[Illustration: A SUMMER EVENING--NIGHT HERONS (page 54)]
The Dallas Lore Sharp Nature Series
SUMMER
by
DALLAS LORE SHARP
AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE FACE OF THE FIELDS,”
“WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON,” “THE FALL OF THE YEAR,”
“WINTER,” “THE SPRING OF THE YEAR,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1913 AND 1914, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TO
ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL
THE FRIEND AND ARTIST
OF THESE FOUR BOOKS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
I. THE SUMMER AFIELD 1
II. THE WILD ANIMALS AT PLAY 9
III. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SUMMER 18
IV. THE COYOTE OF PELICAN POINT 27
V. FROM T WHARF TO FRANKLIN FIELD 39
VI. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS SUMMER 46
VII. THE SEA-BIRDS’ HOME 57
VIII. THE MOTHER MURRE 65
IX. MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKENS 79
X. RIDING THE RIM ROCK 88
XI. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER 100
XII. THE “CONY” 112
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 123
ILLUSTRATIONS
A SUMMER EVENING--BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS _Frontispiece_
RED CLOVER AND BUMBLEBEE 4
RED SALAMANDER, OLD AND YOUNG 7
NEWTS 7
HIPPOPOTAMUS--“IT WAS HIS GAME OF SOLITAIRE” 9
THE OTTER AND HIS SLIDE 12
“FOLLOW MY LEADER” 14
BUTTERFLIES AT PLAY--“WHIRLING OVER MT. HOOD’S POINTED PEAK” 16
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD AND NEST 20
ORCHIDS 22
YOUNG COWBIRD IN VIREO’S NEST 25
COYOTE--“WHAT A SHOT!” 28
ARGIOPE, THE MEADOW SPIDER 44
CICADA--“DOG-DAYS-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z” 48
“THE BATS FLITTING AND WAVERING ABOUT” 49
RED-EYED VIREO--“DO YOU BELIEVE IT?” 52
TUFTED PUFFINS 59
BRANDT’S CORMORANT 63
A MOTHER SPIDER WITH HER SACK OF EGGS 67
THE FATHER STICKLEBACK ON GUARD 68
CALIFORNIA MURRE--“WITH THREATENING BEAK WATCHED THE TWO MEN
COME ON” 75
PETRELS--“SKIMMING THE HEAVING SEA LIKE SWALLOWS” 80
RIDING THE RIM ROCK--“NECK AND NECK WITH A BIG WHITE STEER” 97
SASSAFRAS 105
DEADLY NIGHTSHADE 106
POISON SUMACH 107
POISON IVY 108
VIRGINIA CREEPER 109
THE DEADLY MUSHROOMS 110
POKE BERRIES 111
THE CONY, OR PIKA 116
INTRODUCTION
In this fourth and last volume of these outdoor books I have taken you
into the summer fields and, shall I hope? left you there. After all,
what better thing could I do? And as I leave you there, let me say one
last serious word concerning the purpose of such books as these and
the large subject of nature-study in general.
I believe that a child’s interest in outdoor life is a kind of hunger,
as natural as his interest in bread and butter. He cannot live on
bread and butter alone, but he ought not to try to live without them.
He cannot be educated on nature-study alone, but he ought not to be
educated without it. To learn to obey and reason and feel--these are
the triple ends of education, and the greatest of these is to learn to
feel. The teacher’s word for obedience; the arithmetic for reasoning;
and for feeling, for the cultivation of the imagination, for the power
to respond quickly and deeply, give the child the out-of-doors.
“If I could teach my Rugby boys but one thing,” said Dr. Arnold, “that
one thing should be poetry.” Why? Because poetry draws out the
imagination, quickens and refines and deepens the emotions. The first
great source of poetry is Nature. Give the child poetry; and give him
the inspiration of the poem, the teacher of the poet--give him
Nature. Make a poet of the child, who is already a poet born.
How can so essential, so fundamental a need become a mere fad of
education? A child wants first to eat, then to play, then he wants to
know--particularly he wants to know the animals. And he does know an
elephant from a kangaroo long before he knows a Lincoln from a
Napoleon; just so he wants to go to the woods long before he asks to
visit a library.
The study of the ant in the school-yard walk, the leaves on the
school-yard trees, the clouds over the school-house roof, the sights,
sounds, odors coming in at the school-room windows, these are
essential studies for art and letters, to say nothing of life.
And this is the way serious men and women think about it. Captain
Scott, dying in the Antarctic snows, wrote in his last letter to his
wife: “Make our boy interested in natural history if you can. It is
better than games. Keep him in the open air.”
I hope that these four volumes may help to interest you in natural
history, that they may be the means of taking you into the open air of
the fields many times the seasons through.
DALLAS LORE SHARP.
MULLEIN HILL, February, 1914.
SUMMER
CHAPTER I
THE SUMMER AFIELD
The word summer, being interpreted, means vacation; and vacation,
being interpreted, means--so many things that I have not space in this
book to name them. Yet how can there be a vacation without mountains,
or seashore, or the fields, or the forests--days out of doors? My
ideal vacation would have to be spent in the open; and this book, the
larger part of it, is the record of one of my summer vacations--the
vacation of the summer of 1912. That was an ideal vacation, and along
with my account of it I wish to give you some hints on how to make the
most of your summer chance to tramp the fields and woods.
For the real lover of nature is a tramp; not the kind of tramp that
walks the railroad-ties and carries his possessions in a tomato-can,
but one who follows the cow-paths to the fields, who treads the
rabbit-roads in the woods, watching the ways of the wild things that
dwell in the tree-tops, and in the deepest burrows under ground.
Do not tell anybody, least of all yourself, that you love the
out-of-doors, unless you have your own path to the woods, your own
cross-cut to the pond, your own particular huckleberry-patch and
fishing-holes and friendships in the fields. The winds, the rain, the
stars, the green grass, even the birds and a multitude of other wild
folk try to meet you more than halfway, try to seek you out even in
the heart of the great city; but the great out-of-doors you must seek,
for it is not in books, nor in houses, nor in cities. It is out at the
end of the car-line or just beyond the back-yard fence, maybe--far
enough away, anyhow, to make it necessary for you to put on your
tramping shoes and with your good stout stick go forth.
You must learn to be a good tramper. You thought you learned how to
walk soon after you got out of the cradle, and perhaps you did, but
most persons only know how to hobble when they get into the unpaved
paths of the woods.
With stout, well-fitting shoes, broad in the toe and heel; light,
stout clothes that will not catch the briers, good bird-glasses, and a
bite of lunch against the noon, swing out on your _legs_; breathe to
the bottom of your lungs; balance your body on your hips, not on your
collar-bones, and, going leisurely, but not slowly (for crawling is
deadly dull), do ten miles up a mountain-side or through the brush;
and if at the end you feel like _eating up_ ten miles more, then you
may know that you can walk, can _tramp_, and are in good shape for the
summer.
In your tramping-kit you need: a pocket-knife; some string; a pair of
field-glasses; a botany-can or fish-basket on your back; and perhaps a
notebook. This is all and more than you need for every tramp. To these
things might be added a light camera. It depends upon what you go for.
I have been afield all my life and have never owned or used a camera.
But there are a good many things that I have never done. A camera may
add a world of interest to your summer, so if you find use for a
camera, don’t fail to make one a part of your tramping outfit.
After all, what you carry on your back or on your feet or in your
hands does not matter half so much as what you carry in your head and
heart--your eye, and spirit, and purpose. For instance, when you go
into the fields have some purpose in your going besides the indefinite
desire to get out of doors.
If you long for the wide sky and the wide winds and the wide slopes of
green, then that is a real and a definite desire. You want to get out,
OUT, OUT, because you have been shut _in_. Very good; for you will get
what you wish, what you go out to get. The point is this: always go
out for something. Never yawn and slouch out to the woods as you might
to the corner grocery store, because you don’t know how else to kill
time.
Go with some purpose; because you wish to visit some particular spot,
see some bird, find some flower, catch some--fish! Anything that takes
you into the open is good--ploughing, hoeing, chopping, fishing,
berrying, botanizing, tramping. The aimless person anywhere is a
failure, and he is sure to get lost in the woods!
It is a good plan to go frequently over the same fields, taking the
beaten path, watching for the familiar things, until you come to know
your haunt as thoroughly as the fox or the rabbit knows his. Don’t be
afraid of using up a particular spot. The more often you visit a place
the richer you will find it to be in interest for you.
Now, do not limit your interest and curiosity to any one kind of life
or to any set of things out of doors. Do not let your likes or your
prejudices interfere with your seeing the whole out-of-doors with all
its manifold life, for it is all interrelated, all related to you, all
of interest and meaning. The clover blossom and the bumblebee that
carries the fertilizing pollen are related; the bumblebee and the
mouse that eats up its grubs are related; and every one knows that
mice and cats are related; thus the clover, the bumblebee, the mouse,
the cat, and, finally, the farmer, are all so interrelated that if the
farmer keeps a cat, the cat will catch the mice, the mice cannot eat
the young bumblebees, the bumblebees can fertilize the clover, and the
clover can make seed. So if the farmer wants clover seed to sow down a
new field with, he must keep a cat.
I think it is well for you to have some one thing in which you are
particularly interested. It may be flowers or birds or shells or
minerals. But as the whole is greater than any of its parts, so a love
and knowledge of nature, of the earth and the sky over your head and
under your feet, with all that lives with you there, is more than a
knowledge of its birds or trees or reptiles.
But be on your guard against the purpose to spread yourselves over too
much. Don’t be thin and superficial. Don’t be satisfied with learning
the long Latin names of things while never watching the ways of the
things that have the names. As they sat on the porch, so the story
goes, the school trustee called attention to a familiar little
orange-colored bug, with black spots on his back, that was crawling on
the floor.
“I s’pose you know what that is?” he said.
“Yes,” replied the applicant, with conviction; “that is a _Coccinella
septempunctata_.”
“Young man,” was the rejoinder, “a feller as don’t know a ladybug when
he sees it can’t get my vote for teacher in this deestrict.”
The “trustee” was right; for what is the use of knowing that the
little ladybug is _Coc-ci-nel’-la sep-tem-punc-ta’-ta_ when you do not
know that she is a ladybug, and that you ought to say to her:--
“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home;
Your house is on fire, your children alone”?
Let us say, now, that you are spending your vacation in the edge of
the country within twenty miles of a great city such as Boston. That
might bring you out at Hingham, where I am spending mine. In such an
ordinary place (if any place _is_ ordinary,) what might you expect to
see and watch during the summer?
Sixty species of birds, to begin with! They will keep you busy all
summer. The wild animals, beasts, that you will find depend so very
much upon your locality--woods, waters, rocks, etc.--that it is hard
to say how many they will be. Here in my woods you might come upon
three or four species of mice, three species of squirrels, the mink,
the muskrat, the weasel, the mole, the shrew, the fox, the skunk, the
rabbit, and even a wild deer. Of reptiles and amphibians you would see
several more species than of fur-bearing animals,--six snakes, four
common turtles, two salamanders, frogs, toads, newts,--a wonderfully
interesting group, with a real live rattler among them if you should
go over to the Blue Hills, fifteen miles away.
[Illustration: RED SALAMANDERS, OLD AND YOUNG]
You will go many times into the fields before you can make of the
reptiles your friends and neighbors. But by and by you will watch them
and note their ways with as much interest as you watch the other wild
folk about you. It is a pretty shallow lover of nature who jumps upon
a little snake with both feet, or who shivers when a little salamander
drops out of the leaf-mould at his feet.
[Illustration: NEWTS]
And what shall I say of the fishes? There are a dozen of them in the
stream and ponds within the compass of my haunt. They are a
fascinating family, and one very little watched by the ordinary
tramper. But _you_ are not ordinary. Quiet and patience and much
putting together of scraps of observations will be necessary if you
are to get at the whole story of any fish’s life. The story will be
worth it, however.
No, I shall not even try to _number_ the insects--the butterflies,
beetles, moths, wasps, bees, bugs, ticks, mites, and such small “deer”
as you will find in the round of your summer’s tramp. Nor shall I try
to name the flowers and trees, the ferns and mosses. It is with the
common things that you ought now to become familiar, and one summer is
all too short for the things you ought to see and hear and do in your
vacation out of doors.