was on hand the next day, I think. The mother-bird sprang up when I was
within a pace of her, and in doing so fanned the leaves with her wings
till they sprang up too; as the leaves started the young started, and,
being of the same color, to tell which was the leaf and which the bird
was a trying task to any eye. I came the next day, when the same tactics
were repeated. Once a leaf fell upon one of the young birds and
nearly hid it. The young are covered with a reddish down like a young
partridge, and soon follow their mother about. When disturbed, they gave
but one leap, then settled down, perfectly motionless and stupid, with
eyes closed. The parent bird, on these occasions made frantic efforts
to decoy me away from her young. She would fly a few paces and fall
upon her breast, and a spasm, like that of death, would run through her
tremulous outstretched wings and prostrate body. She kept a sharp eye
out the meanwhile to see if the ruse took, and if it did not, she was
quickly cured, and moving about to some other point tried to draw my
attention as before. When followed she always alighted upon the ground,
dropping down in a sudden peculiar way. The second or third day both old
and young had disappeared.
The whippoorwill walks as awkwardly as a swallow, which is as awkward as
a man in a bag, and yet she manages to lead her young about the woods.
The latter, I think, move by leaps and sudden spurts, their protective
coloring shielding them most effectively. Wilson once came upon the
mother-bird and her brood in the woods, and, though they were at his
very feet, was so baffled by the concealment of the young that he
was about to give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived
something "like a slight moldiness among the withered leaves, and,
on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whippoorwill seemingly
asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its
downy covering does look precisely like a "slight moldiness." Returning
a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he
could find neither old nor young.
It takes an eye to see a partridge in the woods motionless upon the
leaves; this sense needs to be as sharp as that of smell in hounds and
pointers; and yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails to see the
bird and shoot it before it takes wing. I think he sees it as soon as it
sees him and before it suspects itself seen. What a training to the eye
is hunting! To pick out the game from its surroundings, the grouse
from the leaves, the gray squirrel from the mossy oak limb it hugs so
closely, the red fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rabbit
from the stubble, or the white hare from the snow requires the best
powers of this sense. A woodchuck, motionless in the fields or upon
a rock, looks very much like a large stone or bowlder, yet a keen eye
knows the difference at a glance, a quarter of a mile away.
A man has a sharper eye than a dog, or a fox, or than any of the wild
creatures, but not so sharp an ear or nose. But in the birds he finds
his match. How quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere speck
against the sky, and how quickly the hawk discovers you if you happen to
be secreted in the bushes or behind the fence near which he alights!
One advantage the bird surely has, and that is, owing to the form,
structure, and position of the eye, it has a much larger field of
vision--indeed, can probably see in nearly every direction at the same
instant, behind as well as before. Man's field of vision embraces less
than half a circle horizontally, and still less vertically; his brow and
brain prevent him from seeing within many degrees of the zenith without
a movement of the head; the bird on the other hand, takes in nearly the
whole sphere at a glance.
I find I see almost without effort nearly every bird within sight in the
field or wood I pass through (a flit of the wing, a flirt of the tail
are enough, though the flickering leaves do all conspire to hide them),
and that with like ease the birds see me, though, unquestionably, the
chances are immensely in their favor. The eye sees what it has the means
of seeing, truly. You must have the bird in your heart before you can
find it in the bush. The eye must have purpose and aim. No one ever yet
found the walking fern who did not have the walking fern in his mind. A
person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every field
he walks through.
One season I was interested in the tree-frogs; especially the tiny piper
that one hears about the woods and brushy fields--the hyla of the swamps
become a denizen of the trees; I had never seen him in this new role.
But this season, having hylas in mind, or rather being ripe for them, I
several times came across them. One Sunday, walking amid some bushes,
I captured two. They leaped before me as doubtless they had done many
times before; but though I was not looking for or thinking of them, yet
they were quickly recognized, because the eye had been commissioned
to find them. On another occasion, not long afterward, I was hurriedly
loading my gun in the October woods in hopes of overtaking a gray
squirrel that was fast escaping through the tree-tops, when one of these
lilliput frogs, the color of the fast-yellowing leaves, leaped near me.
I saw him only out of the corner of my eye and yet bagged him, because I
had already made him my own.
Nevertheless, the habit of observation is the habit of clear and
decisive gazing. Not by a first casual glance, but by a steady
deliberate aim of the eye are the rare and characteristic things
discovered. You must look intently and hold your eye firmly to the spot,
to see more than do the rank and file of mankind. The sharp-shooter
picks out his man and knows him with fatal certainty from a stump, or a
rock, or a cap on a pole. The phrenologists do well to locate, not only
form, color, and weight, in the region of the eye, but also a faculty
which they call individuality--that which separates, discriminates, and
sees in every object its essential character. This is just as necessary
to the naturalist as to the artist or the poet. The sharp eye notes
specific points and differences,--it seizes upon and preserves the
individuality of the thing. Persons frequently describe to me some bird
they have seen or heard and ask me to name it, but in most cases the
bird might be any one of a dozen, or else it is totally unlike any bird
found in this continent. They have either seen falsely or else vaguely.
Not so the farm youth who wrote me one winter day that he had seen a
single pair of strange birds, which he describes as follows: "They were
about the size of the 'chippie,' the tops of their heads were red, and
the breast of the male was of the same color, while that of the female
was much lighter; their rumps were also faintly tinged with red. If I
have described them so that you would know them, please write me their
names." There can be little doubt but the young observer had seen a pair
of red-polls,--a bird related to the goldfinch, and that occasionally
comes down to us in the winter from the far north. Another time,
the same youth wrote that he had seen a strange bird, the color of
a sparrow, that alighted on fences and buildings as well as upon
the ground, and that walked. This last fact shoved the youth's
discriminating eye and settled the case. I knew it to be a species of
the lark, and from the size, color, season, etc., the tit-lark. But how
many persons would have observed that the bird walked instead of hopped?
Some friends of mine who lived in the country tried to describe to me a
bird that built a nest in a tree within a few feet of the house. As it
was a brown bird, I should have taken it for a wood-thrush, had not
the nest been described as so thin and loose that from beneath the eggs
could be distinctly seen. The most pronounced feature in the description
was the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's tail. I was
quite at sea, until one day, when we were driving out, a cuckoo flew
across the road in front of us, when my friends exclaimed, "There is our
bird!" I had never known a cuckoo to build near a house, and I had never
noted the appearance the tail presents when viewed from beneath; but if
the bird had been described in its most obvious features, as slender,
with a long tail, cinnamon brown above and white beneath, with a curved
bill, anyone who knew the bird would have recognized the portrait.
We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its
specific features. I thought I knew exactly the form of the leaf of the
tulip-tree, until one day a lady asked me to draw the outline of one. A
good observer is quick to take a hint and to follow it up. Most of the
facts of nature, especially in the life of the birds and animals, are
well screened. We do not see the play because we do not look intently
enough. The other day I was sitting with a friend upon a high rock
in the woods, near a small stream, when we saw a water-snake swimming
across a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would have noted it,
perhaps nothing more. A little closer and sharper gaze revealed the fact
that the snake bore something in its mouth, which, as we went down to
investigate, proved to be a small cat-fish, three or four inches long.
The snake had captured it in the pool, and, like any other fisherman,
wanted to get its prey to dry land, although itself lived mostly in the
water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy, that would have
escaped any but sharp eyes. The snake, which was itself small, had the
fish by the throat, the hold of vantage among all creatures, and clung
to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that its best tactics was to
get upon dry land as soon as possible. It could not swallow its victim
alive, and it could not strangle it in the water. For a while it tried
to kill its game by holding it up out of the water, but the fish grew
heavy, and every few moments its struggles brought down the snake's
head. This would not do. Compressing the fish's throat would not shut
off its breath under such circumstances, so the wily serpent tried to
get ashore with it, and after several attempts succeeded in effecting a
landing on a flat rock. But the fish died hard. Cat-fish do not give up
the ghost in a hurry. Its throat was becoming congested, but the snake's
distended jaws must have ached. It was like a petrified gape. Then the
spectators became very curious and close in their scrutiny, and the
snake determined to withdraw from the public gaze and finish the
business in hand to its own notions. But, when gently but firmly
remonstrated with by my friend with his walking-stick, it dropped the
fish and retreated in high dudgeon beneath a stone in the bed of the
creek. The fish, with a swollen and angry throat, went its way also.
Birds, I say, have wonderfully keen eyes. Throw a fresh bone or a
piece of meat upon the snow in winter, and see how soon the crows will
discover it and be on hand. If it be near the house or barn, the crow
that first discovers it will alight near it, to make sure he is not
deceived; then he will go away, and soon return with a companion. The
two alight a few yards from the bone, and after some delay, during which
the vicinity is sharply scrutinized, one of the crows advances boldly to
within a few feet of the coveted prize. Here he pauses, and if no trick
is discovered, and the meat be indeed meat, he seizes it and makes off.
One midwinter I cleared away the snow under an apple-tree near the house
and scattered some corn there. I had not seen a blue-jay for weeks, yet
that very day one found my corn, and after that several came daily and
partook of it, holding the kernels under their feet upon the limbs of
the trees and pecking them vigorously.
Of course the woodpecker and his kind have sharp eyes; still I was
surprised to see how quickly Downy found out some bones that were placed
in a convenient place under the shed to be pounded up for the hens. In
going out to the barn I often disturbed him making a meal off the bite
of meat that still adhered to them.
"Look intently enough at anything," said a poet to me one day, "and you
will see something that would otherwise escape you." I thought of the
remark as I sat on a stump in an opening of the woods one spring day. I
saw a small hawk approaching; he flew to a tall tulip-tree and alighted
on a large limb near the top. He eyed me and I eyed him. Then the bird
disclosed a trait that was new to me: he hopped along the limb to a
small cavity near the trunk, when he thrust in his head and pulled out
some small object and fell to eating it. After he had partaken of it for
some minutes he put the remainder back in his larder and flew away. I
had seen something like feathers eddying slowly down as the hawk ate,
and on approaching the spot found the feathers of a sparrow here and
there clinging to the bushes beneath the tree. The hawk then--commonly
called the chicken hawk--is as provident as a mouse or a squirrel, and
lays by a store against a time of need, but I should not have discovered
the fact had I not held my eye on him.
An observer of the birds is attracted by any unusual sound or commotion
among them. In May or June, when other birds are most vocal, the jay
is a silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves
as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing bird's-nests and he is very
anxious that nothing should be said about it; but in the fall none so
quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a
troop of jays discovered a little screech-owl secreted in the hollow
trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is
a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but
they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the
bluebirds first told them, for these birds are constantly peeping into
holes and crannies, both spring and fall. Some unsuspecting bird had
probably entered the cavity prospecting for a place for next year's
nest, or else looking out a likely place to pass a cold night, and then
had rushed out with important news. A boy who should unwittingly venture
into a bear's den when Bruin was at home could not be more astonished
and alarmed than a bluebird would be on finding itself in the cavity of
a decayed tree with an owl. At any rate the bluebirds joined the jays
in calling the attention of all whom it might concern to the fact that
a culprit of some sort was hiding from the light of day in the old
apple-tree. I heard the notes of warning and alarm and approached to
within eye-shot. The bluebirds were cautious and hovered about uttering
their peculiar twittering calls; but the jays were bolder and took turns
looking in at the cavity, and deriding the poor shrinking owl. A
jay would alight in the entrance of the hole and flirt and peer and
attitudinize, and then flyaway crying "Thief, thief, thief!" at the top
of his voice.
I climbed up and peered into the opening, and could just descry the
owl clinging to the inside of the tree. I reached in and took him out,
giving little heed to the threatening snapping of his beak. He was as
red as a fox and as yellow-eyed as a cat. He made no effort to escape,
but planted his claws in my forefinger and clung there with a grip that
soon grew uncomfortable. I placed him in the loft of an out-house
in hopes of getting better acquainted with him. By day he was a very
willing prisoner, scarcely moving at all, even when approached and
touched with the hand, but looking out upon the world with half-closed,
sleepy eyes. But at night what a change; how alert, how wild, how
active! He was like another bird; he darted about with wide, fearful
eyes, and regarded me like a cornered cat. I opened the window, and
swiftly, but as silent as a shadow, he glided out into the congenial
darkness, and perhaps, ere this, has revenged himself upon the sleeping
jay or bluebird that first betrayed his hiding-place.
THE APPLE.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.--TENNYSON.
Not a little of the sunshine of our northern winters is surely wrapped
up in the apple. How could we winter over without it! How is life
sweetened by its mild acids! A cellar well filled with apples is more
valuable than a chamber filled with flax and wool. So much sound ruddy
life to draw upon, to strike one's roots down into, as it were.
Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined to be a little clayey
and heavy, is the apple a winter necessity. It is the natural antidote
of most of the ills the flesh is heir to. Full of vegetable acids and
aromatics, qualities which act as refrigerants and antiseptics, what an
enemy it is to jaundice, indigestion, torpidity of liver, etc. It is a
gentle spur and tonic to the whole biliary system. Then I have read that
it has been found by analysis to contain more phosphorus than any
other vegetable. This makes it the proper food of the scholar and the
sedentary man; it feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver. Nor is
this all. Besides its hygienic properties, the apple is full of
sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. It is said,
"The operators of Cornwall, England, consider ripe apples nearly
as nourishing as bread, and far more so than potatoes. In the year
1801--which was a year of much scarcity--apples, instead of being
converted into cider, were sold to the poor, and the laborers asserted
that they could 'stand their work' on baked apples without meat; whereas
a potato diet required either meat or some other substantial nutriment.
The French and Germans use apples extensively, so do the inhabitants
of all European nations. The laborers depend upon them as an article of
food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced apples and bread."
Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair compared with the
intense, sun-colored and sun-steeped fruit our orchards yield.
The English have no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element
apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature in that sour and
chilly climate than in our own. It is well known that the European maple
yields no sugar, while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their
veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for our excessive love of sweets,
which may be said to be a national trait.
The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth and transparent,
but the Cossack is not yet all eliminated from it. The only one I have
seen--the Duchess of Oldenburg--is as beautiful as a Tartar princess,
with a distracting odor, but it is the least bit puckery to the taste.
The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano beds, but this fact
which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives
well there. Darwin saw a town there so completely buried in a wood of
apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an orchard. The tree
indeed thrives so well, that large branches cut off in the spring and
planted two or three feet deep in the ground send out roots and develop
into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. The people know the
value of the apple too. They make cider and wine of it and then from
the refuse a white and finely flavored spirit; then by another process
a sweet treacle is obtained called honey. The children and the pigs eat
little or no other food. He does not add that the people are healthy
and temperate, but I have no doubt they are. We knew the apple had many
virtues, but these Chilians have really opened a deep beneath a deep.
We had found out the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine and
the honey, unless it were the bees? There is a variety in our orchards
called the winesap, a doubly liquid name that suggests what might be
done with this fruit.
The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of
fruits. A dish of them is as becoming to the centre-table in winter as
was the vase of flowers in the summer,--a bouquet of spitzenbergs and
greenings and northern spies. A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose
when it ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be addressed, the
touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still
October days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet, it is a
signal that the feast is ready. The bough would fain hold it, but it can
now assert its independence; it can now live a life of its own.
Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go completely, and
down comes the painted sphere with a mellow thump to the earth, towards
which it has been nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its bed,
to hide under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass. It will now take time to
meditate and ripen! What delicious thoughts it has there nestled with
its fellows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar into
wine!
How pleasing to the touch! I love to stroke its polished rondure with
my hand, to carry it in my pocket on my tramp over the winter hills, or
through the early spring woods. You are company, you red-cheeked spitz,
or you salmon-fleshed greening! I toy with you; press your face to mine,
toss you in the air, roll you on the ground, see you shine out where you
lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks. You are so alive! You glow
like a ruddy flower. You look so animated I almost expect to see you
move. I postpone the eating of you, you are so beautiful! How compact;
how exquisitely tinted! Stained by the sun and varnished against the
rains. An independent vegetable existence, alive and vascular as my own
flesh; capable of being wounded, bleeding, wasting away, and almost of
repairing damages!
How it resists the cold! holding out almost as long as the red cheeks
of the boys do. A frost that destroys the potatoes and other roots only
makes the apple more crisp and vigorous; it peeps out from the chance
November snows unscathed. When I see the fruit-vender on the street
corner stamping his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm, and
his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wonder if they do not
ache too to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. But they can
stand it nearly as long as the vender can.
Noble common fruit, best friend of man and most loved by him, following
him like his dog or his cow, wherever he goes. His homestead is not
planted till you are planted, your roots intertwine with his; thriving
best where he thrives best, loving the limestone and the frost, the
plow and the pruning-knife, you are indeed suggestive of hardy, cheerful
industry, and a healthy life in the open air. Temperate, chaste fruit!
you mean neither luxury nor sloth, neither satiety nor indolence,
neither enervating heats nor the Frigid Zones. Uncloying fruit, fruit
whose best sauce is the open air, whose finest flavors only he whose
taste is sharpened by brisk work or walking knows; winter fruit, when
the fire of life burns brightest; fruit always a little hyperborean,
leaning towards the cold; bracing, sub-acid, active fruit. I think you
must come from the north, you are so frank and honest, so sturdy and
appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the northern races. Your
quality is Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous south is not akin to
you. Not spices or olives or the sumptuous liquid fruits, but the grass,
the snow, the grains, the coolness is akin to you. I think if I could
subsist on you or the like of you, I should never have an intemperate
or ignoble thought, never be feverish or despondent. So far as I could
absorb or transmute your quality I should be cheerful, continent,
equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmth and
contentment around.