usual, deep in the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots.
The kingfishers were always in a hurry, and their colours were fussy and
discordant. They flashed up and down the brook like a pair of demented
fireworks. The whole bank reeked with the discarded meals of their
progeny.
By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle,
a down-lined cloak of green.
The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to
look forward to.
On the one side lay the meadow-land, stretching in unbroken monotony to
the sky-line; on the other, the brook; beyond its wooded bank, more
meadow-land.
The brook was not what it had been. Its waters were being drawn away to
thirsty London, and herein lay the sallow's chief vexation.
This year her upper boughs had never flowered. Summer arrived, and she had
hoped against hope. They had never even put forth leaves.
To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as
to be serious. It was the first warning of decay.
* * * * *
The Empress Mother came sailing over the hill, high in the sky as befitted
her. Behind her, in the far distance, lay the white-ribbed downs, and,
along their ridge, there stretched against the sky a thin, shadowy, broken
line. It was the great oak wood, the dominion she had abandoned.
The Empress Mother was looking for a black sallow. Sallows there were in
plenty in and about the great wood, but she wanted one all to herself; one
fit for an imperial nursery. So she came with unerring instinct to the
brook.
The air hung motionless in the grip of a midsummer noon. As she floated
earthwards in stately majesty, the sunlight flung its radiance round her,
and her broad, white ribbon gleamed on its velvet ground like molten
silver.
The sallow humbly drooped her leaves as one who receives royalty.
[Illustration: A SMALL, GREEN-YELLOW, TRANSLUCENT CONE.]
For an hour the Empress Mother was busy. The leaves that she honoured were
chosen with the nicest discrimination, and she honoured more than a dozen.
Each, as she left it, bore on its upper surface a small, green-yellow,
shiny, translucent cone, rounded at the top, flat at the base, and ribbed
along its sides.
For the rest of the day the sallow held her head high.
* * * * *
There were fourteen eggs in all. Six reached maturity, but we are only
concerned with one of them. Outwardly he was much like the others. A day's
exposure softened the yellow of his shell to olive. Save at the base he
matched his leaf surroundings to a nicety. The base was suffused with a
faint blush of purple. As the days passed the purple darkened to black,
and shifted upwards, leaving the parts beneath it pale and colourless. It
seemed to struggle towards the sun. On the eighteenth day the shell parted
at the summit, and the little Emperor was hatched.
His youthful Majesty was mostly dark brown head. Such body as he could
boast of was tapering and greenish. But his head caught the eye. It was
well-nigh as large as the egg from which he came. Until he had fed he
seemed indifferent to his changed surroundings.
The first thing that he ate was his minute discarded shell, and, from this
slender meal, resulted disproportionate energy. He started forthwith on
his travels, outwards towards the light as far as he could go. On the leaf
point he built himself a pigmy throne of silk; and this was his citadel
for a week. He only left it to feed, nibbling the leaf edge jerkily on
either side of him. At the week's end he lost his appetite. His body was
now of a decided green--green with the finest powdering of yellow. About
his waist the yellow fused into a crescent. Nine of him would have
measured an inch.
On the eighth day he ceased feeding altogether. He sat with his
hind-quarters anchored to his throne, his head and fore legs raised from
off the leaf, rigid and immovable. For three days he grew yellower and
yellower. Then his skin split down his back, and he successfully
accomplished his first moult. In his short span he passed through many
changes, but never one more quaint than this.
During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out
before him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.
He moulted once again before the winter, but this was merely a growing
moult. Until October he never left his leaf point. Then Nature herself
warned him to seek shelter. The weather was breaking. Rain he did not
mind, but wind was different. Suppose his leaf was torn from its socket
and hurled a hundred yards into the field?
Leaves were falling all round him, and it was time to take up his winter
quarters. He spent a day or two in reaching them, yet they were not far
off--merely the junction of his own particular branch to the parent stem.
There, in the shelter of the fork, he spun himself a silken blanket, and
in it he slept peacefully till April.
Peacefully through everything, and in spite of everything. Rain beat in
drenching floods against the sallow, hailstorms lashed her branches, snow
enshrouded her, hoar-frost bespangled her,--the little Emperor was quite
unmoved. As the bark weathered from ebony to rusty olive, chameleon-like,
he changed with it. This was the only outward sign he gave of life.
* * * * *
The catkins bloomed once more, and once more were rudely gathered. With
the bursting of the leaf the little Emperor crept from his blanket. He
found the world much as he had left it. Only the leaves were covered with
soft down, smaller, and easier to bite. He was by now a full half inch in
length, big enough to roam at large, and hungry enough to eat the tree. He
started on the first leaf he came to, and, in five minutes, had gnawed a
neat crescent out of it. There was method in his gnawing. He fixed his
claspers firmly to the stalk, then stretched his head as far as he could
reach, and nibbled the leaf edge backwards. When his feet reached his
claspers, he commenced afresh.
Before the winter he had only fed at night; now he fed from sunrise to
sunset, and at night as well. He fattened steadily, and in proportion,
growing more slug-like every day. His horns but emphasized the likeness.
He carried them well forward, and, at his rare sleeping intervals, they
lay flat against the leaf. Thus with his swollen waist he seemed to fall
away both ends. Three times he outgrew his coat. Each time he had eaten
till it stretched to bursting point. Each time the process of disrobing
was the same.
He dragged his slow bulk to some thick mass of leaves, selected the
innermost of them, and spun a web of silk upon its surface. From this he
hung himself head downwards. His weight helped him, and, in due course,
the old skin split along his back, and he emerged resplendent in a fresh,
untarnished, elastic livery.
Each moult was marked by some embellishment. Rusty olive gave place to
pale sap green, this in turn to the green of the young willow-leaf, and
this again to the green of lush grass. Nor was the change in body colour
all. His sides in time were decked with slanting stripes of yellow. A
V-shaped orange girdle marked his waist. Its buckle was a tiny splotch of
crimson. His horns were tipped with russet brown, and head and tail alike
were faintly tinged with blue.
Yet, for all his rainbow tints, Nature had decreed that he should live
invisible. To this end she had coloured him to match his food plant. The
lines of yellow on his sides broke the monotony of green, as veins break
the monotony of a leaf. The blue about him was sister to the blue of
summer that played amid the foliage with quivering transparent lights and
shadows.
Nor did the cunning harmony end here. In form as well as tint he cheated
observation. His outline, as he lay at rest, formed the most perfect
outline of a twisted leaf.
[Illustration: GROWING MORE SLUG-LIKE EVERY DAY. FOR ALL HIS RAINBOW
TINTS, NATURE HAD DECREED THAT HE SHOULD LIVE INVISIBLE.]
Birds passed him by unnoticed. Once, and once only, the ichneumon marked
him down.
It was after his fifth and final moult. He was just a shade too light for
nature, and the ichneumon has a pretty sense of colour. She buzzed
viciously through the foliage, and settled for a moment on his back. She
had reckoned without her host. His skin was indeed dangerously bright, but
it was sensitive in proportion.
Before she could establish herself, a vicious back-sweep of his horns
dislodged her.
Again and again she returned to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin,
her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task
would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch
from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his
strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As
they turned to pupæ he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be
chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host
of dingy hymenoptera. So would the race of ichneumons be preserved.
The little Emperor was fat and well-liking--an ideal _créche_ for young
ichneumons; but the little Emperor was very wide-awake.
The fly could find no foothold on him. He flung his armed head backwards
to his tail. He pawed the air with six fore feet. He shook himself in
paroxysms of fury. The fly cared little for the latter, but the horns
were hard and formidable. They covered his whole body with their sweep,
and struck with lightning speed.
At sundown she withdrew discomfited; the little Emperor's horns had served
him well.
His life was uneventful after this. When he had reached a length of two
inches, his growth ceased. He fed less ravenously and less frequently.
Three parts of his time he spent in contemplation of a special leaf. It
was hard to tell wherein lay the fascination. He had spun a silken carpet
on it. At rare intervals he tore himself away and snatched a hurried meal,
but he infallibly returned to its friendly shelter. He rested on its
mid-rib, facing the foot-stalk. His body was strongly arched and so
compressed that the ridges of its crowded segments recalled the pile of
velvet. His head and fore feet scarcely touched the surface. So he made
ready for the second change.
For this even the favourite leaf was discarded. He roamed about the tree
for days, seeking one that would suit his purpose. At last he found one,
hidden in a thick-set cluster. It hung free, but he secured it in such
fashion to its stem that a stiff breeze could hardly shake it. He
stretched silken ropes from its edges and passed them completely round the
foot-stalk. Then, on its under surface, he spun a little boss of silk,
gripped it with his hind-claspers, and swung with easy confidence head
downwards. For three days he hung thus motionless, yet within him there
was a lively motion.
From the time he left the egg his life had been a dual one. The eye saw
nothing but the outward mask, the caterpillar-form. Within this living
vehicle that moved and spun and fed, lived the true butterfly--life within
life, being within being.
[Illustration: THE CROWDED SEGMENTS OF HIS BODY RECALLED THE PILE OF
VELVET.]
The caterpillar mask had done its work, and having done its work, must
die. Yet one can hardly call such dissolution death. As it hung suspended,
all the marvellous mechanism which had formed a moving, eating, spinning,
sentient being, was absorbed into the chrysalis it covered. Merely the
outer empty shell remained.
On the fourth day this shell split cleanly at the tail, and, from the
opening, the hind part of the chrysalis emerged. It jerked from side to
side, to all appearance aimlessly. Yet there was method in its madness. A
side-swing forced it deep into the boss of silk, and, in a moment, the
hooks that studded its extremity were fast entangled. The chrysalis had
its _point d'appui_.
[Illustration: ON THE CHRYSALIS HEAD WERE TWO SHORT-POINTED HORNS.]
Again the old skin cracked, this time behind the neck. The chrysalis head
was free. On it were two short, flattened, pointed horns. A jerky movement
of the shoulders followed--first expansion, then contraction. At each
expansion the old skin slipped a trifle upwards. Turn by turn the segments
of the body did their work, until it lay in gathered folds about the tail,
just as the pushed-off stocking lies about the ankle.
But even so, the task was not completed. The skin must be got rid of. Its
dull white mass, with dangling skeleton horns, was too conspicuous. Nature
had armed the chrysalis with the needful tools, a grip attachment and a
set of tiny sharp-edged hooks. The skin was fast entangled in the boss of
silk. The chrysalis secured an independent foothold (using as
stepping-stone the skin itself), spun itself from side to side, and cut
the threads that bound it. It jerked lightly from leaf to leaf, until it
reached the ground. The second change was accomplished.
[Illustration: COLOUR AND FORM COMBINED THEIR SKILFUL MIMICRY.]
[Illustration: ITS FORM THE FORM OF THE SALLOW-LEAF.]
Outwardly the chrysalis was nothing but an extra leaf. Colour and form
combined their skilful mimicry. Its colour was the green of the sallow;
its form, the form of the sallow-leaf.
For fifteen days it hung unchanged and motionless. On the sixteenth change
was obviously impending. The upper segments had lengthened, the lower
segments had darkened. On the twentieth day came the last great change of
all.
[Illustration: HE CHOSE THE LOFTIEST BRANCH OF THE LOFTIEST OAK IN THE
FOREST.]
It was a normal July day. Thunder was over the Downs. Now and again great
rain-drops struck the sallow. They were few and far between, however. The
thunder was content to grumble on the hills, leaving the valley to the
sunshine. For all the midday heat the air was laden with moisture. This
was at once both good and bad for the little Emperor, good because it made
the bursting of his cerement easy, bad because it made the drying of his
wings slow.
Still he had no choice in the matter; his time had come, and he must make
the best of it.
[Illustration: WHITES.]
Barely a minute passed between the first yielding of the shell and his
complete emergence. He issued head foremost, groping with bewildered legs
for something to cling to. He struck the only thing within his reach, the
chrysalis case itself. To this he clung with desperation, and he had need
to. As yet he had no means of flight.
There is no room for wing expanse inside a chrysalis. Material for wings
was lying ready on his shoulders, it was moisture laden, packed in
crumpled folds, and lifeless.
* * * * *
[Illustration: BRIMSTONES.]
The thunder passed away seawards, drawing the valley moisture in its
train. From eastward came a gentle drying breeze. It crept from leaf to
leaf with its soft-whispered message until it reached the leaf that most
had need of it.
The little Emperor trembled with excitement. His wings were coming into
being. One by one, like petals of an opening flower, the clinging folds
relaxed and told their secret. One by one the branching nervures hardened.
By sundown the great change of all was over. The Emperor, no longer
little, was fit to mount his throne. Westward, as if in sympathy, the sky
was flooded with imperial purple.
* * * * *
He chose the loftiest branch of the loftiest oak in the forest. Before him
stretched an acre of clearing, thronged with his subjects. Every class was
represented, or rather every class but one. Ages ago the Swallow tail
disputed sovereignty with the Purple Emperor. Fortune declared against
him, and he retreated, like some Hereward, to the fens. There to this day
he holds a third-rate court.
[Illustration: PEACOCKS.]
It was a brilliant gathering that greeted the Emperor. Every colour, every
form was there. Whites and brimstones, silver-studded fritillaries,
peacocks, red admirals, and painted ladies, walls and ringlets,
hairstreaks, blues, and skippers, even the little Duke of Burgundy, even
the white and admirable Sibylla.
[Illustration: HAIRSTREAKS.]
Happy midsummer children! They flashed their dainty tints from leaf to
leaf, from flower to flower, their life one long-drawn revel in the
sunshine.
From his high throne the Emperor watched and envied. He was tiring of
lonely grandeur. Now and again he soared a hundred feet into the air, then
with his wings full spread and motionless, sailed slowly back on to the
summit of the oak.
[Illustration: ADMIRALS.]
Never was flight more exquisite. As he rose, one caught the glint of the
imperial purple; as he descended, its full glory was revealed. Nowhere in
nature is the pure radiant effulgence of that purple surpassed. It is
the purple of the rainbow itself.
[Illustration: SKIPPERS.]
[Illustration: THE WHITE AND ADMIRABLE SIBYLLA.]
[Illustration: SHE SAT ON AN OAK PINNACLE OUTLINED AGAINST THE SKY.]
Once, and once only, did he deign to touch the ground. Deep in the hollow
behind the clearing, where the footpaths crossed each other, a shallow
muddied pool had formed. In it the Emperor saw, from on high, his own
reflection. Perhaps it was mere vanity that drew him closer; perhaps the
fancy that he saw a rival; perhaps, but this is not likely, thirst. Close
to the margin lay a rough-edged clumsy flint. On this he settled, and,
Narcissus like, feasted his eyes on his own beauty. He nearly met
Narcissus' fate. It was the flint that saved him. He felt the shadow,
almost before it reached him, but even so he rose too late. For half a
minute he, the Purple Emperor, was prisoner in a boy's straw hat. Had
the hat covered the flint completely, he must assuredly have graced a
cabinet. Fortunately for him the flint was just an inch too wide. The hat
lay slant-wise across it, leaving a narrow crescent outlet on each side.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALIGHTED WITHIN A FOOT OF HER, ... AS HE OPENED
HIS WINGS TO SHOW THEIR BEAUTY.]
An old collector would have doffed his coat to cover hat and flint alike,
would have sat beside them patiently till nightfall, would have done
anything to make certain of his prize. But this collector was only a boy.
With youthful recklessness he raised the brim a hair's-breadth off the
flint, and, in a moment, the Emperor was fifty feet above him.
It had been a near thing. Higher he soared, and higher, exulting in his
freedom, and, as he soared, he sighted the Princess. She sat on an oak
pinnacle outlined against the sky. Who was she? Whence had she come? On
her wings was the broad white ribbon of butterfly royalty.
[Illustration: SHE TURNED HER BACK ON HIM.]
The Emperor alighted within a foot of her. For the first time in his life
he felt humble. As he opened his wings to show their beauty, she turned
her back on him; as he closed them again, she sought another tree. But
the Emperor was not so easily baffled. He followed in hot haste, and once
more settled on a neighbouring leaf. The Princess drooped her upper wings,
as if she was asleep. But she was not. The Emperor crept along the leaves
a little closer.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ONCE MORE SETTLED ON A NEIGHBOURING LEAF.]
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR CREPT ALONG THE LEAVES A LITTLE CLOSER.]
It was the strangest courtship imaginable, for it was all on one side.
From tree to tree they went, the Emperor flashing his purple in the
sunshine, the Princess, to all appearance, unconscious of her suitor's
presence. Yet he tried every allurement he could think of. He circled
round her, changing from purple to violet, from violet to velvet black. He
soared above her skywards until he was a mere speck in the blue. He showed
her the broad ribbon that he also wore. He even uncurled his slender
saffron proboscis, and toasted his divinity in the sap of the oak-leaf.
[Illustration: HE SHOWED HER THE BROAD, WHITE RIBBON THAT HE ALSO WORE.]
What made her change her mind at the eleventh tree? What had he said to
her? I cannot tell you, but I can tell you this. From that tree they rose
together, circling round each other. Higher they went and higher, until
the oakwood shrunk to a copse beneath them; higher and higher, until the
sea was their horizon; higher and higher, until they passed from sight.
[Illustration: HE EVEN UNCURLED HIS SAFFRON PROBOSCIS, AND TOASTED HER IN
THE SAP OF THE OAK-LEAF.]
[Illustration]
THE HARVEST MOUSE
Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, the Harvest Mouse was
the smallest of British beasties, absolutely the very smallest. Even the
museum men, who look through microscopes, had to admit that.
Then a Liliputian shrewmouse turned up. He was found stretched dead in the
middle of the path, and the time, as any book that deals with shrewmice
would tell you, was the autumn. He was so small that, had he not died in
the path, he would assuredly not have been found at all.
Now, because of his smallness, and because he was found dead in the autumn
(from which you may assume that he was full-grown), he was sent to the
museum men; and the museum men examined his teeth, and rubbed their hands
with glee, for they found that his upper incisors were abnormal.
So they had his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in
the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for
him--SOREX MINUTUS. The lesser shrew. The _smallest_ British quadruped.
[Illustration: THEN A LILIPUTIAN SHREWMOUSE TURNED UP.]
Thus was one unique distinction stolen from the harvest mouse. But to this
day the harvest mouse shrugs his furry shoulders and says, that there are
plenty of dwarfs with abnormal teeth in his own family, if the museum men
want them.
He can afford to be superior, for he has yet another unique distinction
left, and that is not likely to be taken from him.
Of all the four-footed creatures in Great Britain and Ireland, he, and he
only, has a prehensile tail. The middle of it he can bend through half a
circle, the last half-inch he can wrap completely round a cornstalk. It is
pale chestnut above, and pasty white below. Taken all round, it is the
most marvellous tail in the United Kingdom.
[Illustration: HE, AND HE ONLY, HAS A PREHENSILE TAIL.]
A mass of whipcord muscle, it can be made rigid, or flexible, at will. He
can sit back with his hind feet resting on one stalk, hitch his tail round
another, and lean his full weight against it. His full weight is one-sixth
of an ounce. Were the G.P.O. more friendly to naturalists, a score of him
could travel for a penny; but, even so, his tail is trivial in proportion.
He is so proud of it that he cleans it continually. Other mice clean their
tails at odd times--only when they really seem to need it. The harvest
mouse cleans his tail as a matter of regular toilet routine, and he does
his toilet fifteen times a day. First his whiskers, then his head and
ears, then his body, and finally his tail. He pulls it forward between
his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It is quite worth it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOUSE SAT ON THE TOP OF A STALK AND NIBBLED HIS
SUPPER.]
The harvest mouse sat on the top of a cornstalk and nibbled his supper.
His first summer had been most successful. So much had been crowded into
it that he could only dimly remember the oat-stack in which he was born.
Even the hedgerow seemed difficult to recall. He had lived in that two
months, next door to the wood-mouse, and from him he may have learnt
something of the art of nest-building. Then he had wandered abroad. The
field, on the left of the hedgerow as you walk westward, was, when he
entered it, tinged with uncertain green,--a sand-stained green like that
of shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week's time, the
sprouting corn had got the mastery, shrouding with its exquisite mantle
the humble mother soil it seemed ashamed of; then, as if it had imprisoned
the sunbeams, it turned to golden yellow, and now, wearying of conquest,
had borrowed the copper radiance of a dying day.
[Illustration: THE WOOD-MOUSE.]