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  BIRDS AND ALL NATURE.

  ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.

  VOL. VI.         NOVEMBER, 1899.           NO. 4




    CONTENTS

                                                            Page
  A RARE HUMMING BIRD.                                       145
  THE LADY'S SLIPPER.                                        146
  JIM AND I.                                                 149
  WHY AND WHEREFORE OF THE COLORS OF BIRDS' EGGS.            152
  TEA.                                                       155
  THE TOWHEE; CHEWINK.                                       158
  WEE BABIES.                                                161
  WISH-TON-WISH.                                             162
  THE BEE AND THE FLOWER.                                    164
  THE CANARY.                                                167
  THE PAROQUET.                                              169
  THE CAROLINA PAROQUET.                                     170
  WHAT THE WOOD FIRE SAID TO A LITTLE BOY.                   173
  THE MISSISSIPPI.                                           174
  INDIAN SUMMER.                                             176
  THE CHIPMUNK.                                              179
  TED'S WEATHER PROPHET.                                     180
  THREATENED EXTERMINATION OF THE FUR SEAL.                  181
  THE PEACH.                                                 182
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VICEROY.                         185
  BIRD LORE OF THE ANCIENT FINNS.                            186
  BIRD NOTES.                                                187
  STORY OF A NEST.                                           188
  COMMON MINERALS AND VALUABLE ORES.                         191
  WHEN ANIMALS ARE SEASICK.                                  192




A RARE HUMMING BIRD.

HOW ONE OF THESE LITTLE FAIRY CREATURES WAS TAMED.

P. W. H.


Instances are very rare where birds are familiar with human beings,
and the humming birds especially are considered unapproachable, yet a
naturalist tells how he succeeded in catching one in his hand. Several
cases are on record of attempts to tame humming birds, but when placed
in a cage they do not thrive, and soon die. The orange groves of
southern California abound in these attractive creatures, and several
can often be seen about the flowering bushes, seeking food or chasing
each other in play. "Once, when living on the <DW72>s of the Sierra
Madre mountains, where they were very plentiful, I accomplished the
feat of taking one in my hand," says the naturalist.

"I first noticed it in the garden, resting on a mustard stalk, and,
thinking to see how near I could approach, I gradually moved toward it
by pretending to be otherwise engaged, until I was within five feet of
it. The bird looked at me calmly and I moved slowly nearer, whistling
gently to attract its attention, as I began to think something was the
matter with it. It bent its head upon one side, eyed me sharply, then
flew to another stalk a few feet away, contemplating me as before.
Again I approached, taking care not to alarm it, and this time I was
almost within reaching distance before it flew away. The bird seemed to
have a growing confidence in me, and I became more and more deliberate
in my movements until I finally stood beside it, the little creature
gazing at me with its head tipped upon one side as if questioning what
I was about. I then withdrew and approached again, repeating this
several times before I stretched out my hand to take it, at which it
flew to another bush. But the next time it allowed me to grasp it, and
I had caught a wild bird open-handed without even the use of salt!"

One of the curious features of humming birds is that they are never
found in Europe, being exclusively American, ranging in this country
from the extreme north to the tropics, adding to the beauty of field
and grove, being veritable living gems. Nothing can approach the
humming bird in its gorgeousness of decoration. It is especially rich
in the metallic tints, seemingly splashed with red, blue, green, and
other bronzes. Some appear to be decked in a coat of mail, others
blazing in the sunlight with head-dresses and breast-plates that are
dazzling to behold and defy description. The smallest of birds, they
are one of the most beautiful of the many ornaments of our fields and
gardens.

In some islands of the south Pacific birds have been found that had
never seen a man before, and allowed themselves to be picked up, and
even had to be pushed out of peoples' way, it is said, yet they must
have been very unlike the birds that are generally known, or they would
have been more timid, even if they had not learned the fear of man.




THE LADY'S SLIPPER.

WILLIAM KERR HIGLEY,

Secretary of The Chicago Academy of Sciences.


This interesting plant belongs to that remarkable family of orchids
(_Orchidaceæ_) which includes over four hundred genera and five
thousand species. They are especially noted for the great variety of
shapes and colors of their flowers, many of them resembling beetles
and other insects, monkey, snake, and lizard heads, as well as helmets
and slippers, the latter giving rise to the name of the plant in our
illustration. The variety, singular beauty, and delicate odor, as well
as the peculiar arrangement of the parts of the flower, make many of
the species of great financial value. This is also enhanced by the
extreme care required in their cultivation, which must be accomplished
in hothouses, for the majority of the more valuable forms are native
only in the tropical forests. Many, too, are rarely found except as
single individuals widely separated.

There are many parasitic species, and in the tropics a larger number
attach themselves by their long roots to trees, but do not obtain their
nourishment from them, while those belonging to temperate regions
usually grow on the ground.

In the last sixty years the cultivation of orchids has become a passion
in Europe and, to a great extent, in America.

It is said that "Linnæus, in the middle of the last century, knew but a
dozen exotic orchids." To-day over three thousand are known to English
and American horticulturists.

Though admired by all, the orchids are especially interesting to
the scientist, for in their peculiar flowers is found an unusual
arrangement to bring about cross-fertilization, so necessary to the
best development of plant life. It is evident also, as shown by Dr.
Charles Darwin, that this was not so in the earlier life of the family,
but has been a gradual change, through centuries, by which the species
have been better prepared to survive.

No other family of plants presents as much evidence of the provision
in nature for the protection of species and their continuance by
propagation.

Few of the orchids are of economic value to man. The most important
ones, outside of a few used in medicine, are the vanillas, natives of
tropical America and Africa.

The lady's slipper belongs to the genus _Cypripedium_ (from two Greek
words meaning _Venus_ and _a buskin_, that is, Venus' slipper).

There are about forty species found in both temperate and tropical
countries. The one used for our illustration is the "showy lady's
slipper" (_Cypripedium reginæ_ or _spectabile_) and is a native of
eastern North America from Canada nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. It
grows to a height of from one to three feet, and is leafy to the top.
It grows in swamps and wet woods, and in many localities where it
is extensively gathered for ornamental purposes it is being rapidly
exterminated.

Those living before the era of modern investigation knew little of
the functions of the various parts of flowers. We find an excellent
illustration of this ignorance in the following peculiar account of a
South American lady's slipper, written by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, father of
Dr. Charles Darwin, in the latter part of the last century.

In his notes on his poem, "The Economy of Vegetation," he says: "It has
a large globular nectary * * * of a fleshy color, and an incision or
depression much resembling the body of the large American spider * * *
attached to divergent slender petals not unlike the legs of the same
spider." He says that Linnæus claims this spider catches small birds as
well as insects, and adds: "The similitude of this flower to this great
spider seems to be a vegetable contrivance to prevent the humming-bird
from plundering its honey."




  [Illustration: A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
                 LADY'S SLIPPER.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]




JIM AND I.

BY ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE.


Wouldn't the little readers of BIRDS AND ALL NATURE enjoy a talk with a
mother-bird? The father-bird, it seems to me, has done all the talking
hitherto. Because he is handsome and can sing is no reason why Jim, my
mate, should write up the history of his family. It would have been a
sorry attempt had he tried, I promise you, for though he is a Hartz
Mountain Canary--pure yellow and white like the lower bird in the
picture--he is not at all clever. My mistress says I have more sense in
one of my little toes than Jim has in his whole body.

"You cute little thing," she exclaims when I kiss her, or take a hemp
seed from off her finger, "you are the dearest and wisest little bird
in the world."

Jim sometimes taunts me because I wear such sober colors--black
and brown with green and yellow mixed--like the upper bird in the
picture--but I retort that I am a Hartz Mountain bird, also, and have
just as good German blood in my veins as he has. Neither of us ever saw
the Hartz Mountains, of course, for we were born in Chicago, but our
great grandmothers did, I am sure.

A good husband? No, I can't say that Jim is. He is too quarrelsome. My
mistress says he is a bully, whatever that may mean. He has a fashion
of standing by the seed cup and daring me to come and pick up a seed;
the same with the drinking-water and the bathing-dish. Then again he
is very gracious, and calls me pet names, and sings at the top of his
voice every love song he knows. Sometimes I try to imitate him, when
he flies into a rage and sharply bids me "shut up." I am too meek to
return the compliment, even when I have grown weary of his music, but
my mistress shakes her finger at him and calls him a "naughty, naughty
bird."

She can't tame Jim, all she may do. Few canary birds will resist a
hemp seed when offered on a finger. My mistress used to crack them
between her teeth and coax and coax him to take one, but he never
would. That's the reason she calls him stupid, for we love hemp seed
just as you little folks love peanuts, you know. That's the way she
tamed me, and that's the way you can tame your canary if you have one.

I have had a rather eventful history for a bird. In the first
place--but let me begin at the beginning and tell you the circumstance
just as it happened.

It was about four years ago, so far as I can recollect, that I caught
my first glimpse of the world and tasted the sweets of freedom. One
balmy morning in June, I escaped from my cage, and the window being
open, out I joyously flew into the bright sunshine. I was a little
dazzled at first and frightened. How immense the world seemed! How far
away the tender blue sky over which the fleecy clouds sailed, that
sky which I had thought a mere patch when seen from my cage in the
window! How many houses there were, and how inviting the green trees
and grass-plots! I fairly danced with joy, and chirped, "I'm free, I'm
free," as I flew from place to place, my wings, never tiring, bearing
me from tree to housetop and from housetop to tree.

Ah, that was a day never to be forgotten. How I escaped the dangers
which lurk about the steps of the unwary and innocent has always been
a marvel to me. The hostile sparrows, for instance, the green-eyed,
sharp-clawed cat, the sling-shot of the cruel boy, the--but why linger
over horrors which might, but did not happen?

In this way the morning passed joyfully, the pangs of hunger, as noon
approached, however, advising me sharply it was near dinner time. From
housetop to housetop I flew, from tree to tree, but nowhere could I
find a little china cup filled with rape, hemp, and canary seed, or a
tiny glass vessel filled with water that I might slake my thirst.

What should I do? A bird brought up as I had been, I reflected, could
never descend to work for a living, as the sparrows did, and other wild
birds which I had met among the trees. Some of them ate insects--fact,
I assure you--and one red-headed bird, wearing a coat of many gay
colors, simply tapped and tapped on a tree with his hard bill whenever
he wanted his dinner.

"Come in," said the bug, innocently, who was making his home between
the bark and the tree, "come in."

Nobody appearing, the bug ventured out to see who his caller might be.

"Good morning," grinned the woodpecker, and then politely gobbled the
poor bug up.

But I was not brought up that way. I could not eat bugs, neither could
I rummage in the garbage boxes as the sparrows did. Oh, how unwise of
me, and how ungrateful to run away from a home where my every need was
faithfully served by a kind mistress. Like the prodigal I would return.
Surely I would know the house, the very window from which I had fled.
Yes, I would start at once, and off I flew in the direction which I
thought I had come.

But, alas! how alike all the houses in that neighborhood seemed. Vainly
did I fly down on many a window-sill and peer in. No mistress' face
greeted me, no empty cage swung idly between the curtains. At length,
faint from hunger and fatigue, I flew down and perched upon the railing
of a porch where two ladies were sitting.

"You dear little thing," said one of the ladies--I want to say here
that I am much smaller than the dark Hartz Mountain bird who sat for
her picture--"I never saw a sparrow so tiny, or marked like you before."

"It's a canary, not a sparrow," said the other lady, "doubtless,
somebody's lost pet," and she held out her hand, and chirped and talked
to me very much like my lost mistress had done.

"Poor little wanderer," she at length said, as I looked at her, but
made no effort to fly away, "I have an idea you came to us for food,"
and then she went into the house and shortly returned with a cage in
the bottom of which she scattered seed, placing it upon the ground very
close to me.

"Rape, hemp and canary," I chirped, "the seed I am used to," and down
I at once flew, hopped into the cage, and, the next moment, was made
prisoner.

Sorry?

Well, really I don't know. My period of freedom had been so brief, and
attended with such anxiety and fear, that I hardly knew whether to
laugh or cry. The next day, however, I knew that my lines had indeed
fallen in pleasant places. My first mistress had been kind, but oh, how
much more tender and thoughtful the new one proved to be!

"I was a helpless little creature," she said, "and upon her depended my
entire comfort and happiness." Never for one day did she neglect me.
Though my regular bill-of-fare was bird-seed, yet she varied it as she
did her own. Cracker, lettuce, apples, grapes, cherries, sugar, and
always in the summer, pepper-grass. If you little folks have a canary
never fail, I beseech you, to give them of the latter all they want to
eat. It costs nothing and may be gathered in any vacant lot fresh every
day.

What pleasure so kind a mistress could find in keeping me in a little
gilt cage, I could not see, for there were screens in the window, and
even if there had not been I don't believe I should have cared to fly
away. Something in my appearance one day suggested the thought to her,
I am sure, for looking at me earnestly, she said:

"You are not happy, my birdie, I fear. Neither would I be, cooped up
in a cage like that," and so she opened wide the door and out I flew,
never to be a prisoner again--till, well, I will not speak of that just
here, but keep it for the close.

What famous times we did have after that, to be sure. Whenever I felt
lonesome down I'd fly upon the desk where my mistress sat writing. She
would pretend not to see me till I had hopped upon the very sheet over
which her pen was gliding.

"Why birdie!" she would then cry, as though very much astonished, and
off I'd fly, as she made a dash for me, to the window where I would
hide behind the ruffle of the sash curtain.

"_Cheep, cheep_," I'd cry, just as you little folks cry "whoop," when
all is ready, "_cheep, cheep_."

"Where can my birdie be?" she would say after awhile, dropping her
pen. "Where can she be?" and then she would look here and there, till
presently approaching my hiding-place, out I'd fly, with a gurgle, into
an adjoining room, where I'd again crouch behind the curtain. Between
you and me I believe she knew all the time where I was hiding and only
pretended to search for me here and there. Anyway it was capital fun,
and I never tired of it, though mistress did.

"I can't play with you any more," she would say, "you quite tire me
out," and then she would go to writing again and so our game of "hide
and seek" would end for that day.

"Everything needs companionship," she said one morning to my master,
"birds, children and men," and so that day he brought home a large
wooden cage in which was as handsome a canary bird as you would want
to see. That was Jim, and oh, how happy I was, when, a few days after,
he asked me to be his mate. I said "yes," almost before he had got the
song out of his mouth--I didn't know what a tyrant and bully he was
till afterward, you know--and so we went pretty soon to housekeeping in
the wooden cage.

My mistress understood what I wanted when she saw me picking up threads
and pulling her chenille table cover to pieces, and so in one corner of
the cage she put a nest made of wire and covered with a bit of muslin.
Near by were little heaps of cotton-batting, wrapping-cord, and hair.
Dear, dear, how busy I was for days! Jim, as I have said before, did
nothing much but sing--and criticise. More than once I dragged all
the furniture out of our wire home, because he thought I should have
put the hair in first, and the cotton and strings in afterward. For
a newly wedded couple, on their honeymoon so to speak, we did a vast
amount of quarreling. The nest, however, was at last made cozy enough
to suit us, and so one day I climbed in it and sat for quite a while.
Then I called to Jim and I must say he seemed to be just as proud as
I was of the little blue speckled egg which lay there so snug in the
cotton. The next day but one I laid another, and then one every day
till I had laid five. My, how I felt when I gathered them up close
under me and sat down to brood. If all went well, after thirteen or
fourteen days, we would have five dear birdlings. For fear the eggs
might get chilled I left them only a few minutes at a time, hurriedly
eating a few seeds, then back on the nest again. Jim could have helped
me very much by brooding the eggs while I took exercise and my meals,
but he was too selfish for that. All he did was to fly about and sing,
bidding me to keep my spirits up. If it hadn't been for my mistress I
should have fared badly, you may believe. She fed me crackers soaked in
milk, cracked hemp seeds and placed them around the edge of the nest,
besides other delicacies in the vegetable line too numerous to mention.
When the birdlings were born Jim appeared to be very proud indeed. He
couldn't sing long or loud enough, leaving me to feed the five gaping,
pleading red mouths every day. Ah, no one knows better than a mother
how much trouble and worry there is in bringing up a family. I'm sure
I have had experience enough, for since that time I have had so many
birdlings I can't count them. One season I had eighteen, three nests,
and six in the nest each time. They were considered such fine birds
that my mistress had no difficulty in selling them as soon as they
learned to sing.

Now I am coming to a period the thought of which fills my heart with
sorrow. For some reason that I am not able to tell you, my mistress
concluded to part with me and Jim. She shed tears over it, I know, but
nevertheless we felt ourselves being borne away one night, and in the
morning, lo! we found ourselves in a large, bare room, on the floor of
which was painted an immense ring or circle. I was sitting on six blue,
speckled eggs at the time, and didn't mind it so much, but Jim was
very cross and restless, for the cage door was fastened and he bitterly
resented imprisonment. Alas! from that time forth we never were to know
freedom again; from that time forth we had to accustom ourselves to
many, many changes.

About nine o'clock the door of the room opened and in came a little
girl, followed by a little boy. Then more little girls and boys, till
I counted, as well as I could, seventeen. All one family? Oh, no, I'm
not talking about bird families now. As many as could crowded about the
cage and stared at me with wide-open eyes. The cage was on a low table
so they could peep into the nest. Oh, how frightened I was. One little
chap thrust his finger through the bars, and down I flew, leaving my
precious eggs exposed. That was what they wanted, and oh how they did
exclaim! I went back pretty soon, however, for I began to understand
that they did not mean to harm me or the eggs either. However, it was
many days ere I got over the feeling of fright when stared at by so
many eyes, but by the time the birdlings were hatched out I had grown
quite used to it. Indeed I felt somewhat proud of the interest those
wee tots took in my babies, my manner of feeding them never failing to
call forth cries of wonder and praise.

"She just chews up the seeds and swallows 'em," said a little chap one
day, "then when the baby birds cry for something to eat she brings it
up and stuffs it down their long throats with her bill. My! it's ever
so much better than a spoon."

The teacher laughed and patted the little fellow on the head.

"That is your first lesson in nature-study, Victor," said she, and then
a lady at the piano struck up a march and off they all trooped two by
two.

"Where do you suppose we are?" crossly said Jim, hopping excitedly from
one perch to another, "it looks like a lunatic asylum to me."

Jim, as I have stated before, is a very stupid bird. The words "lesson"
and "nature-study" held no meaning for him.

"It seems to me," I said, watching the little tots marching with an
observing eye, "that we are in a kindergarten."

"A kindergarten," echoed Jim, "what's that?"

"Why," I explained, "a school where young children are taught to love
everything and everybody. Surely we have nothing to fear."

And so it turned out to be, a kindergarten, in which, I am proud to
say, for purposes of nature-study, I have raised many and many a brood.




WHY AND WHEREFORE OF THE COLORS OF BIRDS' EGGS.


The why and wherefore of the colors of birds' eggs, says Ernest
Ingersoll, has been a favorite theme for speculation, from the quaint
surmisings of Sir Thomas Browne to the solemn guess-work of Shufeldt,
in his ten "biological laws explanatory of the variation in color of
the shells of the eggs in class Aves."* Hewitson piously concludes that
the beauty of these elegant and often exquisitely attractive objects is
intended for the delight of human eyes; hence, as he says, eggs simply
white are put out of sight in holes! He also sees in the larger number
of eggs laid by game-birds a provision by a benevolent Providence for
the joy of the sportsman and the delectation of the epicure. Next
comes a man who assures us that the colors of eggs are due to the
influence of their respective surroundings on the imagination of the
hen birds--the old story of Jacob's little trick on Laban in the matter
of young cattle. This school instances as an example the red blotches
prevalent on the eggs of falcons, regarded by it as a record of the
bloody experiences of the parents; but it does not explain why the
equally rapacious owls produce pure white eggs, or the blood-thirsty
skuas and shrikes lay greenish ones. Other equally fallacious
theorizings might be noted.




  [Illustration: FROM KOEHLER'S MEDICINAL-PFLANZEN.
                 TEA.
                 CHICAGO:
                 A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.]

Explanation of plate: _A_, flowering branch, nearly natural size;
1, flower in section; 2, stamen; 3, ovary in transverse section; 4,
pistil; 5 and 6, fruit, with seed; 7, seed; 8, seed in sections.

TEA.

_Camellia Thea Link_.

DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER,

Northwestern University School of Pharmacy.

    The gentle fair on nervous tea relies,
    Whilst gay good nature sparkles in her eyes.
                                        --_Crabbe_: "Inebriety."


The highly esteemed drink referred to in the above lines is made
from the leaves and very young terminal branches of a shrub known as
_Camellia Thea_. The shrub is spreading, usually two or three meters
high, though it may attain a height of nine or ten meters. It has
smooth, dark-green, alternate, irregularly serrate-dentate, lanceolate
to obovate, blunt-pointed, simple leaves. The young leaves and branches
are woolly owing to the presence of numerous hair-cells. The flowers
are perfect, solitary or in twos and threes in the axils of the
leaves. They are white and rather showy. Some authors state that they
are fragrant, while others state that they are practically odorless.
Stamens are numerous. The ovary is three-celled, with one seed in each
cell, which is about the size of a cherry seed.

The tea-plant is no doubt a native of India, upper Assam, from whence
it was early introduced into China, where it is now cultivated on an
immense scale. It is, however, also extensively cultivated in various
parts of India, in Japan, Java, Australia, Sicily, Corea, and other
tropical and subtropical countries and islands. It is also cultivated
to some extent in the southern United States, as in Carolina, Georgia,
Mississippi, and California, but apparently without any great success.
The plant is extensively grown in green-houses and conservatories on
account of its beauty.

According to a Japanese myth the tea plant originated as follows: A
very pious follower of Buddha, Darma, vowed that he would pray without
ceasing. He had prayed for some years when finally the Evil One
over-powered him and he fell asleep. When he awoke he felt so chagrined
and humiliated that he cut off both his eyelids and threw them from
him. From the spot where they fell grew two plants endowed with the
property of dispelling sleep. Chinese writers maintain that priests of
Buddha introduced the plant from India. Some authorities are inclined
to believe that the plant is a native of China; others, that it was
brought from Corea to China about the ninth century.

Tea-drinking was supposed to have been discovered by a servant
of Emperor Buttei, 150 B. C., but concerning this there is much
uncertainty. It is said to have been in use in Japan as early as 729
of our era. The first definite information about tea-consumption in
China dates from the year 1550, when a Persian merchant brought tea
from that country to Venice. At a little later period we find tea
mentioned in various letters and documents of travelers and merchants,
yet it is evident that it was a costly and rare article as late as
1660. In 1664 the East India Company presented the queen of England
with two pounds of tea. In fact, it was not until the beginning of the
eighteenth century and later that tea began to be used in different
parts of Europe. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and
the beginning of the eighteenth century tea-houses were established
in various cities of Europe, especially in England. At the present
time tea-houses, like coffee-houses, have become practically extinct
in civilized countries, but that does not imply that tea-drinking
and coffee-drinking are on the wane. Among the English and Slavs
tea-parties are all the rage. The favorite Gesellschaft _Kaffee_,
coffee-party, of German housewives indicates that they give coffee the
preference. The biggest tea-party on record was doubtless the so-called
Boston Tea Party, at which tea valued at £18,000 sterling was destroyed.

In spite of the tropical origin of the plant the largest quantities of
tea are consumed in northern countries, notably in Russia and Asiatic
Russia. Large quantities are consumed in England and the United States.

Most authorities are agreed that the different kinds of tea on the
market are derived from the same species of plant. Some admit a variety
_C. Thea var. viridis_. The following are the principal teas of the
market and the manner of their preparation:

1. _Green Tea._ After collecting the leaves are allowed to lie for
about two hours in warmed pans and stirred and then rolled upon small
bamboo tables, whereupon they are further dried upon hurdles and again
in heated pans for about one hour, accompanied by stirring. The leaves
now assume a bluish-green color, which is frequently enhanced by adding
Prussian blue or indigo. Of these green teas the most important are
Gunpowder, Twankay, Hyson, Young Hyson, Hyson skin, Songla, Soulang,
and Imperial.

2. _Black Tea._ The leaves are allowed to lie in heaps for a day, when
they are thoroughly shaken and mixed. After another period of rest, two
to three days, they are dried and rolled much as green tea. In the
storing process the leaves undergo a fermentation which develops the
aroma and the dark color. The following are the principal varieties:
Campoe, Congou, Linki-sam, Padre Souchon (caravan tea), Pecoe,
Souchong, and Bohe.

In some countries the teas are scented with jasmine flowers or
orange flowers. This is, however, no longer extensively practiced.
The essentially Chinese custom of coloring teas with Prussian blue,
gypsum, and indigo is dying out, at least so far as the export trade
is concerned, because intelligent civilized consumers are beginning to
prefer the uncolored teas. Competent authorities maintain that there is
not enough of the coloring substances added to be harmful. The workmen
preparing the better qualities of tea are not permitted to eat fish,
as the very enduring and penetrating fish-flavor would be transmitted
to the tea in the thorough handling. It seems, however, that a more or
less distinct fishy flavor is perceptible in many teas, even the better
qualities.

Tea-dust consists of remnants from tea-chests, dust from the working
tables upon which the leaves are rolled--in fact, tea-refuse of all
kinds. It is certainly not a desirable article. Besides true tea there
are leaves and other parts of a great variety of plants which have been
used as tea. To enumerate and describe these would be impracticable in
this paper. The following are a few of the more important: Paraguay
tea, or maté, is highly esteemed in South America. The Coreans prepare
tea from ginger. The poor Siberians use cabbage leaves. Teas are made
from the leaves of a great variety of herbs which are supposed to have
medicinal or stimulating properties similar to those of tea. Peppermint
tea and chamomile tea are greatly esteemed in certain localities.

Concerning the adulteration of tea there seems to be considerable
difference of opinion, some authorities maintaining that adulteration
is common, while others maintain that it is very rare, indeed. There
is, however, little doubt that used tea is frequently redried,
rerolled, and resold as good tea. Willow leaves, strawberry leaves,
and mulberry leaves are said to be added occasionally.

Every housewife knows that _good_ tea is expensive. Since the different
teas are all from the same species of plant why should there be such
a difference in price? The expensive teas consist of the very young
leaves and terminal branches and are carefully dried and prepared under
special supervision. The young leaves and branches have a more delicate
flavor. To determine whether a sample of tea consists of young leaves
or not soak it in water, carefully roll out the leaves, and measure
them. If the majority of leaves measure an inch or more in length it is
a poor quality. It must be remembered that even fair medium qualities
are mixed; that is, they consist of mature and immature leaves. The
best and most expensive teas are often sold at one hundred dollars per
pound. They are never exported, but consumed by high Chinese officials.
Imperial tea is prepared under the direct supervision of royal
government officials.

Tea owes its stimulating properties to an active constituent known
as thein, which is in all respects similar to caffein, the active
constituent of coffee. The flavor which is developed by the drying
process is due to several constituents. Besides these substances tea
also contains considerable tannin. Tea consumed in moderate quantities
is beneficial rather than otherwise. Its injurious properties are due
to the tannin, which affects digestion. If consumed in large quantities
for a long time the thein causes nervousness and the tannin causes
various dyspeptic conditions. In China some chew the leaves treated
with arsenic to improve the complexion. The whitening of the complexion
is, however, due to the arsenic and not the tea.

Tea is prepared in different ways in different countries, nevertheless
the preparation of a good cup of tea is comparatively simple, leaving
out of consideration the many paraphernalia used by different nations
and which really have no effect except that upon the imagination. The
following is Emperor Kien Lung's (1680) recipe for making tea, and
which is frequently found upon Chinese tea cups: "Over a moderate
fire place a vessel with three feet, showing by its color and form
that it has been much used; fill with clear water of melted snow and
heat it until the water will turn a fish white or a lobster red. Pour
this water into a cup containing the leaves of a select variety of
tea; allow it to stand until the first rising vapors, which form a
dense cloud, become gradually less and float over the surface as a
faint mist. Drink this precious liquid slowly and thou wilt find it a
powerful dissipator of the five sorrows which disturb our minds. The
sweet and peaceful rest which we owe to this drink we may taste and
feel, but may not describe." This recipe, although two hundred years
old, has not been improved upon. Stated in a little simpler form the
recipe would read: In a cup with good tea leaves pour clean boiling
water and allow to stand five or six minutes; decant and drink slowly.

Tea leaves should never be infused for a long time for several reasons.
The flavor dissipates and the objectionable tannin is more and more
extracted, imparting to the tea astringency and a bitterness, which
are not only disagreeable to the taste but also cause indigestion
and constipation. After the tea is prepared as indicated it may be
taken hot or cold, with or without sugar, with or without cream or
milk. Iced tea, with a little lemon juice added, is a delicious drink
for hot weather. It is cooling besides having a tendency to check
excessive perspiration. Tea has also been found valuable as a wash for
inflammation of the eyes.

In conclusion, I wish to refer the reader to an article in the July
number of the _Cosmopolitan_ on "Tea-drinking in many lands," by Laura
B. Starr, in which are related many interesting customs relative to the
use and preparation of tea.




  [Illustration: A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
                 TOWHEE.
                 1/2 Life-size.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]

THE TOWHEE; CHEWINK.

(_Pipilo erythrophthalmus._)

BY LYNDS JONES.


The home of my childhood and early youth nestles in one of the gems of
woodland which are so characteristic of the rolling prairies of central
Iowa. This hundred-acre grove covers five main hills, with their
valleys and the lesser runs which divide each of the five hills into
two, three, or four lesser hills. The hills radiate in a semicircle
to the north and west from the height on which the old home stands,
rolling away to the creek which bathes their feet. Here are tall, heavy
woods, without underbrush, covering the north <DW72>s; lower, more open
woods with patches of plum, and wild crab apple trees, with some hazel
brush on all lower <DW72>s of the hills; and finally a liberal fringe
of low, brushy trees--hawthorn, plum and crab apple trees--and dense
hazel brush on the uplands and on lower lands away from the creek.
This dense growth also fringes the county road which extends from end
to end of the grove, and it was from this roadside that towhee first
heralded his arrival from the south, during the bright days of late
March or early April. Later, when the frost had left the ground, and
his mate was growing anxious to be selecting a nesting-place, he might
be seen on the topmost twig of one of the taller small trees in every
brushy place on every hillside. I have sometimes wondered if the towhee
household did not have some disagreement about the family name, for the
male, from his elevated perch loudly calls _towhee-e-e-e_, while his
spouse on the ground below no less vigorously reiterates _che-wink_.
But if danger seems to threaten his lordship quickly descends to join
his mate in earnest warning that this small bit of earth belongs by
right of discovery to che-wink. How earnestly both birds emphasize
their claim by the nervous fluff of the short, stiff wings and the
quick spreading of the long tail, as if the large patches of white
at its end would startle the intruder away. But the male bird does
not always confine himself to the iteration of the name he seems to
love so well. Instead of the single first syllable there may be two
or even three, no two in the same pitch. It has been a surprise to me
that persons unfamiliar with the towhee's song do not realize that the
two parts proceed from the same bird. To them the first part seems to
resemble some part of the wood thrush's song and the last part--the
_he-e-e-e_--the rattle of downy woodpecker. My ear persistently
renders the whole song, _towhee-e-e-e_, or _towhe-hee-e-e-e-e_, or _O
towhe-he-e-e-e-e-e_. Others render it _chuck burr pilla-will-a-will_.
But towhee is not limited to this variety of vocalization. Besides the
abbreviation of his _che-wink_ alarm note to _swink_, or even _wink_,
and a _chuck, chuck_, when the nest is threatened, he sometimes sings
a rarely beautiful ditty which is totally unlike any of his other
performances. I have heard it only shortly after his arrival from
the south, before his mate had joined him, and have tried in vain to
describe it. The bird moves slowly and sedately about among the fallen
leaves in a soliloquy over the happenings of the long journey just
ended, with apparently no thought of the absent mate. The manner of its
utterance indicates that this is the bird's private song, egotistic if
you please, while his tree-top rendition is evidently his altruistic
performance.

The ordinary song and call and alarm notes are well rendered in the
local names bestowed upon the bird: Towhee, che-wink, joreet, joree,
charee, pink-pink, and wink-wink. His chestnut- sides and lowly
habits have given him the names of ground robin and swamp robin, and
his red iris, red-eyed towhee.

Nesting begins about the first of May in northern Ohio. The nest is
almost always placed on the ground, often in a slight depression made
by the birds, rarely in a bush up to seven feet from the ground. It is
made of material easily accessible in the region of the nest, of dry
leaves for a foundation upon which plant stems, dry grass, grape-vine
bark, or like material is arranged, and the whole lined with fine
rootlets. The material will vary somewhat with locality and situation
of the nest, as a matter of course. Rarely the nest may be covered,
with the entrance in the side, but it is usually not covered. The nest
site is preferably some distance from a road or foot-path, often in
moderately deep woods where there is little underbrush, but more often
in the shrubbery fringing the woods, either on a hill-top or side hill
or bottom land. Here at Oberlin, Ohio, I have found more nests in the
low second growth near swampy places than elsewhere.

The nest complement is from three to five eggs, usually four. The egg
seems to be a rather rounded ovate, running to nearly spherical on the
one hand to elongate oval on the other. The ground color is white, not
seldom tinged with pink or blue, with sprinkling of reddish-brown dots,
spots, and blotches. It is a common experience to find eggs of the
parasitic cowbird in nests of towhee. Twice I have found nests on which
the mother towhee was serenely sitting with four eggs of the cowbird
beneath her and none of her own. Two eggs of the cowbird and two or
three of the towhee in a nest are common. Sometimes the parasitic
eggs so closely resemble those of the parent that it is not easy to
distinguish between them, but often the difference is very marked.

The towhee is a fairly common inhabitant of the whole region east of
the Rocky Mountains and north to the northern border of the United
States, breeding everywhere north of northern Alabama.




WEE BABIES.

ELLA F. MOSBY.


The past summer I saw the most charming baby-bird of my life. He was
so tiny and silvery, his upper feathers such a lovely olive-green and
the under plumage such soft white, and over the bright, innocent little
eyes a beautiful curving line like an eyebrow. I did not at first
recognize him, but the next day I saw two, probably of the same flock,
hunting very industriously over an old tree, and I knew they were the
young red eyed vireos. Their feathers were all new and fresh, and that
made them look so silvery and the tints seem so clear.

The same summer I became very well acquainted with a different set
of bird-babies. They were still younger, for their feathers had a
soft, downy look, and fluffed out so that they really looked larger
than their tiny parents. They were silver gray, the little blue-gray
gnat-catchers, and nothing could be more charming than the way they
twinkled about the bushes, or turned somersaults in the air to catch
flying insects on the wing. Their little songs, as low as whispers,
their call-notes "like a banjo-string" _ting!_ and even their low
scoldings, were very pretty, and seemed to belong to them perfectly.
Someone, who did not know birds very well called them little wrens,
and they really had a good many of the restless movements and alert
attitudes of these birds, but their habits are totally different. For
instance, their life begins in a lichened cup high up among the top
boughs and it is only in the late summer, when birds break their rules
and go as they please for a brief holiday time before the migration,
that you will see the gnat-catchers come down to the low bushes. I can
hardly believe it myself, but I once saw a young one picking away on
the ground.

One charm about the tiny birds, gnat-catchers, chebecks, vireos,
kinglets, and the like, is that they are not usually so shy as large,
handsome birds, and I have often had them almost within touch, singing,
feeding, preening their feathers, in the loveliest and most confiding
way.




WISH-TON-WISH.

EMMA M. GREENLEAF.


One bright May morning Wish-ton-wish sat on the mound in front of his
family burrow. Wish-ton-wish was a lively young prairie-dog and he
wanted to talk with someone.

Presently Madam Talky came out of her burrow and ran up to the top of
her mound.

"Good-morning," called out Wish-ton-wish; but Madam Talky did not even
turn her head his way. I dare say she thought to herself, "Humph! A
chit of a fellow like that isn't worth my time."

Now Wish-ton-wish was an only boy in a family where there were five
other children, so that he had come to believe, as only sons often do,
that he was wise enough to talk with a very Solomon of prairie-dogs.
The silence of Madam Talky didn't hurt his feelings in the least.
Presently he called out again and this time with greater tact: "How are
your charming daughters this morning?"

O, you should have seen the change in Mrs. Talky. She turned her whole
face toward Wish-ton-wish now and fairly beamed upon him.

"Very well, indeed, thank you," she answered; "you must call to see us."

And this time I dare say she thought to herself, "Why, I can hardly
realize that the young fellow is about grown up; how fine he looks,
too; his family must have great confidence in him to let him be
sentinel when he is so young."

Wish-ton-wish thanked her politely for the invitation, and said that
perhaps he might call that afternoon.

"Have you heard that Mr. Grizzle Prairie Dog has been found?" asked
Madam Talky.

"No, where?" said Wish-ton-wish.

"O, in a very strange place," madam answered.

"It was Mr. Talky that found him. At least we feel pretty sure that he
did. It was this way: Mr. Talky often has attacks of dyspepsia, and
last night he ate so much timothy hay for his supper that he had to
run back and forth in our burrows for exercise, ever so long before
he went to bed. He put his head out at the end of the longest burrow
to see if the moon was full and there stood two boys with a gun and a
dead hawk. He heard them say they wanted the hawk for a 'collection.'
Then one of them said, 'Wish we could have shot it before it caught
that prairie-dog.' Mr. Talky was so dreadfully startled that he whirled
round and fairly flew back through the burrow to his nest, but we feel
sure it was Mr. Grizzle that the hawk had caught."

"How many enemies our race has!" said Wish-ton-wish with a sigh. "Have
you told Mrs. Grizzle the sad news?"

"Yes, I told her before sunrise this morning; but she's got used to it
now and doesn't feel so bad. He had been missing two days, you know.
I saw her going after clover with Mr. Reddy Prairie Dog. You remember
Mrs. Reddy was eaten up by a coyote last week."

"Dear me, dear me," sighed Wish-ton-wish again, "how many enemies our
race has!"

Just then there came a warning yelp from a sentinel some distance away.
Madam Talky and Wish-ton-wish and every other prairie-dog in sight
echoed the yelp and then each one of them leaped into his burrow like
a flash. They must have turned a double-quick somersault, for, like
another flash there were the little heads and bright eyes looking out
at the very openings where their tails had vanished an instant before.
Scores of curious little faces were peering out and their owners were
anxious to know what made the first prairie-dog call out, "Danger,
danger!"

Again came several quick calls from the distant sentinel; then all the
little animals disappeared into their burrows.

No, not quite all of them. Way over on Last street there was an
exciting scene. Mr. Silence Prairie Dog sat upright in front of his
door fairly shaking all over with anger. His body shook, his tail
shook, his head shook, and he yelped and barked--turned and popped
into his burrow--turned again and popped out of his burrow in the same
instant, and acted like one going crazy.

No wonder! Crawling slowly along through the short, dry grass, came
a large rattlesnake. Nearer and nearer it glided to the door of the
burrow. When it was almost there, Mr. Silence Prairie Dog keeled into
his house, the snake slid after him, and then silence fell.

That night the village heard the rest of the story--how Mr. and Mrs.
Silence Prairie Dog bit at the rattlesnake with their sharp teeth and
scratched at him with their sharp claws, but could not drive him out of
their nest where lay two baby prairie dogs. These two he ate for his
dinner and then lay down in the deep, soft, warm nest of dried grass.
How Mother Silence crept back after a long time and found the greedy
old snake lying dead. Yes, truly; killed by the fierce bites of Mr. and
Mrs. Silence.

Now all these sad affairs made young Wish-ton-wish quite blue.

Besides, when he went that afternoon to call on the Talky misses, he
found that the plumpest one had gone after timothy with another young
fellow. All at once he made up his mind that life was a failure and
that he would run away from home.

When the prairie-dog folk found out that he was gone they were very
sorry. They felt sure he had been eaten by some bird of prey or by a
sly coyote.

"He was so wise and so handsome and so brave," said his mother; "there
was no young fellow in the village who could be named in the same day
with Wish-ton-wish."

Most everybody praised him now that he was dead, or now that they
thought he was. I wonder if it isn't rather a poor plan to wait until
people are dead or far away before we say the kind things that might
have made them happy when they were near?

"We must not neglect our duties even in sorrow," said the father. "It
is going to rain. Let us go out and put our mound into good order so
that the water may not run into our burrows." They worked with a will,
and found out, as everyone always does, that nothing helps sorrow and
trouble so quickly as hard work.

When morning came the very first one to be out of a burrow was
Wish-ton-wish's mother. Perhaps she had not slept any all night.

She went up to the top of the mound, then stood still with astonishment
and joy; for there, on the other side of it, was Wish-ton-wish, hard at
work. He was patting and smoothing the sides and making them even after
the rain.

"O, where have you been all night, Wish-ton-wish?" cried his mother.

"I went over to the next village; I thought they might not have so many
troubles as we have and perhaps I'd stay. But they have even more,
mother; they have snakes and hawks and owls and coyotes and _men_,
for yesterday some _men_ came there with a great tank of water and
poured five barrels into one burrow. They said they were making an
'experiment.' Of course they couldn't drown anybody because the burrows
run down and up in every direction. So I thought I'd come home again."

"My son," said his mother, "you have learned a wise lesson. It is of no
use to run away from trouble, hoping to find a place where there isn't
any. Trouble comes everywhere; and so does happiness."

"Yes, mother; I believe it," said Wish-ton-wish, and he looked with
soft eyes over toward the burrow of the plumpest Miss Talky.




THE BEE AND THE FLOWER.

MRS. G. T. DRENNAN.


Virgil, in his "Pastorals," beautifully alludes to the industry of the
bee in culling its sweets from the flower. Perhaps we do not definitely
know more of the mystery of the flower's secreting the nectar, and of
the bee's making the honey, than was known in ancient times. There
are differences of opinion on the subject. Darwin considers the
honey secreted by the nectary to be the natural food with which the
stamens and pistils are nourished. Others assert that the only use
of honey with which flowers are supplied is to tempt insects, which,
in procuring it, scatter the dust of the anthers and fertilize the
flowers, and even carry the pollen from barren to fertile flowers.
Linnæus considered the nectary a separate organ from the corolla; and
every part of the flower which was neither stamen, pistil, calyx,
nor corolla, he called a nectary; but what he called nectaries are
at present regarded as modifications of some part of the flower; in
some cases a prolongation of the petals, and in others an inner row
of petals, or modified stamens adhering to the corolla. The term
disk is now applied to whatever appendages appear between the stamen
and pistil, formerly called nectaries. The form of the honey sac, or
nectary, differs with different flowers. In the lily it is a mere
cavity, or gland. In the honeysuckle a golden fluid is secreted at the
end of the tube, without the sac. Few things in nature can be more
beautiful than the nectary and the honey drops in the crown imperial.
Each one is a shallow cup and pearly white. From each cup hangs a
shining drop, like a tear. The tint of the cup gives the drop its hue
and each one looks a splendid pearl fastened in the crown of each of
the flowers of the crown imperial which, hanging down, only display the
pearly honey drops when we look up into the flower. The buttercup is
one of the most interesting flowers that secrete nectar. It belongs to
the _Ranunculus_, or crowfoot family, which numbers many wild and some
of the choicest of cultivated flowers. The nectar-cups are under the
petals, and the mission of the flowers seems to be to feed the bees. It
is well known that beyond the realm of romance and poetry the buttercup
is a plant abhorred by the cow that gives the milk that makes the
butter. The lovely yellow color of the buttercup no doubt suggested the
name. Apiarists know that certain kinds of flowers make certain grades
of honey. They know also that while the bee makes its honey from the
flower, it will also make honey from sugar and molasses. The drainings
of molasses casks are given the bee for winter food, and it is one of
the unsolved mysteries how the bee makes its honey. The nectar in the
flower is not honey. The bee makes the honey from what is abstracted
from the flower, and also preserves life and makes honey from sweets
that are given it for food. Buckwheat is an example of dark, rich honey
and white clover and raspberry blooms of clear, translucent honey. Also
the fact is, that abstracting the nectar in no wise impairs the beauty
nor the fruitfulness of the flower. Instance the rich, productive
buckwheat, how profusely it yields its flower; and raspberries ripen
sweet and juicy from vines that have had the bees hovering over the
snowy blooms from the time they open till the berries form. Honey bees
are not always safe in their selection of flowers to feed upon, for
Xenophon, in his "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," describes the honey
of Trebizond as having produced the effect of temporary madness, or
drunkenness, upon the whole army. Mr. Abbott, writing from the same
country in 1833, says he witnessed the same effects of honey upon those
partaking of it as Xenophon describes.

This would indicate that the honey undergoes some chemical change in
the making, as the bees, in these instances, were not injured by the
flowers, yet the honey they made from them was injurious to man.




  [Illustration: A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
                 CANARIES.
                 Life-size.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]

THE CANARY.

(_Serinus canarius._)

C. C. M.


This favorite singer and cage bird is a native of the Canary Islands,
Madeiras, Azores and other small islands near the western coast of
Africa. The islands are in the latitude of Florida and the climate
may be said to be of a tropical character, though varied by lofty
mountains. The canary in its native habitat is chiefly found in the
mountainous districts, often several thousand feet above the level of
the sea. The wild birds mate about the latter part of March. The nest
is built in the tall trees of the evergreen species, frequently in the
tops of these trees, and never less than eight or ten feet from the
ground. We have seen it stated that they build on the ground, but this
has been found to be an error.

The first canaries known to Europeans were brought from there by a
merchant ship trading with the Canary Islands as a part of her cargo,
several thousand of these birds having been trapped in the hope that
they could be sold for a good price as song-birds. The ship was wrecked
near the coast of Italy, but by the thoughtfulness of a sailor the cage
containing the birds was opened and the birds liberated. They flew at
once to the nearest point of land, which happened to be the island
of Elba. The climate was so propitious that the canaries multiplied
rapidly. In a very short time their superiority as songsters attracted
attention and their domestication followed. The shipwreck referred to
occurred early in the sixteenth century. The Italians were the first to
breed these birds, and they were by them shipped to Russia, Germany,
Belgium, and England. They were first described in an English book on
natural history in 1610. The rage for breeding the canary with home
birds became curiously popular and resulted in a curious intermixture
of colors. In Italy they were bred with the citril and serin; in
Germany with the linnet, green finch, and siskin. Mr. C. N. Page says,
in his "Feathered Pets," a very valuable book for bird fanciers, that
in an English book published in 1709 there are twenty-eight varieties
of canaries mentioned, comprising nearly all those known at the present
time and some which have become extinct. The climate has also had much
to do with the change of color in these birds. The canary, which in its
native home at Teneriffe is almost brown, becomes yellow and sometimes
nearly white after being bred a few years in France, and it has been
observed by naturalists that the winter fur of animals and feathers of
birds become thicker and lighter in color in proportion to the coldness
of the climate which they inhabit.

In England and Germany canary societies have existed for upwards of a
century, and annual shows or exhibitions are held with prizes offered
for the best birds.

Of the many varieties of canaries the most popular in the United States
is the German. It is smaller than the English canary and is a much
finer singer, being bred and trained for song and not for size. They
are called Hartz Mountain canaries, and experts consider them the most
satisfactory bird for the people. They are bred by the peasants in
ordinary living-rooms high up among the Hartz Mountains of Germany.
These birds are even more hardy than the American-bred canaries. They
are brilliant singers. We had one for five years, and while its voice
was wonderfully clear, full, and musical, it was too loud and was
not admired by our neighbors. The shrill and piercing note of some
of this species renders them somewhat objectionable as house pets.
The birds are happy in the cage, require very little care, and if
properly attended to are said to be free from diseases. Most of the
Hartz Mountain canaries are somewhat mottled with dark, greenish-brown,
though many of the birds are clear yellow, and few have crests. In the
canary-breeding section of Germany, almost every family keeps a few
cages of these birds, or has a room devoted to their breeding. The
German people are very fond of birds and there are many of them in the
United States who have many cages of rare specimens.

Milwaukee supplies the United States with the bulk of the Hartz
Mountain canaries, and there is no great crime in the deception, for
the Milwaukee bird is really an improvement on the imported article,
having just as fine a voice and being much hardier.

Experience has shown that the imported singer loses the power of
transmitting his voice to the young after passing through an American
winter. This is the case also, it is said, with Tyrolean singers who
come to this country, their voices losing the peculiar yodling quality
when they have been here a year. The native canary is hardier than the
imported one, and, with proper training, is every bit as good a singer.

Before they are mated the hen birds are kept in separate cages in
the music room, carefully fed and made to listen to the music of the
singers and the machine used in training their voices. In this way the
hen is enabled to transmit the best musical quality to her offspring.
The music-room is a large one, with a south exposure, and is kept with
the same scrupulous neatness as the breeding-room. In the corner of
this room is the bird organ, and with it the little birds are given
their vocal training.

When the machine is started the notes emitted are wonderfully like the
song of the untutored canary. These notes are known to bird-trainers
by the term _pfeiffen_. Gradually the whistle strikes onto a different
line. It is an improvement over the _pfeiffen_, and is called the
_klingel rolle_. A higher step still is called the _klingel_, and a
still higher step _hohl klingel_. Lastly comes what is called _hol
rollen_, and a bird whose voice has been developed up to that point is
worth $50 in the market any day.

In this country there are only three importers of canaries. Each of
these firms employs "bird-pickers" who travel over the mountains in
Germany and gather together a supply of birds which are selected from
the stocks of the small breeders.

There are several varieties of English canaries. The Norwich is a
general favorite. It takes its name from the city of Norwich, where for
generations it has been bred and cultivated. It has a brilliant, deep,
reddish-yellow plumage. It is regarded as the most beautiful of all the
canaries. Its color is frequently so dark that it is called the red
canary. This color is produced artificially by feeding them during the
moulting season a large amount of cayenne pepper mixed with hard boiled
egg and cracker crumbs.

Canaries have many pretty ways and can be taught many pretty tricks.
One that belonged to the writer had been deprived of its feet. Its
wing feathers never grew out, hence it could not fly or perch and was
obliged to stump about on the floor like an old veteran on his crutch.
But it was healthy and vigorous, and so pugnacious that on our return,
after the day's absence, it would fly at us, or try to, poor thing,
and peck our outstretched fingers, even while taking offered hemp seed
greedily. The bird watched and waited for our coming and we became so
much attached to it that its death was a real loss.

    The little birds can fill our hearts
    As full as larger creatures' arts.

The nest of the canary is a pretty, neatly formed structure of any soft
material it can find. Five bluish eggs are usually laid, and three
or four broods are raised between February and September, though the
female will sometimes persist in building until much later.




  THE PAROQUET.


"I am so sorry," wrote a little girl from Tarrytown, N. Y., to the
editor of BIRDS AND ALL NATURE, "not to find in your magazine any more
the bird-talks to the little folks. I used to read them with so much
interest. Are there to be no more of them?"

Other little folks have written to the editor in much the same strain,
so that this month the paroquet will speak for himself.

"From my photograph," he says; "you will notice that I am fond of gay
dress, green, blue, yellow, orange-chrome, and red being my favorite
colors. From my brilliant coat you would judge me to be a tropical
bird, but I'm not. I was born and raised in the United States, as was
my family, therefore I am an American citizen.

"In appearance I greatly resemble my cousin, the glib-tongued parrot,
but for some reason, though my tongue is thick and short like his,
and my bill as charmingly curved, I cannot talk--that is, not to be
understood by the human family, I mean, for among ourselves we keep up
a very lively conversation, in very loud tones--a mark we think, as do
some other folk, of good breeding. On the other hand there are people
unreasonable enough not to like it, and they say we 'scream' and that
our notes are 'ear-splitting' and that, though we are beautiful to
look upon and extremely docile, our voices render us undesirable as
cage birds or pets. The idea! As though we do not consider that very
fortunate!--for a cage is a prison, no matter if the bars are gilded.
For my part I prefer to be free even if I do have to hustle for a
living and, between you and me, I think that a bird that can screech
and doesn't screech when shut up in a little cage doesn't deserve to
live. He ought to be killed and stuffed and set up in a museum for
people to gape at. Don't you think so, too?

"It is a great pity, but we paroquets are fast being exterminated.
In some regions, where less than twenty-five years ago we were very
plentiful, not a paroquet is now to be seen. We were once quite common
in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the
United States. We are now to be found, in diminished numbers, in remote
localities only of the lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf States and
in some regions of Florida. To escape from our enemy, the plume-hunter,
we make our homes in practically uninhabitable regions. That is a long
word for you little folks, but spell it out slowly, as I did, and you
will understand what it means.

"Our nesting-time is during February and March. Then colonies of us
paroquets, sometimes numbering a thousand, flock to a cypress swamp and
build our flimsy nests in forks of trees, near the end of a slender,
horizontal branch. Often there are fifty nests in one small tree, each
containing from four to five pretty, greenish-white eggs. It is a
good thing we build our nests in wild and unsettled places, for they
are so flimsy that the eggs are plainly visible from beneath. What a
temptation to the bad boy they would be, and to the bad man, also! Some
paroquets, however, choose a hollow tree in which to deposit their eggs.

"Well, I have told you about all I know of myself and family, so will
close by reciting in my very loudest and prettiest screech, so that all
the neighborhood may hear, a few lines about a Mr. Macaw who was silly
enough, after escaping from a cage, to return to it. He is a cousin
of mine, a _distant_ cousin, for he was born in South America; but he
wears the same  coat and vest as I do, his tongue is just as
thick, and his bill curves like a parrot's, also:


MR. MACAW'S LESSON.

    'Mr. Macaw was tired of his cage--
      Too much of a prison for home;
    Mr. Macaw was in a great rage,
      And so he _settled_ to roam.

    The cage-door was open, the window too
      (Strange chance, both open together!),
    So he took his chance and away he flew;
      But, alas! it was wintry weather.

    Wind from the north, ground covered with rime,
      A frost that made your limbs shiver;
    Poor Mr. Macaw! this was not like the clime
      On the banks of the Amazon River.

    So Mr. Macaw grew wise, as do men,
      When taught by experience bitter;
    He flew back to his cage, and determined then
      He would never again be a flitter.'"




  [Illustration: FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
                 A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
                 CAROLINA PAROQUET.
                 Life-size.
                 CHICAGO COLORTYPE CO.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]

THE CAROLINA PAROQUET.

(_Conurus carolinensis._)

BY LYNDS JONES.


Few birds indeed can lay claim to such beautiful and varied dress as
our native paroquet. But for this dress and for certain habits which
will be spoken of more particularly a little later, he has had to pay a
most severe penalty. Once an abundant bird over the whole southeastern
portion of the country, ranging commonly as far north as southern Ohio
and Illinois, and sometimes even as far north as southern Michigan and
New York, and as far west as eastern Colorado, his numbers and range
have been reduced to a few individuals in the wilds of the Indian
Territory and the adjacent parts of Texas, and the fastnesses of the
Florida swamps. The region over which he ranged so numerously in
advance of civilization, suffers a distinct loss in his extermination.

It is hardly fair to lay the blame for the disappearance of this bird
solely at the door of the plume-hunters and collectors, for it must be
admitted that the paroquet was a real menace to the fruit-grower and
farmer when he was abundant. Even his extreme fondness for the fruit of
the cockle-bur, thistle, and a few other noxious plants, could hardly
atone for the complete ruin of the apple crop, or his serious inroads
upon the wheat or corn field. One could not stand tamely by while a
flock of these birds, with all their beauty, stripped his orchard of
every blossom and bud.

The food of the paroquet was entirely vegetable, consisting of the seed
of the cockle-bur, as already stated, sycamore and cypress seed, pecan
and beech nuts, the fruit of the pawpaw, mulberries, wild grapes and
various other wild fruits as well as cultivated fruits, the seeds of
pine cones and the burgrass. Grains of various kinds were eaten while
in the milk, and Mr. Frank M. Chapman found them eating the seeds of
thistles. So varied a diet enabled these birds to pass the winter in
the northern parts of their range as well as farther south. It has
been stated that paroquets have been found hibernating in hollow trees
in the coldest winters. If they were actually found in such places they
were undoubtedly simply taking refuge from some severe storm, to issue
forth again when it had passed.

The paroquet's strong, hooked beak was probably so formed for the
cutting of stems and husks of plants and the crushing of seeds and
nuts, but he also finds it useful in climbing about trees as an aid to
his yoked feet, and as a partial support while he sleeps in some hollow
tree, the bill being hooked over a projection or into a convenient
crevice.

Major Charles E. Bendire describes the flight as undulating, like
that of the woodpeckers, but very swift, accompanied by a continuous
chattering while on the wing. The birds remain together in flocks
of from six to twenty individuals (before they became so scarce, by
hundreds), and are very devoted to each other. The cries of a wounded
companion will always recall the whole flock to his aid, thus enabling
the hunter to kill every bird in the flock. It is this characteristic,
no doubt, which has very largely caused the rapid disappearance of the
birds before advancing civilization.

The nesting-habits of the paroquet are in some doubt, but the evidence
seems to indicate that the birds may rear their brood either in a
cavity in a tree or build a slight nest after the fashion of the
mourning-dove. Such nests seem to be largely confined to the cypress
swamps of Florida. The eggs, several of which have been secured from
birds in confinement, are pure glossy white, smooth, and rather
ovate in shape, somewhat larger than those of the mourning-dove, and
averaging 1.39 × 1.07 of an inch.

These birds seem to nest in colonies, a fact which led Major Bendire to
suggest that when the colonies were very large the birds were forced to
build open nests from a lack of suitable nesting-places in cavities.

The cry is described as "shrill and disagreeable, a kind of grating,
metallic shriek." One call resembles the shrill cry of a goose. They
sometimes give utterance to low conversational notes while perched.

It seems almost incredible that scarcely more than half a century
has witnessed the passing of a once abundant species of our native
bird. Like the bison, the paroquet has been swept away by the rushing
tide of progress, leaving only fading memories where once they were
characteristic features of the landscape. We may congratulate ourselves
that there are few of our birds and mammals that find it so impossible
to survive the advance of civilization.


WHAT THE WOOD FIRE SAID TO A LITTLE BOY.

    What said the wood in the fire
    To the little boy that night,
    The little boy of the golden hair,
    As he rocked himself in his little arm-chair,
    When the blaze was burning bright?

    The wood said: "See
    What they've done to me!
    I stood in the forest, a beautiful tree!
    And waved my branches from east to west;
    And many a sweet bird built its nest
    In my leaves of green,
    That loved to lean
    In springtime over the daisy's breast.

    "From the blossomy dells,
    Where the violet dwells,
    The cattle came with their clanging bells,
    And rested under my shadows sweet;
    And the winds that went over the clover and wheat,
    Told me all that they knew
    Of the flowers that grew
    In the beautiful meadows that dreamed at my feet!

    "And the wild wind's caresses
    Oft rumpled my tresses;
    But, sometimes, as soft as a mother's lip presses
    On the brow of the child of her bosom, it laid
    Its lips on my leaves, and I was not afraid,
    And I listened and heard
    The small heart of each bird,
    As it beat in the nests that their mothers had made.

    "And in springtime sweet faces,
    Of myriad graces,
    Came beaming and gleaming from flowery places.
    And under my grateful and joy-giving shade,
    With cheeks like primroses, the little ones played;
    And the sunshine in showers,
    Through all the bright hours,
    Bound their flowery ringlets with silvery braid.

    "And the lightning
    Came brightening,
    From storm skies, and frightening
    The wandering birds that were tossed by the breeze,
    And tilted like ships on black, billowy seas;
    But they flew to my breast,
    And I rocked them to rest,
    While the trembling vines clustered and clung to my knees.

    "But how soon," said the wood,
    "Fades the memory of good!
    For the forester came, with his axe gleaming bright,
    And I fell like a giant all shorn of his might.
    Yet still there must be
    Some sweet mission for me,
    For have I not warmed you and cheered you to-night?"

    So said the wood in the fire
    To the little boy that night,
    The little boy of the golden hair,
    As he rocked himself in his little arm-chair,
    When the blaze was burning bright.
                                        --_Atlanta Constitution._




THE MISSISSIPPI.

W. E. WATT.


Americans like to boast of the things of this country that are larger,
longer, more valuable, or more wonderful than anything of the kind in
the world. They have recited in school such a number of statements
about the Mississippi river that the great stream has become one of the
essential points of our nation's honor.

You may be able to make the average man believe that Washington was not
always as truthful in his youth as Weems in the cherry-tree story tried
to make him; that Captain John Smith drew somewhat on his imagination
when some sixteen years after the expedition into the woods he told the
story of his rescue by Pocahontas; that perhaps, after all, we did not
whip the entire British nation twice in open warfare--but it will be
hard to make any native-born American admit that the Mississippi river
is not the longest in the world.

He may listen to your argument in favor of the Nile or the Amazon, but
he will tell you that he still thinks that if the Mississippi had been
measured correctly at first, taking the source of the Missouri as the
source of the Mississippi, we would have been the possessors of the
longest river on earth.

And if that should seem a trifle weak he will at once tell you that
the great river is more wonderful than all others because its source
is several hundred feet nearer the center of the earth than its mouth.
In other words, the river flows up hill. The curvature of the earth
is not the true arc of a circle from the equator to the poles, for
the axis of the earth is shorter than its diameter at the equator by
about twenty-six miles. It is thirteen miles less from the north pole
to the center of the earth than from any point on the equator to the
center. So the river flows towards the equator with an apparent fall as
estimated from the sea-level, but with an actual rising away from the
earth's center just as the sea rises round this shoulder of the earth.

So the Mississippi is a source of joy and boastful conversation to
every citizen of the United States.

The Acadian settlers of Nova Scotia whose praises have been sung by
Longfellow in his "Evangeline", were the earliest to reclaim land from
the sea in America. Being weaker than those who used the ax to fell the
giants of the forest primeval, they were more skillful with the spade.
They took advantage of the extremely high tides of the Bay of Fundy and
its branches, and when the water was low threw up embankments which
prevented the sea from covering part of the rich red mud flats before
the village of Grand Pre.

At the time of their painful dispersion they had secured all the land
between the original shore and the island which stood out in the basin
of Minas.

Though they could not take these rich lands with them in their exile,
many of them carried the knowledge of dike-building down to the lower
courses of the Mississippi, and taught the rest of the Americans there
how to get the fat lands of the river bottoms by means of levees.

When General Pakenham gave up his life and lost a fine British army to
General Jackson after the treaty of peace had been signed in the War of
1812, his right rested on the bank of the Mississippi where there was a
levee a little over five feet high.

This levee cut off the waters from spreading when the freshet was on.
It was sufficient at that time. Extensions of levee work cut off more
and more of the bottom-lands from the spread of the high waters till
now nearly four-fifths of the area over which the waters of the June
freshet used to spread are protected by these structures.

The levees are not now the low banks of earth which once kept the
waters back. The great mass of water that comes from the melting of
snows in the Alleghenies and the Rockies must either spread out or pile
up. Confining within less than a mile of width a surplus of water that
formerly spread itself for a hundred miles makes it necessary for the
water to rise and rush forward with greater violence.

Year by year the levees have crept up the sides of the great river,
choking it into narrow walls. Year after year it has risen in its wrath
and burst its bounds to destroy the cities and plantations which have
been fattening in the mud of its alluvial flats. Every year the levees
are put up higher, and as the works extend to the northward and more
effectually close up the southern places of spreading out there is an
average increase in the stage of high water and in velocity of the
current. When it was allowed to wander over great stretches of country
the water seemed in no hurry to get to the gulf, but now it goes
tearing madly through its narrowed banks, and it has become a question
with Congress which will take much deliberation and experiment as well
as great financial outlay to solve.

It has been proposed that great reservoirs be constructed in the
mountain districts to hold back the waters that are wasted in their
rush to the sea. If there could be made in the Bad Lands in northern
Wyoming a reservoir that would hold all the waters accumulating there
during the months of spring, that reservoir would "skim off" the top of
the Mississippi river two thousand miles away and save the people there
from the perils that threaten them whenever the water mounts toward the
danger-point.

It would require a vast artificial lake to hold these waters, but there
are mountain ranges that could be utilized to form the barriers and the
land taken from profitable grazing could be paid for with much less
expense than the cost of one inundation of Mississippi bottom lands
when a levee breaks.

Instead of one vast reservoir it will probably be found expedient to
lay out a great number of works for retaining the western waters, as
well as others in the eastern mountains and some in the beds of other
tributary rivers whose sources are in the great basin between.

If these stores of water could be utilized for irrigation it is
probable that the works would eventually pay for themselves in the
increase in value of cultivated lands. The water at present is largely
wasted because it rushes past the lands that need it before their
distress of drouth comes, and its bulk is fairly spent when they need
most the water that has passed. Adequate systems of reservoirs would
also prevent largely the wearing away of banks and the changing of the
course of the channel and even of the river itself which now sometimes
tears away the foundations of cities, obliterates landmarks, and
carries off bodily many well-tilled farms. Navigation could be much
improved if the stages of high water could be moderated.

The Kansas farmer complained that the Missouri river is too thick to
drink and too thin to plow. Control of surplus water near the sources
would make this river so moderate that commerce would move along its
surface. Varying moods and shifting sands now prevent navigation on
that great river almost completely.

The Chinese have a problem similar to ours. Their government esteems
their board of public works as one of the highest in their country.
This board has charge of the canals and embankments along the great
rivers. But it is a Chinese board.

The Hoang Ho resembles our great water course in that it rises in
mountains and flows for hundreds of miles through comparatively level
country in its lower courses. It deposits mud along its way through the
great plain so that the people are continually obliged to construct
levees higher and higher until nature no longer will put up with such
treatment and the great yellow river breaks its bonds and travels
across the country to find a new outlet at the seacoast.

In 2500 years it has altered its general course nine times with
terrible destruction of life and property. Its last great breach
occurred in 1887, when it tore through the empire a new channel
that caused its waters to reach the sea through the mouth of the
Yangtse-kiang five hundred miles away from its present mouth. More
than a million lives were lost and the devastation of the country has
never been approximately estimated. The gap torn in its embankment was
two-thirds of a mile in width. Efforts to close it were ineffective
except in low water, and when it was at last almost accomplished the
celestials had a narrow but constantly deepening breach to mend, its
depth during the last days of the work being so great that a torrent
sixty feet deep fought with gigantic might against the endeavors of the
men. At times the bed of this river has actually stood above the level
of the surrounding country, its walls having risen with the rise of
the bed due to the deposit of mud till it seemed as if the great river
had risen to take a look over the surrounding plain to see where it
could wreak the direst vengeance on those who prevented it from running
unvexed to the sea.

We may learn from the wide experience of the Chinese that there is
no safety for us in merely building higher the walls to restrain the
Mississippi. The nation must take hold of the matter with a strong
hand. Possibly forty or fifty millions will be necessary to construct
the works which will moderate the flow and distribute its waters to
those who need it in their irrigating ditches. Even though it cost
thrice the sum paid to Spain in settlement of the Philippine question,
the people would more gladly give it.

Nothing short of a great ship canal along the bed of the Mississippi
will satisfy Americans. There is but one objection to the work, and
that is its great expense. But we have recently seen that the cost of
one great inundation along the Brazos was far more than the figures
here named, and no account need be made of the loss of life and the
suffering that followed that great disaster.

Our great river must be controlled. Not in the Chinese fashion, which
we know to be merely the storing of wrath against the day of wrath,
but it must be done intelligently and with patience, with faith in
ourselves and a determination to prevent the great loss of life which
will be imminent every time there happens to be the coming of a flood
from the eastern mountains and another from the western at the same
time.

Our great water way, when properly controlled and protected by
permanent revetments and masonry, will furnish the farmers of the great
plains a natural outlet to the sea for all their produce. This will be
monopolized by no railway trust; no combination of steam-boat men will
put the farmer into the hands of corporations seeking to rob him of the
best part of his crop on the way to market, for there will be docks
along every man's water front, and the rudest flatboat will always rely
upon the favoring current to bear its cargo to the sides of independent
vessels plying the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth.




INDIAN SUMMER.


    Withal there comes a time when summers wane,
      When from the sunshine something seems withdrawn,
      And pensive shadows lengthen on the lawn;
    White bindweed wanders lonely in the lane,
    The one sweet thing that now unwithered doth remain.

    But there is beauty in autumnal bough
      No less than in dear April's dewy leaves,
      When with its store of golden-girdled sheaves
    Piled stands the wain where one time passed the plow,
    And ripened labor reaps fulfillment of its vow.

    Then, though no more the oblivious cuckoo calls
      From land to land, nor longer on the spray
      Of yellowing elm the throstle vaunts his lay,
    The ringdove's mate, as fades the leaf and falls,
    Reiterates its note of love that never palls.

    Though fluttereth still the soul-like lark aloft,
      There is a quiet in the woodland ways,
      The retrospective hush of vanished days,
    And around garden close and orchard croft
    A something in the air celestially soft.

    From hamlet roofs blue spires of smoke once more,
      As dies the day in mist along the dale,
      And widowed evening weeps behind her veil,
    From log-replenished ingle heavenward soar,
    And lamps are early lit, and early latched the door.
                                        --_Alfred Austin._




  [Illustration: FROM COL. F. M. WOODRUFF.
                 A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
                 CHIPMUNK.
                 Life-size.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]

THE CHIPMUNK.

(_Tamias lysteri._)

C. C. M.


Naturalists, as well as many ordinary observers, it is said, recognize
numerous varieties among the chipmunks of the United States, founded
principally on the markings of the fur; for in their habits they are
all very similar. Elliott Coues describes four varieties found in this
country.

The American chipmunk, hackee, or chipping squirrel (_Tamias lysteri_)
is distributed all over the United States. The face is of a reddish
brown tint, with darker spots on the forehead and cheeks; the nape of
the neck is ashen gray, the hind-quarters reddish brown, the under
surface whitish; there is a dark-brown stripe on the back, a black
stripe over the eye, with white above and below it, and there is a wide
white side-streak edged with blackish brown; the upper surface of the
tail is dark-brown, the base being grayish yellow, the tip whitish and
the lower surface a ruddy hue.

This description may seem superfluous, in view of our picture of
the lively little animal; we think, however, it may induce closer
observation of the markings of its fur.

The chipmunk is visible at all seasons of the year, but late in summer
it may be seen running about, "its cheek pouches filled and its eyes
beaming with the satisfaction which its riches afford it." According
to the different months in which they mature, it gathers its varied
stores, for the most part consisting of buckwheat, hazelnuts, maple
seeds, and corn. During the winter it hibernates to some extent, but
it seems to stand in need of food during the whole winter. Audubon dug
up a burrow in January, and at the depth of about four feet he found a
large nest of leaves and grass in which were three chipmunks; others
seemed to have disappeared in the lateral passages at the approach of
the diggers. The animals were overcome with sleep and not very active,
but they were not as torpid as true hibernating animals are, and they
snapped viciously at the naturalist, who tried to handle them. The
animal does not become torpid before November. It does not leave its
subterranean home during the winter, but keeps a passage open. When the
snow melts it begins its activity above ground.

The young are born in May, and a second litter usually in August. It is
said the males engage in fierce combats during the breeding-season.

The farmer is not very friendly to this animal, which he regards as a
pest. It is hunted extensively. A whole army of enemies is constantly
engaged in its pursuit. "Boys utilize it to practice the noble sport of
hunting; weasels pursue it both on and under the ground; cats deem it
a prey equally as good as rats and mice, and all larger birds of prey
carry it off whenever they have a chance. One of these birds has even
gained for itself the name of squirrel-hawk, because of its attacks
on the chipmunk." The rattlesnake, according to the observations
of Geyer, also follows the poor little creature with a great deal
of perseverance. Winter often causes sad havoc among the numerous
young brood born in summer. Yet they are very plentiful, at least in
favorable years, the great fecundity of the female making up for the
losses. Their chief protection against enemies is the difficulty in
finding them and the amazing nimbleness they display as they dart
between and under hedges like wrens.

The beauty and gracefulness of the ground-squirrels render them
interesting pets, but as they never become quite tame, are timid and
addicted to biting, and gnaw everything in the cage they are not very
desirable to keep. Their care presents no difficulties, and they thrive
well on the simplest diet of grain and fruit.

Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N. Y., is suffering for the second time
in its history from a too great increase in its colony of chipmunks.
Eighteen years ago they became such a nuisance that a trapper was
employed, and 28,000 small striped pelts were the results of his first
year's work.

This year it was noticed that an unusual number were about, even in
the early spring, when the chipmunks first appear after a winter's
sleep. Now it is estimated that there are at least 20,000 chipmunks in
the cemetery, and a great deal of damage has been done. Through their
burrowing habits they have undermined the gravestones, and even in many
cases caused graves to sink in, when rainwater has helped to hollow out
their burrows.

The chief enemies of the chipmunks are the florists, for the animals
nip growing plants at the roots to reach the sap. One Brooklyn florist
says that since Decoration Day he has had to put in 250 new plants to
keep up an original plat of 150. Florists with contracts to keep graves
in condition have entered strong protests, but outside florists, who
work by the piece, have been making money.

The eight special policemen on the grounds have been furnished with
poisoned nuts to scatter about. No diminution has yet appeared in
the chipmunk army, as they reproduce three or four times a year and
increase fourfold in a season if not checked. But if poison fails
another trapper may be called in.

_Our Animal Friends_ says that some children were feeding chickens with
some stale bread one day, and two or three chipmunks appeared. They
wanted the bread, too, and every time the children threw a bit down,
both chickens and chipmunks would make a rush for it; and nearly always
the chipmunks got it. One of them was particularly smart; he gathered
all his pieces in a little pile between two stones, and he seemed to
keep one eye on them and the other on the lookout for fresh pieces all
the time. At last one of the chickens saw the pile and made a run for
it, but its owner got there first, and he just sat right down on the
top of the heap and _chattered_. The chicken kept on coming nearer
and looking rather as if he would fight for it, so Mr. Chipmunk sat
straight up, twirled his tail, and just seemed to shake with anger.
Then another came along to help him, and the two tucked all the pieces
into their pockets and off they darted, leaving the poor chicken
looking awfully disappointed.




TED'S WEATHER PROPHET.

GRANVILLE OSBORNE.


    Flittin' along from tree to tree,
    Chipper 'n friendly ez he kin be;
    Dancin' erbout on the'r talles' lim',
    Jes' the likeliest place fer him.
    Bound ter foller 'n seems to know
    Very bes' places I like to go;
    Bobbin' his head 'n winkin' his eye,
    'S if he knew all erbout ther sky;
    'Nen he nods an' sez as plain,
    "Goin' ter rain; goin' ter rain!"

    Little feller 'ith coat all brown,
    Vest uv red wher' the wings come down,
    Primpin' his feathers 'n winkin' at me,
    Mincin' er-round so he kin see;
    'Taint no use ter hide erway,
    'At's a game what two can play;
    'Course he finds me, 'nen he tries
    Ter make believe he's awful wise.
    All uv a suddin he sez again,
    "Goin' ter rain, goin' ter rain!"

    Climbed way up ter his nest one day,
    "Better be careful," I heard him say;
    Ruffled his coat 'n looked so mad,
    I didn't 'spose he could be so bad.
    Coziest nest 'at ever you seen,
    Snuggled way up amongst ther green;
    Four little eggs, ther purtiest blue,
    Didn't touch one uv 'em, honest 'n true!
    Robin hops on 'n begins ter explain,
    "Goin' ter rain, goin' ter rain!"




THREATENED EXTERMINATION OF THE FUR SEAL.


The fur-seal herds of the north Pacific breed on islands situated in
Bering Sea and belonging to the United States and Russia. On these
islands, Pribilof and Komandorski, for nearly a hundred years they have
received all necessary protection from attacks on land. The existence
of the herds, however, demands the further protection of the females
when they are feeding or migrating in the open sea beyond the usual
three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction. The animals visit certain
islands in the summer. They breed on them and make them their home.
The young remain there until driven away by the storms of winter. The
adults leave the islands in summer only to feed, going to a distance of
one hundred to two hundred miles for that purpose. The winter is spent
by the entire herd in the open sea, their migrations extending from
one thousand to twenty-five hundred miles to the southward of their
breeding-resorts.

For many years, both under Russian and American control, the herds
have, as I have said, received absolute protection on land, the killing
for skins being restricted to the bands of superfluous males. As only
one male in about thirty is able to maintain himself on a rookery or to
rear a family, about twenty-nine out of every thirty are necessarily
superfluous. The survival of one male in a hundred is sufficient for
all actual needs of propagation. The young males on land are as easily
handled and selected as sheep, and no diminution whatever to the
increase of the herd has arisen from selective land-killing. The number
of females in the herd bearing young each year was, in the earlier
days, about 650,000 on the American islands and perhaps half as many
on the Russian. The numbers of males and of young were together about
twice as many more. This gave an annual total on the American, or
Pribilof, islands of about 2,000,000 animals of all classes, while on
the Russian, or Komandorski, islands there were about 1,000,000.

About 1884 different persons, known as pelagic sealers--chiefly
citizens of Canada, but some of them from the United States--began to
attack the herd in Bering Sea. Here no selective killing was possible.
The females were always in the numerical majority, as the males had
become less numerous on account of land-killing and as they left the
islands less frequently in the summer. Each female above two years,
when taken in the sea, died with her unborn young. Most of the adult
females so taken after July 1 had left their young on the islands, and
these orphan pups invariably starved to death.

Beginning with this increase of pelagic sealing in 1884 the fur-seal
herds rapidly declined in numbers. In 1897 there were about 130,000
breeding-seals on the American islands, or about 400,000 animals of
all classes, while on the Russian islands there were less than 65,000
breeding-animals, or less than 200,000 of all classes.

For this great reduction in numbers there is but one cause--a cause
plain, self-evident, and undeniable--and that is the slaughter of
breeding-females at a rate largely in excess of the rate of increase.
While other causes have been assigned, none of them is worthy of the
slightest consideration in explaining the decline.

Even in 1893 it was evident, to all capable of forming an opinion,
that pelagic sealing was the sole known cause of the decline of the
fur-seal herds. It was also evident that as an industry it must
be self-destructive, since, if permitted to exist on any scale
which would make it profitable, it must destroy the herd on which
it operated.--_"Lessons of the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration," by
President David Starr Jordan, in Forum._




THE PEACH.

WILLIAM KERR HIGLEY,

Secretary of The Chicago Academy of Sciences.


The peach (_Amygdalus persica, L._), is one of our most important and
best-known fruits.

It is not found in the wild state, in its present form, though in some
localities it propagates itself, having escaped from cultivation.

It is probably a native of China, where it has been cultivated for
centuries and where it is said to reach its greatest perfection,
although Darwin holds that the evidence seems to indicate that the wild
almond of Persia is the original source of the cultivated almond, the
peach, and the nectarine. The specific name _persica_, has its origin
in the fact that the peach was obtained from Persia, both by the Romans
and the Greeks.

Dr. Willis tells us that "it was introduced into Italy from Persia by
the Romans, in the reign of Claudius Cæsar. It was introduced into
Great Britain during the sixteenth century, and thence brought in 1680
by the settlers of Virginia to America."

The number of varieties seems to be unlimited. Over four hundred have
been catalogued, though less than one hundred of these are constant.
The nectarine is considered a variety and closely related to the peach
and the plum, the apricot, and the cherry.

The tree itself, when bearing its beautiful rose-, five-petaled
flowers, is highly ornamental. It seldom grows higher than twenty feet
and its branches form a symmetrical top. One very ornamental variety
produces double flowers and bright, shining leaves, but no fruit.

This valuable plant is generally placed in the family _Rosaceæ_, which
includes many species of economic and ornamental importance. Besides
those already mentioned, here belong the rose, the strawberry, the
raspberry, the blackberry, the apple, the pear, and the quince, as well
as many beautiful wild forms.

The thousand or more species usually classed in this family may be
readily separated into distinct groups, to which are given distinct
family names by some authorities. Thus, the peach, the cherry, the
plum, and the almond, which resemble each other in regard to the
structure of their fruits and in their chemical constituents, may be
placed in a family by themselves.

It is of interest to note that this luscious fruit was not always
considered free from noxious qualities. Pliny states that it was
considered by some that its presence in Egypt was due to its
introduction there by the Persian king for the purpose of poisoning his
enemies.

The Chinese writings refer to the peach as early as the fifth century
before Christ, and it is given the name "tao" by Confucius. We are
also told that in these writings "the peach tree holds the same place
that the tree of knowledge does in the sacred scriptures, and that
the golden Hesperides, apples of the heathen, hold among the western
nations."

In Chinese mythology a peach tree is mentioned which was thought to
possess the power of causing immortality but which produced its fruit
but once in a thousand years, and another, which grew on a mountain and
which existed in the early history of China, was said to be guarded by
a number of demons.

  [Illustration: CHICAGO:
                 A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.
                 PEACH.
                 1/2 Life-size.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]




THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VICEROY.

(_Basilarchia archippus._)

REST METCALF.


Ugh! The ugly worm! Crush it! Wait a moment, listen, while I tell you
a more excellent way. Notice on what your worm is feeding; take a
branch of it home and place it in a bottle of water with the worm on
it; then place the bottle with its contents in a large box, fastening
a wire securely over the box, to prevent the escape; then watch your
worm. Perhaps your worm will be the one so often found on the milkweed
(_asclepias_) with black and yellow stripes around his body, two little
horns in front on his head and one at the tail. If you keep him well
supplied with fresh leaves, in a short time he will eat all he wishes
and then, and not until then, will he leave the plant on which he is
feeding and travel many a long journey up and down and all around the
box, until you may imagine he has gone crazy from his confinement; but
that is not the case, as you will soon see. When he finds just the
right place, he will remain quite still to all appearances, but really
he is very busy with his bobbin of silk and glue bottle weaving a small
silken mat and fastening it very securely to the top of the box, and
the next thing you will see him hanging by his tail from this mat,
with his head recurved. Watch him and you will notice that he makes
little jerky motions. For about twenty-four hours he remains in that
same position, when suddenly he drops down his head so that he hangs
straight down; now don't leave him for a moment, for very soon after
taking that position, his black and yellow striped coat begins to split
open, right between those two little black horns on the head, as evenly
as though cut with a sharp knife and a pale green globular object comes
into sight. With a few contortions of the body the little fellow pushes
up his old coat, folding each stripe, just as Japanese lanterns fold
up, then with a dexterous movement he fastens the end of his beautiful
green chrysalis to the mat, dropping his old clothes, so closely
compacted together that you would hardly recognize them. Now for two
hours he exercises by little shrugs until the beautiful green chrysalis
hangs complete, with gold band and pure gold spots, the most beautiful
chrysalis I ever saw. Everyone exclaims, "How beautiful!" and wonders
how an ugly worm could so transform itself into a thing of beauty.

For ten days we can see no change in the looks of this chrysalis; then
it grows darker and darker until you can distinguish the veins on the
wings of the future butterfly. Then this little fellow, tired of his
close quarters, opens the door of his beautiful chrysalis and creeps
out, clinging fast to the empty nest. O, what tiny wings! But as you
watch they dry out and lengthen to three times their first size and you
behold the beautiful large Viceroy--orange-red wings with black lines
along the nervures and a row of white spots along the outer margin, his
black body beautifully spotted with white.

Or perhaps you may find, on the carrots in your garden, a worm with
black and green stripes around his body, the black stripe being
decorated with yellow spots. He will spin a long silken mat the length
of his body and to that mat fasten a swing to hang around his body,
so that by using a little glue at the end of his body the swing will
hold his chrysalis in place. This chrysalis is not as beautiful as the
Viceroy, but very interesting in its odd shape and in its development
and will well repay all the interest taken in it. Perhaps you may
be surprised by not seeing a beautiful butterfly emerge from your
chrysalis, but instead an Ichneumon fly, for often the Ichneumon fly
deposits her egg in the caterpillar's back, and he can not say her
nay; after he is nicely settled in his chrysalis this egg hatches and
develops rapidly, needing so much food that nothing is left of the
poor caterpillar or worm, but the fly prospers and soon comes forth
full-grown, from a round hole which he makes in the side of the
chrysalis.

Each variety of worm and caterpillar will reward you with a different
chrysalis or cocoon. If you are not sure of your worm place a box of
dirt in your box, for some worms go into the dirt to make the great
change. After watching these changes you, too, will say: "Don't crush
the worms! For are they not a symbol of our own death and resurrection
when we shall awake in His glorious likeness?"




BIRD LORE OF THE ANCIENT FINNS.


In the _Bulletin of the Michigan Ornithological Club_ H. S. Warren says
that nature and nature-worship form the center of all the life of the
ancient Finns, and he quotes freely from Crawford's translation of "The
Kalevala," the national epic of Finland. He says that, "as the English
language is not strong in diminutives, and therefore lacks some of the
most effective means for the expression of affectionate, tender, and
familiar relations, in this respect all translations from the Finnish
into English must fall short of the original, the former being the
language of a people who live pre-eminently close to nature, and are at
home among the animals of the wilderness, beasts and birds, winds and
woods and waters, falling snows and flying sands." The metre is like
that of "Hiawatha," and is the characteristic verse of the Finns.

As to birds, the duck lays the mundane egg. "Then the water-mother
finds a place upon her own knees for the duck to rest, where it lays an
egg which rolls into the sea. There it breaks and is transformed into
the earth."


    From one half the egg, the lower,
    Grows the nether vault of Terra;
    From the upper half remaining
    Grows the upper vault of heaven;
    From the white part come the moonbeams,
    From the yellow part the sunshine.

       *       *       *       *       *

    Wainamoinen, wise and ancient,
    Made himself an ax for chopping,
    Then began to clear the forest,
    Then began the trees to level,
    Felled the trees of all descriptions,
    Only left the birch tree standing,
    For the birds a place of resting,
    Where might sing the sweet-voiced cuckoo,
    Sacred bird in sacred branches.
    Down from heaven came the eagle,
    Through the air he came a-flying,
    That he might this thing consider--
    And he spake the words that follow:

The eagle inquires of the ancient singer, Wainamoinen, why he has left
the birch tree only standing; and upon being assured it was left solely
for the use of the birds, he commends Wainamoinen's "hero-judgment."
There is a lesson in forestry for the modern day.

    Wainamoinen, old and trusty,
    Turned his face and looked about him;
    Lo! there comes a springtime cuckoo,
    Spying out the slender birch tree--
    Rests upon it, sweetly singing:
    "Wherefore is the slender birch tree
    Left unharmed of all the forest?"
    Spake the ancient Wainamoinen:
    "Therefore I have left the birch tree,
    Left the birch tree only growing,
    Home for thee for joyous singing;
    Call thou here, O sweet-voiced cuckoo,
    Sing thou here from throat of velvet,
    Sing thou here with voice of silver,
    Sing the cuckoo's golden flute-notes;
    Call at morning, call at evening,
    Call within the hour of noontide,
    For the better growth of forests,
    For the ripening of the barley,
    For the richness of the Northland,
    For the joy of Kalevala."

Thus is the cuckoo looked upon as a prophetic bird, or perhaps a
mediator between the man and his gods.

The woodpecker is another sacred bird of "The Kalevala." In that epic
he is not directly named, perhaps, because he was so very sacred,
but the minor wood god, Nyyrikki, upon whom Lemminkainen calls in
his distress to help him track the elk, is, like his father, Tapio,
evidently a survival of Pikker, the woodpecker.

    O Nyyrikki, mountain hero,
    Son of Tapio of forests,
    Hero with the scarlet headgear,
    Notches make along the pathway,
    Landmarks upward on the mountain,
    That the hunter may not wander.




BIRD NOTES.


F. Schuyler Mathews says, in an article in _Popular Science_, that the
bird not only possesses an ear for music but the mind to produce it.
As our own conventional conception of music does not at all correspond
with the wild bird's song, we are apt to consider the latter as foreign
to art. If, however, we choose to consider the bird's conception of
music a lawless one, we must show that he ignores all fundamental
principles. This it is impossible to do, for he invariably resolves his
effort to a perfectly intelligible, logical, musical idea. His music
is, therefore, an art at least in part.

"There are," Mr. Mathews continues, "three woodland singers who
will perfectly illustrate my idea of the underlying principle of
bird-music. These are the chickadee, the white-throated sparrow, and
the hermit-thrush. The chickadee sings, or I may say, calls his mate,
with a perfect musical third, or with two notes separated by a complete
musical interval. One bird may sing the third; another may answer in
two descending notes. The remarkable thing about this simple example of
melody is that the intervals between the notes are correctly measured.
The result of his effort is a combination of tones in perfect accord
with a law of music, and we are bound to accept it as an example of
melody.

"The chickadee, too, it should be remembered, is not a high type of
bird; there are many steps of progression between him and his more
gifted cousins, the thrushes, who are, indeed, musicians of a high
order. But, just here I might as well call attention to the fact that
bird-music should not be overestimated. Its character is fragmentary,
and its unconventionality is obvious. The wild songs of the woods and
fields are not musical compositions; they are at best but detached
bits of melody imperfectly conceived, although often replete with the
suggestions of a complete musical idea.

"For instance, the white-throated sparrow or Peabody bird sings a
perfect musical phrase which we may harmonize as we please, because
it certainly suggests harmony. This is absolutely no more than the
bird sings. The musical intervals, the pitch, and the lengths of the
notes are all correctly sustained. In other words the bird suggests
a complete musical idea. But the little Peabody bird seldom attempts
a more difficult or elaborate task. He knows his limitations, and
keeping within these, his attempts are musically both consistent and
perfect. But let us turn our attention to the more gifted songster of
the northern woods, the hermit thrush. His capacity for simple melody,
his technical mastery of tone intervals and note values, his phrasing
and his brilliancy as a performer, are certainly not exceeded by any
vocalist of nature.

"But we must again studiously heed the limitations of the bird's idea
of music. We are still in the presence of the untamed singer, who is
amenable only to his own elastic laws. The hermit thrush starts his
song with a prolonged keynote (often it is A) and then springs upwards
in thirds and fifths with such rapidity and ease that we are amazed
at the accuracy of the performance. Not only are the tones correctly
given, but they are embellished with subsidiary or tributary tones.

"The last note, C, too faint to be heard at any distance, is rendered
in a gyrating, suppressed way, impossible to describe, but comparable
to the soft tones of a harmonicon. This note is an excellent example of
bird lawlessness regarding music. It is quite antipodal in character to
the initial note (A) with which the bird slowly begins, as if desirous
to found upon it a solid musical phrase; but he fails most utterly at
the last and subsides into an exquisite, elusive, compound tone--I
do not know what else to call it--which he rounds off in a plaintive
pianissimo. He is not satisfied; he begins the same strain again, now
in another key, and with no better success in the final than in his
first effort. So he starts again with a variation, this time striking
an initial note higher than before. Then he makes another attempt; but
still he seems dissatisfied and, after a short rest, three tiny high
notes come from his throat, full of perfect melody, as simple as that
of the chickadee."

The bird is a transcendentalist, ever attempting what he cannot
satisfactorily accomplish, but failing, only to delight us with the
strange sweetness of the imperfect performance. The highest form of
bird-music is unquestionably revealed in the songs of the thrushes.
Here we have not only a simple fundamental rule, amply demonstrated,
but also a partially developed series of musical ideas, strung together
with a well-chosen relationship. Of course, musically considered, the
development of the melody and the connection of the phrases are more or
less imperfect; but that does not matter. The truth is, the bird is an
accomplished singer who cares less for conventional rules than he does
for the essence, or the soul of the music; but above all he succeeds in
inspiring his listener. What more, may I ask, could be expected of a
musician?--_School Journal._




STORY OF A NEST.

ANNA R. HENDERSON.


    Far away in the beautiful land of Brazil,
    Where the birds are all singing o'er valley and hill,
    Two little children walked out 'neath the trees,
    Talking in musical Portuguese;
    And if you will listen to what I say,
    I'll tell you in English their words that day.
    "Sister," said Manuel, "often I've heard,
    That the trees scarce have room for the nest of each bird;
    For this is the land of these beautiful things,
    And the air seems alive with their songs and their wings;
    And I think that I know of a little bird breast,
    Which was puzzled and troubled for place for a nest."
    "Now, brother," said Lena, "don't tell me a word,
    Let me hunt for the nest of this crowded-out bird,"
    So away they went roving o'er hill and through dell;--
    Of the nests that they found 'twould take hours to tell.
    There were nests in the orange trees, blossoming white,
    There were nests in the coffee trees, glossy and bright,
    There were nests in the hedges, the bushes and grass,
    In the dark, hanging vines, by each roadside and pass.
    There were blue eggs and speckled eggs, brown eggs and white,
    And yellow throats opening with chirpings of fright.
    "Search no longer," said Manuel, "'mid bushes and trees,
    'Tis a stranger place, sister, than any of these."
    "I give up," said Lena, a shade on her brow,
    "Come, hasten, dear Manuel, I'll follow you now."
    Then away to the garden the little feet sped,
    And he showed her the nest in a big cabbage head!




  [Illustration: CHICAGO:
                 A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.
                 IRON ORES.
                 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY
                 NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.

                 Pyrites         Magnetite        Pyrites
                 Limonite                         Limonite
                 Hematite                         Specular]

COMMON MINERALS AND VALUABLE ORES.

THEO. F. BROOKINS.


I.--IRON MINERALS.

Probably many a bright youth, accustomed to wander through the
fields in enjoyment of nature, has been thrilled with pleasurable
anticipations on finding, in some outcrop of crystalline rock, a
mineral substance that glittered as gold. That his anticipations were
premature should not deter the ambitious youth. Men far beyond him
in experience have been deceived by that same "fool's gold." History
records that shiploads of the valueless yellow iron pyrites were sent
to England by explorers of America on the supposition that they were
accumulating gold.

Of the various compounds of iron occurring in nature, but four may
be considered as relatively common--pyrite, magnetite, hematite, and
limonite. Pyrite consists of iron and sulphur; magnetite, hematite, and
limonite are oxides of iron. The first-named mineral differs largely
from the others in external appearance as well as in composition. The
others are, however, readily differentiated. We will discuss each of
the four minerals in the order mentioned above.

The sulphide of iron, pyrite, occurs in many crystalline rocks; but,
owing to the difficulty of separating the iron and sulphur, is not used
as an ore of iron. The mineral much resembles in external appearance
a yellow ore of copper, called chalcopyrite, from which it may be
distinguished in that it will strike fire with steel. A specimen of
pyrites containing large crystals is an interesting subject of study.
These crystals are cubical in shape, but generally massed together so
that no single crystal form may be observed as complete. Peculiar
striations on the cube faces may often be noted. The striations of
no two adjoining faces are continuous; but rather a striation of one
face bears to that of another in direction the relation of the stem of
a printed T to the top, or vice versa. Owing to the affinity of each
component element for oxygen, pyrite often changes to vitriol, or else
forms the oxide of iron, limonite, described below.

The black oxide of iron, magnetite, occurs widely distributed. As its
name indicates, it sometimes displays the properties of a magnet. If
a fragment of unequal dimensions be suspended freely by a string, the
longer dimension will gradually swing into a north and south direction.
The property possessed by magnetite of attracting other bits of iron
appears to have been known to the ancients, and by them the name
lodestone was applied to the mineral. Since the power to attract other
particles of iron is not apparent in all specimens of magnetite we must
consider other more distinguishing characteristics. The ore is very
heavy; particles of it are attracted by an artificial magnet, in which
regard it differs from the other minerals we have mentioned; if a piece
of the ore be scratched across the surface of a harder substance, _e.
g._, smoky quartz, a black "streak" will be left. Pure magnetic iron
ore is intensely black, with no coloring.

In a series of ore beds formerly operated by a mining company of
northern New York, four distinctions of the crude ore were made, two
varieties of blue, one of black, and one of gray. The blue coloring
is apparently due to the presence of impurities; the black ore is
evidently magnetite; and the steel-gray mineral, failing in the
characteristic properties of magnetite, finds its class place under
hematite. Hematite differs from magnetite in representing a higher
degree of oxidation. It is often found, as indicated above, in beds
distributed in close conjunction with those of magnetite. This ore is a
valuable source of iron. Hematite commonly occurs in earthy materials,
as red ochre. Its streak is red. All rocks of a reddish or red color
owe the color to this oxide of iron.

When hematite rusts, the brownish-yellow or yellow iron oxide,
limonite, results. The streak of limonite is yellow, thus
distinguishing it from hematite. Disseminated through beds of clay,
limonite gives them the characteristic yellow color. Such clays turn
red when heated, since the water of the limonite is driven off, leaving
hematite as a residue. This is the explanation of the usual coloring of
bricks. Yellow ochre is impure, or earthy, limonite.




WHEN ANIMALS ARE SEASICK.

PHEBE WESTCOTT HUMPHREYS.


Anyone who has traveled extensively has had an opportunity in some of
the ocean voyages to witness the seasickness of animals, and many queer
stories are told from time to time of their actions at such times--how
lions become un-kinglike, monkeys ape humanity, and dogs are especially
woeful--and one realizes that human beings are not the only ones that
suffer from seasickness, by any means.

One hears a good deal about pangs that have filled the men and women
with woe, but little is said of the menageries brought to America every
year, or carried hither and yon in wave-tossed boats.

Lions and tigers may be majestic when they have unwavering earth or
rock against their paws, but a seasick cat of these tribes is as
forlorn as any man ever was, and doesn't look a bit more kingly than
a wet rabbit. Even its roars and growls have a weeping sound in them,
quite in keeping with the general appearance of the beast.

A monkey is as pitiable an object when it is seasick as any other beast
so stricken, and its forlorn facial expression is so humanlike and the
way it clasps its paws across its stomach is so natural that the man
who is not seasick necessarily sees something to laugh at in the misery
of the creature. Not so with the seasick man. If he sees a seasick
monkey he is sure to get very angry, thinking the poor thing is mocking
him.

It takes a dog to be woeful at sea. It has a way of doubling all up,
with its tail between its legs and its head hanging down that shows
a deep-seated pain. To free itself the dog goes through all sorts
of contortions. It will stretch out on the deck, groan and whine,
sometimes rising on its haunches and lifting its head and howling long
and miserably, as some dogs do at the sound of music.

Many other animals show signs of great distress when on the water in
rough weather, and any animal that is thoroughly seasick will show
almost human signs of distress and appeal for sympathy, yet one can
scarcely help laughing at their actions, even in the face of their
evident suffering.




  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
  | Transcriber's Note:                                              |
  |                                                                  |
  | Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.     |
  |                                                                  |
  | Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant |
  | form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.    |
  |                                                                  |
  | Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.            |
  |                                                                  |
  | Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs   |
  | and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that   |
  | references them.                                                 |
  |                                                                  |
  | Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters,         |
  | _like this_.                                                     |
  |                                                                  |
  | "... the shells of the eggs in class Aves."* (Page 152.) A       |
  | footnote is indicated but missing from the text.                 |
  |                                                                  |
  | The Contents table was added by the transcriber.                 |
  +------------------------------------------------------------------+





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and all Nature, Vol. VI, No. 4,
November 1899, by Various

*** 