.
There are a lot of curious things about this hibernation. Not only will
warmth arouse the sleepers but also extreme cold, and after the extreme
cold may come another sleep from which the sleepers never awaken; in
other words, too much cold kills them. So the object of burying one's
self as the ground-hog does, or under the snow as rabbits do, or in
hollow caves and trees as Brer Bear does, is to keep from getting too
cold. Sometimes two or more "bunk" together, as little pigs do on cold
March days. The body of each helps to keep his bedfellows warm.
IT'S THE COLD THAT MAKES ONE DROWSY
It is the cold itself that seems to make hibernating animals feel
sleepy; just as it does human beings. At a moderate temperature, say 45
or 50 degrees, dormice and hedgehogs will wake up, eat something, and
then go to sleep again. The dormouse usually wakes in every twenty-four
hours, while the hedgehog's Winter naps are two or three days long.
Hunger seems to be the cause of their waking, just as it is with babies.
The little dormouse, as the air grows colder, gradually dozes off, and
his breathing is very deep and slow. As the temperature rises, he begins
to take shorter and more rapid breaths and gradually wakes up. Then, if
he is in his own little home under the ground, he feeds on the nuts and
other foods that he stored in Autumn and drops off again. He sleeps from
five to seven months, depending on the weather.
Moles and shrews, so far as observation goes, don't hibernate. The moles
simply dig deeper, and there they find worms and insects that are buried
away from the reach of frost. The shrews hunt spiders and hundred-legged
worms and larvae in holes and crannies of the soil or beneath leaves of
ground plants and old logs.
[Illustration: LITTLE HEDGEHOG IN MAN'S HAND]
A queer thing is that the hedgehog, which belongs to the same family as
the shrew and the mole, is dead to the world all Winter. Like all
complete hibernators he stops breathing entirely. The reason for this
difference between the hedgehog and the mole is that the mole doesn't
need to go to sleep, because he digs below the frost-line. As for the
shrews, they have little bodies and are very active, and so get
themselves food and keep warm, while the hedgehog is so much bigger and
slower that, when there is so little to eat and it is so cold, he would
either freeze or starve to death if he went about looking for food. He
finds it cheaper to turn in and sleep than to work.
[Illustration: A HEDGEHOG AND HER BABIES]
None of the tree-squirrels seem to take any unusually long naps in the
Winter. We often see them around on pleasant days in the parks and in
the woods. They run out, get a few nuts from their stores, and then back
again to their nests, but the chipmunks and the gophers, who are closely
related to the squirrels, stay from late Autumn to Spring in their
burrows, where they have plenty of food stowed away, and they sleep most
of the time. In the home of four chipmunks was found a pint of wheat, a
quart of nuts, a peck of acorns, and two quarts of buckwheat, besides a
lot of corn and grass seed; all to feed four fat chipmunks. So, with
such plentiful supplies, it is not surprising that after their long
Winter sleep the chipmunks are as sleek as can be and as fat as butter,
while Mr. Bear comes out in the Spring lean and with his hair all mussed
up and as hungry as--well, as hungry as a bear!
All the bear family, except the polar bears, retire to caves or some
sheltered spot under a ledge of a rock or the roots of a big tree. Among
the polar bears the rule seems to be that it's Mamma Bear only who goes
to bed for the Winter. She is careful to put on enough fat not only for
herself, but so that the babies that come along in the Spring will have
plenty of milk. She is buried by snow that drifts on her and her breath
melts a funnel up to the fresh air.
IV. MR. GROUND-HOG AND HIS SHADOW
The woodchuck, like the bear, is a "meat-packer." People talk about him
more or less in February. His other name is "ground-hog" and his shadow
is quite as famous as he is. But is there anything in that old weather
saw? Well, yes and no. You see, it's like this: Mr. Ground-Hog goes to
bed very early in the Fall--long before the cold weather sets in--and so
he is up very early the next Spring; long before the snow is all gone
and, as it is with the other all-Winter sleepers, a little extra warmth
may wake him up. Along toward morning, you know, we all begin to stir
around in our beds and get half awake. So in addition to the fact that
it is nearly daybreak for him--that is to say, Springtime--let there
come along a bright, warm day in February--the second is as good as any
other--and Mr. Ground-Hog is likely to come out of his hole. And, if he
does, of course he will see his shadow, after which there is likely to
be quite a lot of cold weather.
HOW WEATHER AVERAGES UP
Not that his shadow makes any difference, but the point is that if you
have much warm weather _early_ in February you are likely to have colder
weather _later_ and running on into March. It's just the law of
averages, that's all. You see it running through the year--this
averaging up of weather; it just sways back and forth like a pendulum.
Take it in any storm of rain or snow; first the clear sky, then the
clouds, then the downfall, and after that the clear sky again. Take any
month as a whole, or a year as a whole, and it's the same way; you get
about so much rain, so much sunshine, so much heat and cold. The United
States Weather Bureau went to work once and, from the records,
classified the storms for the last thirty years, and they found that
about fifteen storms each year start over the region of the West Gulf
States, twelve begin over the mountains of Colorado, forty cross the
country from the North Pacific by way of Washington and Oregon; and so
on, just about so many from each region each year.
[Illustration: _The Last Snow, by Lippincott_]
And records and old diaries, going back a hundred years, show that the
longer the period you examine for weather facts, the closer the average.
The weather for one ten-year period will be almost as much like any
other ten-year period, as the peas in a pea shell are like each other.
Coming back to the subject of February weather, we find in the diary of
an old resident of Philadelphia in 1779: "The Winter was mild, and
particularly the month of February, when trees were in bloom." He
doesn't say anything about the ground-hog, but there is this to be said
of the sharper changes of February and March, that at this season the
earth is getting more and more warmed up and yet the cold winds from the
North don't like to go; so there is a constant wrestling-match, and it
is the wrestling of the winds one way and another that brings the
changes of the weather. So if the South Winds get the best of it early
in February, the North Winds, with their cold weather, are likely to win
later in the month, and vice versa. Moreover, if you believe in the
ground-hog proverb you are apt to _notice_ the warm days (or cold days,
as the case may be) for the next six weeks after February 2, and you
_won't_ notice so much the weather that doesn't fit your proverb! It's a
way we all have; _seeing_ the things that go to prove what we believe
and _overlooking_ the things that don't.
[Illustration: MR. GROUND-HOG AND HIS SHADOW
"But is there anything in the old weather saw? Well, yes and no. Mr.
Ground-Hog goes to bed early in the Fall and is up early next Spring.
Let there come a bright, warm day in February--the second is as good as
any--and Mr. G.-H. is likely to come out and see his shadow. And if you
have warm weather early in February you are likely to have colder
weather later. It's the law of averages, that's all."]
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
I don't care what it says in "Alice in Wonderland," dormice never
drink tea; although dormice have been at table with people ever
since the days of the Romans. Dormice are still eaten in some parts
of Europe, and the Romans used to keep them as part of their live
stock. The European dormouse is really a little squirrel. Varro's
"Roman Farm Management" (of which you are apt to find a good
translation in the public library) tells how the Romans put their
dormice in clay jars specially made, "with paths contrived on the
side and a hollow to hold their food."
Crocodiles and other tropical animals take very long naps during
the hottest weather. Hartwig's "Harmonies of Nature" tells about an
officer who was asleep in a tent in the tropics, when his bed moved
under him, and he found it was because a crocodile, in the earth
beneath, was just waking up! Imagine what the dried-up ponds and
streams of the llanos of South America must look like when the
rainy season comes on, after the dry spell, with crocodiles asleep
just under the surface everywhere. Doctor Hartwig's book tells.
But the most remarkable case of drying up that ever I heard of was
that of the Egyptian snail in the British Museum, that Woodward
tells about in his "Manual of the Mollusca." This snail was sent to
England, simply as a shell, in 1846. Never dreaming there was
anybody at home, they glued him to a piece of cardboard, marked it
_Helix Desertorum_, and there he stuck until March 7, 1850, when
somebody discovered a certain thing that indicated that there _was_
somebody "at home," and that he was alive. They gave him a warm
bath and he opened his four eyes on the world!
In his "Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs" ("Nature's Work Shop")
Grant Allen tells why the hedgehog works at night and sleeps in the
daytime.
How he fastens on his winter overcoat of leaves, using his spines
for pins, and how funny it makes him look.
How Mother Nature manages to have breakfast ready for him in the
Spring just when he is ready for _it_.
How hedgehogs use their spines when they want to get down from a
high bank or precipice real quickly.
How their eyes tell how smart they are; for a hedgehog is smart.
You will also find interesting things about hibernation in Gould's
"Mother Nature's Children" and Richard's "Four Feet, Two Feet and
No Feet."
In one of his essays on nature topics--"Seven Year Sleepers"--Grant
Allen tells how the toad goes to bed in an earthenware pot, which
he makes for himself, and how this habit may have helped start the
story that live toads are found inside of stones.
Ingersoll, in that delightful book I have already referred to
several times, "The Wit of the Wild," calls the pikas "the
haymakers of the snow peaks." In his article on these interesting
little creatures, he tells why you may often be looking right at
one and still not see it; why the pikas gather bouquets and why
they always lay them out in the hot sun; why their harvest season
only lasts about two weeks, and why, although they usually go to
bed at sunset, they work far into the night in harvest time.
"The Country Life Reader" has a good story of a woodchuck named
"Tommy." Among other things it tells about the variety of
residences a woodchuck has; and why animals that work at night, as
all woodchucks do, have an unusually keen sense of smell. Can you
guess why? The reason is simple enough.
Here's a clever bit of verse about the woodchuck by his other name,
that I came across in some newspaper:
"The festive ground-hog wakes to-day,
And with reluctant roll,
He waddles up his sinuous way
And pops forth from his hole.
He rubs his little blinking eyes,
So heavy from long sleep,
That he may read the tell-tale skies--
Which is it--wake or sleep?"
Ingersoll's "Nature's Calendar" tells why Brer Bear stays up all
winter when there is plenty of food, but goes to bed if food is
scarce; how he uses roots of a fallen tree to help when he is
digging his winter house; how he makes his bed and what he uses for
the purpose; how the winds help him put on his roof, and how he
locks himself in so tight that he can't get out until spring, even
if he wants to.
[Illustration: "IT MUST BE BRER BEAR!"]