about twelve o’clock the sun burst out with great brilliancy, and life
and light succeeded to torpor and gloom; a steam immediately arose from
our garden beds and plowed lands, giving us a very strong example of the
rapid manner in which the matter of heat (caloric) will at times unite
with water. Half an hour before, this water was frozen and inert; but
the instant that the sun’s rays fell upon it, their heat was imbibed,
and the icy matter converted into a body lighter than the atmosphere by
which it was surrounded, and passed into it in the vapor we have just
noticed. I was the more particular in observing this common event, as it
afforded a forcible illustration of the invisible evaporation which is
constantly going forward, the unremitting changes in operation, the
action and reaction of the earth and its products with the atmosphere.
During the night, and the earlier parts of the morning, water was
falling on the earth in minute particles, constituting what we call fog;
then out burst the sun, and reclaimed this moisture which had fallen,
and we could see it obeying the mandate, and pass away in steam. In the
evening it will probably return again in fog, or in rain, when the
atmosphere cools; and thus a constant visible intelligence is going on.
How much insensible intercourse takes place we know not, but we can
comprehend its agency by the effects and events that manifest
themselves. Our country people think these “rokings” (reekings) of the
earth greatly favorable to the growth of vegetation, supposing it
occasioned by the internal heat of the earth producing a vapor like that
from fermenting soil, thus warming the roots; but if the theory be
defective, the fact may be true, by the caloric in the sun’s rays
promoting the decomposition of the water, or separating the component
parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which uniting with other matters contained
in the earth and atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this
means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, resins, &c.,
in the vegetable world; and hence there is a constant decomposition of
water going forward by these alternations, and a constant formation of
matters beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of the
earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain has revived or promoted
the increase of vegetation, we must understand, that the mere wetting it
has not accomplished this; but that the vegetable has by means of its
foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or separated the combined
matters of the water, and taken from it certain portions as essential to
its vigor, or been revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained
in the water.
Jan. 10.—The ground covered with snow, the pools with ice, trees and
hedges leafless, and patched here and there with a mantle of white,
present a cheerless, dreary void; no insects are animating the air, and
all our songsters are silent and away; a few miserable thrushes are
hopping on the ditch-bank, swept bare by the wind; and the robin puffing
out his feathers, and contracting his neck into his body, is peeping
with his fine bright eyes into the windows from the cypress bough. A few
evergreens are waving their sprays, and glittering in the light, yet
making but poor compensation for the variety, the flutter, the verdure,
of our summer. Though we have little natural beauty to note or to
record, we are not left without a testimony of an overruling Power; and,
however sad and melancholy things may appear at the first view, yet a
more steady observation will manifest to us a presiding Providence and
Mercy. Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for contemplation, yet
I would add a reflection in my Journal of our passing events, or rather
recall from memory the truth, that science has made known to us, revived
by the sight of that frozen pool. There is one universal body, inherent
in every known substance in nature, latent heat, which chemists have
agreed to call “caloric.” By artificial means bodies may be deprived of
certain portions of it; and then the substance most usually contracts,
and increases in weight. Water is an exception to this; for in losing a
part of its heat, the cause of its fluidity, and becoming ice, it
expands, and is rendered lighter, by inclosing, during the operation,
more or less of atmospheric air: consequently it swims, covering the
surface. To this very simple circumstance, ice floating and not
sinking,[76] are the banks and vicinities of all the rivers, lakes,
pools, or great bodies of water in northern Europe, Asia, and America,
rendered habitable, and what are now the most fertile and peopled would
be the most sterile and abandoned, were it not for this law of nature.
Had ice been so heavy as to sink in water, the surface on freezing would
have fallen to the bottom, and a fresh surface would be presented for
congelation; this would then descend in its turn, and unite with the
other; and thus during a hard frost successive surfaces would be
presented, and fall to the bottom, as long as the frost or any fluid
remained. By this means the whole body of the water would become a dense
concretion of ice: its inhabitants would not only perish, but the
indurated mass would resist the influence of the sun of any summer to
thaw it, and continue congealed throughout the year, chilling the earth
in its neighborhood, and the winds that passed over it, preventing the
growth of vegetation in the former, or blighting and destroying it by
the influence of the latter.
Winter is called a dull season; and to the sensations of some, the
enjoyments of others, and, perhaps, to the vision of all, it is a most
cheerless period. This is so universally felt, that we always associate
the idea of pleasure with the return of spring: whatsoever our
occupations or employments may be, though its sleety storms and piercing
winds may at times chill the very current in our veins, yet we consider
it as a harbinger of pleasurable hours and grateful pursuits. We
commence our undertakings, or defer them till spring. The hopes or
prospects of the coming year are principally established in spring; and
we trust that the delicate health of the blossoms round our hearths,
which has faded in the chilling airs of winter, may be restored by the
mild influence of that season. Yet winter must be considered as the time
in which Nature is most busily employed; silent in her secret mansions,
she is now preparing and compounding the verdure, the flowers, the
nutriment of spring; and all the fruits and glorious profusion of our
summer year are only the advance of what has been ordained and
fabricated in these dull months. All these advances require Omnipotent
wisdom and power to perfect; but perhaps a more exalted degree of wisdom
and power has been requisite to call them into a state of being from
nothing. The branch of that old pear-tree now extended before me, is
denuded and bare, presenting no object of curiosity or of pleasure; but,
had we the faculty to detect, and power to observe, what was going
forward in its secret vessels, beneath its rugged, unsightly covering,
what wonder and admiration would it create!—the materials manufacturing
there for its leaf, and its bark; for the petals and parts of its
flowers; the tubes and machinery that concoct the juices, modify the
fluids, and furnish the substance of the fruit, with multitudes of other
unknown operations and contrivances, too delicate and mysterious to be
seen, or even comprehended, by the blindness, the defectibility of our
nature—things of which we have no information, being beyond the range of
any of the works or the employments of mankind! We may gather our pear,
be pleased with its form or its flavor; we may magnify its vessels,
analyze its fluids, yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation,
and the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite to conduct
it to our use, than a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the
infinite number of processes that are necessary to furnish a loaf of
bread, from plowing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but an
isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more complicated still.
How utterly inconceivable then are the labors, the contrivances, the
combinations, that are going forward, and accomplishing, in this our
dull season of the year, in that host of nature’s productions with
which, shortly, we shall everywhere be surrounded!
Jan. 20th.—A keen frost, and the ground covered with snow, present a
scene of apparent suffering and want to many of our poor little birds;
but the preservation of the fowls of the air, which sow not nor gather
into barns, has been beautifully instanced to us, as a manifest evidence
of a superintending Providence: the full force of this testimony is most
strongly impressed upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with
rigor, and we marvel how the life of these beings can be supported when
the waters are bound up, and earth and all its products hidden by a
dense covering of snow. Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by
picking the refuse of our corn-stacks, by seeds scattered about our
homestalls and cattle-yards, but multitudes of others are in no way
dependent upon man for shelter or support, do not even approach his
dwelling, but are maintained by the universal bounty of Providence; as
the woodlark, the meadow-lark, the chats, and several others; but by
what means they are maintained in a period like this is not quite
manifest. The portion that they require is probably small, yet it must
be insect food, and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily
engaged in providing for their wants upon the furze sprays, amidst
frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches and pools; and as no insect
but the winter gnat is now found in such places, it is probable that
this creature, which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields them
in this season much of their support. Some of the insectivorous birds
have at such periods no apparent difficulty in supporting their
existence, finding their food in a dormant state in mosses, lichens, and
crevices of trees and buildings; but for those which require animated
creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be procured but this gnat,
and it possibly has been endowed with its peculiar habits and
dispositions for a purport like this. We have many examples in nature of
similar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence and
requirements of another. The molusca and insects of the deep continue
the life of some, the feeble races of the air and waters maintain the
beings of others, and the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those
which inhabit with him; but where this chain ends, human faculties will
probably never be able to ascertain. The remarkable fact which our
microscopes make known to us, that all infusions of natural substances
in water will produce life, however extraordinary the form may be, seems
to denote a continuation of being beyond any possible comprehension, and
probably subservient to the existence of each other: the minute creature
that floats a hardly perceptible atom in the water of the ditch, and
which subsists many of the animals which inhabit those places, feeds
upon smaller than itself, and those again, possibly, upon more minute
ones which the vegetable infusions of those places give existence to:
here the investigation terminates, but the thread unbroken continues,
probably through endless gradations, perceptible to infinity alone.
Having applauded the operations of Nature with so much cordiality,
possibly I may be called her “enthusiastic adorer,” but the epithet must
be disclaimed. None can respect the works of creation more, but ’tis not
with an ecstasy that glows, fades, and expires, but with a calm deep-
rooted conviction implanted in the boy, and increased by years of notice
and experience. I have followed her footsteps, though far, very far
distant, as an humble admirer of perfection, nor can my veneration cease
whilst reason continues undisturbed.
* * * * *
Sept. 8th, 1828.—A remarkably dry and exhausting day, not from any
peculiar influence of the solar heat, but from the arid state of the
air, which was very distressing to our feelings, and all tender
vegetation became languid and suffering under its influence. I
endeavored to ascertain the power of absorption possessed by the air at
the time by an experiment, rude enough to be sure, yet it tended in some
measure to indicate the rapid manner in which fluids are exhaled in
particular states of the atmosphere. A linen cloth twelve inches square,
which had absorbed an ounce avoirdupois of water, was suspended in the
shade in a free current of air, and in the course of ten minutes it had
lost 436 grains, equal to one-sixteenth of its weight. This great
evaporation was principally effected by the absorbent power of the air,
and manifested in some degree the exhausting influence that was passing
over the earth and the vegetation exposed to the current of air; and as
the roots could not derive sufficient moisture from the soil to supply
what was thus drawn from the leaves, the foliage became languid and
flaccid in consequence. The linen, containing the same quantity of
water, was then spread upon a short turf in the sun and in the space of
ten minutes it lost 368 grains, and this was effected without any
particular influencing current of air; accordingly, the evaporation from
an acre of moist land covered with vegetation would exceed one hundred
and twenty-two cwt. of water in an hour! As the quantity drawn from the
vegetation on the soil may be equal to the shelter its foliage affords
to the earth, no very accurate data can be drawn from this experiment;
for different soils will give out their moisture more or less easily,
and succulent vegetables be more influenced than those of a drier
nature; but it served at the time to indicate the portion of moisture
that was escaping from a given horizontal surface. From the invisible
and insensible nature of evaporation, its influences are not always
considered; but such an action on the surfaces of things as that related
above, must put into operation all the inherent powers of matter
susceptible of impulse, and probably would produce effects which we
might suppose to be accomplished by the agency of other means.
Nov. 10.—Many effusions of the mind have been produced by the approach
or existence of the seasons of our year, which seem naturally to actuate
our bodily or mental feelings through the agency of the eye, or
temperature of the air. The peculiar silence that prevails in autumn,
like the repose of wearied nature, seems to mark the decline and
termination of being in many things that animated our summer months; the
singing of the bird is rare, feeble, and melancholy; the hum of the
insect is not heard; the breeze passes by us like a sigh from nature: we
hear it, and it is gone for ever. But it is the vegetable tribes, which
at this season most particularly influence our feeling, and excite our
attention. We see the fruits of the earth stored up for our use in that
dull season “in which there will be neither earing nor harvest,” the
termination and reward of the labors of man. But this day, November 10,
presented such a scene of life and mortality, that it could not be
passed by without viewing it as an admonition, a display of what has
been, and is. There had occurred during the night a severe white frost;
and, standing by a green-house filled with verdure, fragrance, and
blossom, I was surrounded in every direction by the parents of all this
gaiety, in blackness, dissolution, and decay. But the very day before,
they had attracted the most merited admiration and delight by the
splendor of their bloom and the vigor of their growth; but now just
touched by the icy finger of the night, they had become a mass of
unsightly ruins and confusion. Once the gay belles of the parterre, they
fluttered their hour, a generation of existent loveliness; their
youthful successors, unpermitted to mingle with them, peeped from their
retreats above, seeming almost to repine at their confinement; they have
bloomed their day, another race succeeds, and their hour will be
accomplished too. This was so perfectly in unison with the shifting
scenes of life, the many changes of the hour, that it seemed inseparably
connected with a train of reflection, with the precepts which all nature
points out—her still small whisperings for the ears of those that can
hear them.
The extraordinary tendency that Nature has to produce, and the vigilant
perseverance she maintains to occupy all substances as a soil for her
productions, when they arrive at a state fitting for her purposes, is a
well-known fact, and is perfectly in consistency with the uniform habit
she preserves, of letting “no fragment be lost.” All things tend
upwards, from some original, through an infinity of gradations, though
the beginning and termination may not always be perceived, nor the links
of this vast chain be found. The most obscure plants, agarics or mucor,
as far as we know, perfect their seed, and give birth to other
generations; but there is a fine green substance, observable upon the
sprays of trees, stems of various shrubs in every hedge, upon old rails
and exposed wood-work, leaving a powdery mark upon one’s coat that has
rubbed against such places, which I have always considered as the very
lowest rudiment of vegetation. This matter, submitted to examination in
the microscope, presents no foliage or plant-like form, but appears a
kind of pollen, a capsule, or a perfected seed, suspended on a fine
fibre; but from the extreme smallness of it I speak with hesitation, not
being able to define it satisfactorily with the most powerful lens. If
it be, as I have conjectured, a perfected seed, it probably is the
origin of many of those minute mosses, that become rooted, we know not
by what means, upon banks, stones, barks, &c., in such profusion; but
here all investigation ceases: by what agency this fine seed has been so
profusely scattered, or from what source it sprang, is hidden from us,
and we can no more satisfactorily conjecture, than we can account for
those myriads of blighting insects, which so suddenly infest our grain,
our fruits, and our plants. There is an inquisition, where all human
knowledge terminates; the bounds of nature have never been defined.
Without considering the various sources of enjoyment and pleasure
bestowed upon an intelligent creature, what a scene of glorious display
might be opened to man through the agency of the eye alone! Motives we
must abandon, as probably they are beyond our comprehensions; but were
the powers of vision so enlarged or cleared as to bring to observation
the now unknown fabrication of animate and inanimate things, what
astonishment would be elicited! The seeds, the pollen of plants, the
capillary vessels and channels of their several parts, with their
concurrent actions, the clothing of various creatures, and all that host
of unperceived wisdom around us! Yet probably the mind, constituted as
it now is, would be disturbed by the constant excitement such wonders
would create; but at present, though sparingly searched out by the
patient investigator, and but obscurely seen, they solace and delight;
“cheer, but not inebriate.”
“Oh good beyond compare!
If thus thy meaner works are fair,
If thus thy bounties gild the span
Of ruin’d earth and sinful man,
How glorious must that mansion be
Where thy redeem’d shall live with thee!”
* * * * *
And now I think I have pretty well run over my diary, the humble record
of the birds, the reptiles, the plants, and inanimate things around me.
They who have had the patience to read these my notes, will probably be
surprised that I could take the trouble to register such accounts of
such things; and I might think so too, did I not know how much
occupation and healthful recreation the seeking out these trifles have
afforded me, rendering, besides, all my rural rambles full of enjoyment
and interest: companions and intimates were found in every hedge, on
every bank, whose connexions I knew something of, and whose individual
habits had become familiar by association; and thus this narrative of my
contemporaries was formed. Few of us, perhaps, in reviewing our by-gone
days, could the hours return again, but would wish many of them
differently disposed of, and more profitably employed: but I gratefully
say, that portion of my own passed in the contemplation of the works of
nature is the part which I most approve—which has been most conducive to
my happiness; and, perhaps, from the sensations excited by the wisdom
and benevolence perceived, not wholly unprofitable to a final state, and
which might be passed again, could I but obtain a clearer comprehension
of the ways of Infinite Wisdom. If in my profound ignorance I received
such gratification and pleasure; what would have been my enjoyment and
satisfaction, “if the secrets of the Most High had been with me, and
when by His light I had walked through darkness?”
APPENDIX.
BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.
NOTE A.
THE “CONEYGAR” AND “LODGE FARM,” p. 11.
It is one of the pleasing characteristics of an old and highly civilized
country, that appropriate local names for the smaller hamlets, farms,
and single rural dwellings, are in general and familiar use. Every thing
which gives to the household home, whether of rich or poor, a pleasant
distinctive character, an additional hold on the memory and the
affections of its inmates, must always prove a merit; and many,
assuredly, have been the instances in which the familiar name of the
family roof has continued through life a hallowed sound to the wanderers
of the household band it once sheltered. In England, this custom—so
natural, so kindly, when undisturbed by pretension—is very general, and
it is almost needless to say that wherever these names go back for half
a century or more, they are always appropriate, and often peculiar, or
it may be, interesting from historical or other associations. In very
many instances, not only do the farm-house and the cottage bear suitable
names, but even the different fields about them are all marked in the
same way; this meadow, that grain-field, yonder copse, the knoll beyond,
shall each be called by some simple term, familiar to the household of
the farmer of the present day, as it was perhaps to his forefathers of
past generations.
NOTE B.
THE POTATO, p. 30.
It has been clearly ascertained that the potato is indigenous to South
America. Mr. Darwin, in his “Journal of Researches,” speaking of the
Chonos Archipelago, on the coast of Chili, writes as follows:
“The _wild potato_ grows on these islands in great abundance, in the
sandy, shelly soil, near the sea beach. The tallest plant was four feet
in height. The tubers were generally small, but I found one, of an oval
shape, two inches in diameter; they resembled, in every respect, and had
the same smell as English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much,
and were watery and insipid, without any bitter taste. They were
undoubtedly indigenous here: they grow as far south, according to Mr.
Low, as lat. 50°, and are called _Aquinas_ by the wild Indians of that
part; the Chilotan Indians have a different name for them. Professor
Henslow, who has examined the dried specimens which I brought home, says
they are the same with those described by Mr. Sabine,[77] from
Valparaiso, but that they form a variety, which by some botanists has
been considered specifically distinct. It is remarkable that the same
plant should be found on the sterile mountains of central Chili, where a
drop of rain does not fall for more than six months, and within the damp
forests of these southern islands.” Darwin’s “Journal of Researches,”
Vol. II. p. 23, American edition.
NOTE C.
THE WYCH ELM, (_Ulmus Montana_,) p. 46.
The following account of the wych elm is given by Mr. Downing in his
“_Landscape Gardening_:”
“The Scotch, or wych elm, (_ulmus montana_.) This is a tree of lower
stature than the common European elm, its average height being about
forty feet. The leaves are broad, rough, pointed, and the branches
extend more horizontally, drooping at the extremities. The bark on the
branches is comparatively smooth. It is a grand tree, ‘the head is so
finely massed, and yet so well broken, as to render it one of the
noblest of park trees; and where it grows wild amid the rocky scenery of
its native Scotland, there is no tree which assumes so great, or so
pleasing a variety of character.’ In general appearance the Scotch elm
considerably resembles our white elm. Its most ornamental varieties are
the spiry-topped elm, (_U. m. fastigiata_,) with singularly twisted
leaves, and a very upright growth; the weeping Scotch elm, (_u. m.
pendula_,) a very remarkable variety, the branches of which droop in a
fan-like manner; and the smooth-leaved Scotch elm, (_u. m. glabra_.)”
NOTE D.
THE CARPENTER BEE, (_Megachile Centuncularis_,) p. 53.
The term _carpenter bee_ is now usually confined, in England, to those
insects of the bee tribe which chisel out or rasp their nests in posts,
or palings, &c. Their cells “consist of a tunnel excavated in the wood,
and divided by thin partitions of clay into five or six compartments,
each with its supply of pollen for the single inhabitant who is to
emerge from the egg deposited therein.”
The bee referred to by Mr. Knapp, page 53, although inhabiting, at
times, a wooden cell also, like the true “carpenter,” is more generally
classed with the “upholsterer bees,” or those which line their nests
with cuttings from leaves, and flowers. This leaf-cutter bee is thus
alluded to in “Acheta Domestica:”