The Masnavi

Upon this sheltered, upland knoll, At early dawn I often stroll; White clusters edged with crimson hue Lie here, impearled with crystal dew.

Like many of the mollusks of which we have written the octopus is esteemed as a valuable article of food by several savage tribes as well as by some civilized people. The native of the Pacific coast catches the Octopus (Octopus punctatus) by a very ingenious method. Providing himself with a spear twelve or fourteen feet long which has four or five barbed pieces of hard wood some fourteen inches long attached to the end, he paddles his canoe to the feeding-ground of the mollusk. One is soon found in ten or twelve feet of water and the Indian carefully lets down his spear until within a few inches of the center of the animal, when he quickly plunges it into the soft mass. Instantly the water is in commotion, the eight long arms writhing about in an endeavor to reach the boat. The Indian knows that should this happen his chances for life would be slim indeed. But he is prepared, and carefully lifting up the octopus with his barbed spear until it is above the surface of the water, he plunges a long, sharp spear, with which he is provided, into each arm where it joins the body. At each plunge of the spear, an arm becomes helpless and in a short time the animal, which but a few moments before had the power of a score of men, lies in the canoe, a shapeless, helpless mass.

The antlers of both Wapiti and stag are much alike, though those of the former are longer and heavier, corresponding to its larger size. The full growth of the horns is attained about the seventh year. The perfect horns are slightly oval in transverse section and thickly covered with warts or slight elevations, which are arranged in longitudinal lines. All the branches or prongs are situated on the front side of the main trunk. “The general color is a light chestnut red, which deepens into a brownish hue on the neck and legs and almost into a black on the throat and along the median line of the under surface of the body. The buttocks are yellowish white, bordered by a dusky band which extends down the posterior surface of the hind legs.” In winter the fur is much thicker and finer and the general color is more gray than in summer. “During the mating season the males have fierce combats, and at this time the male Wapiti emits a peculiar noise, resembling the braying of an ass, beginning with a loud shrill tone and ending in a deep guttural note.” At this time, even when kept in confinement, the male is easily irritated and may attack people. Old males will frequently wage persistent and long battles for supremacy. The antlers are used as the weapons in these duels, and cases have been recorded where these have become so firmly interlocked that they could not be separated, resulting in the death of both individuals.

In company with the long-billed curlew and some species of sandpipers it builds its nest on the grassy banks of rivers and ponds, usually in some natural depression. Occasionally, however, the nests are found on moist prairies some distance from a stream. In these grass-lined nests are laid the three or four bright olivaceous, drab or creamy buff eggs that are variously spotted or blotched with varying shades of brown. They are domestic and seemingly devoted to their fellows. When one of their number is wounded and unable to fly they will frequently remain in the vicinity, flying around the spot where lies their wounded comrade.

Whatever Rob did, of course, Baby Jim wanted to do.

There is other evidence in abundance. The phenomena named atavism is a part of that evidence. Almost everybody has seen well-defined and regular stripes upon horses, and nobody doubts that they indicate a zebra-like ancestor. Again, in the inner side of the human eye is a little red fold, known as the plica semilunaris, the remnant of an ancestor which possessed a third eyelid, similar to that possessed by some reptiles and birds of to-day.

The poets have given us many beautiful writings detailing the vices and virtues of the lower forms of life and among these the Pearly Nautilus and Paper Sailor have received a goodly share of the muse’s attention. But, alas! for the poet, who, not being a conchologist, has sadly misused and misjudged these helpless and harmless creatures. Thus we are told how the paper nautilus sails over the ocean with his “sails” (meaning the two expanded arms) spread out to catch the breeze, and how, when the storm approaches, it folds its sails and disappears beneath the waters of the ocean. Alas for the poet! he puts the most beautiful ideas together in verse, ideas and themes which we would fain believe; but along comes cold, calculating science, and at one fell stroke sweeps away all that the poet has done, for in the poem on the Argonaut all is wrong, the animal does not and could not sail, for were it to do so the shell would fall and become lost in the bottom of the ocean.

A frightened sparrow overheard this accusation and came near enough to protest that they were not guilty and had been themselves trying in vain to find their newly-arrived English relatives, whom they had believed they heard that morning.

Early in the sixteenth century one of the European species was rated as “worth three times as much as the snipe,” and was considered a delicacy of the French epicure. We are told that the black-tailed Godwit in the year 1766 was sold in England for half-a-crown. Ben Jonson speaks enthusiastically of this bird as a delicate morsel for the appetite.

Now, shrilleth clear each several bird his note, The Halcyon charms the wave that knows no gale, About our eaves the swallow tells her tale, Along the river banks the swan, afloat, And down the woodland glades the nightingale.

The geographical distribution of the Marbled Godwit includes the whole of North America, though it is infrequent on the Atlantic coast. Its nesting range is chiefly limited to the interior from Iowa and Nebraska northward to the Saskatchewan. In winter it migrates to Central America, Cuba and the northern part of South America.

The hop plant is a creeping perennial with several stems or branches attaining a length of fifteen to twenty-five feet. It has numerous opposite three to five lobed, palmately veined, coarsely toothed leaves with long leaf stalks (petioles). Flowers unisexual, that is staminate and pistillate flowers separate, either on separate plants (dioecious) or upon different branches of the same plant (monoecious). Flowers insignificant in loose, drooping axillary panicles. Fruit a cone-like catkin usually designated a strobile.

The evolution of organic matter now claims attention in detail. Of the origin of first life, we know absolutely nothing. The doctrine of Evolution does not deal with that. There are, however, many hypotheses upon the subject. Lord Kelvin, the eminent physicist, has suggested that unicellular life may have been transferred to this globe from a wrecked planet. This hypothesis obviously aids us very little, for it merely transfers the original scene of action to some other world. Personally, I prefer the idea that the first protoplasm was produced by the action of the sun upon inorganic matter not unlike the colloids, and that it “fed upon the previous steps in its own evolution.” In this connection, I may say that two points are certain—viz., that vegetable life preceded animal life, and that the first forms of life were mere specks of jelly, without organs. Can these primitive specks be created at the present time? Or, in other words, can protoplasm be manufactured by artificial processes? The answer must be No; not by any process now known, although a great number of experiments have been made with the object of manufacturing unicellular vegetable life. During the years between 1870 and 1880, this question was thoroughly thrashed out, and at first the balance seemed to be very evenly held between the supporters and the opponents of spontaneous generation. The investigations of the late Professor Tyndall, however, conclusively proved that biogenesis, that is, all life from previous life, is the condition at the present day. But I must add Huxley’s words of warning, viz., “that with organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the qualities called vital, may not some day be artificially brought together.” And further, “that as a matter not of proof but of probability, if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time, to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through chemical and physical conditions which it can never see again, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from nonliving matter.”

Robin looked very handsome in his crimson vest, hopping over the grass in a scalloped path, with his modest little mate following in a similar path beside him. Suddenly they stopped and listened.

There came a day early in the season when Mr. Woodpecker, Robin Redbreast and Mr. Blue Jay all assembled within speaking distance on the lower branches of a silver maple tree and excitedly discussed the arrival of a number of birds which they had heard early that morning but had been unable to find.

It was decided that the three birds make one more immediate and thorough search for the monster hobgoblin which infested the Lawn.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

These ideas have little foundation in fact. Darwin no more discovered Evolution than Edison discovered electricity; we are not descended from any existing ape, with or without a tail, and no competent person ever asserted that we were; and there are good reasons for saying that such palaeontological “links” as are missing are not of the greatest possible importance. In short, whatever is evolutionary in the popular mind, is a burlesque upon the evolutionist’s true opinions.

The food of Audubon’s Oriole consists of insects and, to some extent, of berries and other fruits. Mr. Chark, who studied the habits of this species in Texas, says that he observed it frequently feeding on the fruit of the hackberry. He also states that these birds were usually in pairs and exhibited a retiring disposition, preferring the thick foliage of the margins of streams rather than that of more open and exposed places.

“A land of hops and poppy-mingled fields.”

Another cephalopod closely related to the Octopus is the Squid, several species of which are found on the Atlantic coast of the United States. In this genus the body is long and cylindrical, ends in two fins, has a prominent head terminating in eight short and two long arms and is supported by a long, cartilaginous, internal pen, which is made up of a central shaft with expansions on each side like a quill, hence the name “pen.” These animals are very numerous in individuals and form a large part of the food of fishes, like the blue-fish, black bass, etc., and have even been found in the stomach of jelly-fishes. Besides being eaten by the fish the squid furnishes a large part of the food of some whales, the former occurring frequently in shoals and falling ready victims to the huge monster.

“I learned a greedy lesson to-day,” said Baby Jim. “One ant had some food and he met an ant who hadn’t any, and he divided; then he went on some more and met another ant with not any, and he told him to come over to my chair-leg where the cookie was.”

The name Wapiti is of Indian origin, and in their language is used to designate a Rock Mountain goat. The name elk so commonly applied to this animal should properly be limited to the moose.

THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL. (_Kalmia latifolia._)

G Gila Monster [Illustration] (Amelia Walson), 80 Godwit, The Marbled [Illustration], 201 Grackle, The Great-Tailed [Illustration], 62 Grouse, The Canada [Illustration] (Seth Mindwell), 158

W Wapiti, The American Elk or [Illustration], 216 Warbler, The Hooded [Illustration], 71 Warbler, The Townsend’s [Illustration], 11 What Evolution Means (Lawrence Irwell), 207 When Spring Comes [Poem] (George Gee), 188 Winter Buds, The Opening of (Roberta Irvine Brotherson), 220 Witch in the Cream, The (Elizabeth Roberts Burton), 169 Wrens, Two (Nelly Hart Woodworth), 185

Imagine their chagrin when they saw tilting upon the unleaved twig of a late catalpa tree a modest little gray bird with keen, bright eyes, who commenced a garble of all their songs called off in such merriment that the birds could not but appreciate the sport. Then the stranger, who was no other than Mr. Cat-bird, a cousin to the brown mocking-bird of the south, gave a weird cry exactly like a cat’s meow which so frightened the birds they flew hastily away to their several homes.

The red-eyed cowbird (Callothrus robustus), of the Southern United States and Central America, seems to be the pest that infests the homes of Audubon’s Oriole. It has been stated that the majority of the sets of eggs collected from the nests of this Oriole contain one or more of the cowbird’s eggs. It is also probable that many of the Oriole’s eggs are destroyed by the cowbirds as well as by other agencies, and thus, though the raising of two broods the same season is frequently attempted, the species is far from abundant.

Description of Plate.—A, staminate (male) inflorescence; B, pistillate (female) inflorescence; C, fruiting branch; 1, staminate flower; 2, perigone; 3, stamen; 4, open anther; 5, pollen; 6, pistillate catkin; 7, 8, 9, pistillate flowers; 10, scales; 11, 12, 13, scales and flowers; 14, 15, fruit; 16, 17, 19, seed; 20, resin gland (lupulin).

Violets stir and arbutus waits, Claytonia’s rosy bells unfold; Dandelion through the meadow makes A royal road, with seals of gold. —Helen Hunt Jackson.

There are two reasons why nobody has seen one species turn into another. The first is that until the word “species” is satisfactorily defined, instances of the evolution of new forms cannot be supplied. Secondly, as nobody lives much beyond a hundred years at the most—a mere moment in Nature—our ability to witness marked changes in animals or plants is extremely limited. Minor changes, of course, are frequently noticed. I ask the reader to remember, however, that the flower-garden and the farm-yard are in an artificial condition, Natural Selection having ceased. For instance, the duck which has defective wings when hatched has as good a chance of surviving as the duck with powerful wings.

The hop has been called the northern vine. It is found in a wild state throughout Europe, excepting the extreme north, and extends east to the Caucasus and through central Asia. It is a handsome plant and not infrequently used as an arbor plant. The lower or basal leaves are very large, gradually decreasing in size toward the apex. H. lupulus is the only representative of the genus.

“We’ll find it something to eat,” cried the children, and off they ran.

He soon discovered to his sorrow that those selfish, quarrelsome sparrows who tormented the birds last summer and drove away the wrens, had gone no farther during the winter than to the eaves of a near barn, and were already back to their nest in the tall poplar, scolding and threatening as disagreeably as ever. But Robin noticed that the limb which held their nest so high was dead and he hoped a strong wind would dash limb, nest and ugly sparrows all to the ground.

S Sandpiper, The [Poem] (George Bancroft Griffith), 114 Sandpiper, The Solitary (H. S. Keller), 13 Scoter, The Surf [Illustration] (Frank M. Woodruff), 213 Sea-Bird, To a [Poem] (Bret Harte), 197 Sea-Mews in Winter Time [Poem] (Jean Ingelow), 127 Snails of the Forest and Field [Illustration] (Frank Collins Baker), 74 Snails of the Ocean [Illustration] (Frank Collins Baker), 176 Snails of Pond, River and Brook [Illustration] (Frank Collins Baker), 128 Snipe, The Knot or Robin [Illustration], 14 Sparrow, The Alaskan [Poem] (Nellie Hart Woodworth), 56 Sparrow’s Appeal, The Song (George Bancroft Griffith), 168 Spring [Poem] (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), 97 Stone Houses, Interesting (Rest H. Metcalf), 55 Summer, The Passing of [Poem] (Benjamin Karr), 32 Swan, The Musical (Juliette A. Owen), 137

T Tree Top Town, A [Poem] (Austin Arnold McCausland), 192

Dr. Coues tells us that “on intrusion near the nest the birds mount in the air with loud, piercing cries, hovering slowly around with labored flight, in evident distress and approaching sometimes within a few feet of the observer.”

That very day Rob came running in to show a bug which he had in a bottle. It was such a queer looking specimen that all became interested in it at once.

When the man appeared in the morning Baby Jim marched out with an air of importance, and, after surveying the deserted ant-hill, he turned to the man and said, “My sheeps are all gone into the house to bed, so you can clean up their meadow if you want to.”

The buckeye bud is one of the largest of the winter buds. It is covered with small, pointed, brown scales, which overlap each other, thus keeping the cold from the more delicate parts within. Underneath these hard outer scales are thinner, half-transparent ones. Their color is a delicate pink, and fine veins line them. Snugly wrapped inside these dainty coats are tiny woolly objects, and when the wool is removed they are found to be miniature leaves folded together so compactly that they occupy very little room. If the bud has grown on the end of the twig a very small flower bud will be enclosed within the leaves; but if it has grown on the side there will be no flower bud. Since these leaves and flowers have all been formed the summer before, it is easy to understand that a few warm days will cause them to grow so that they soon become too large for their winter covering, and suddenly burst it open.

“Surely that is Mr. Woodpecker pounding on the tin roof-drain,” said Robin; and Mrs. Robin looked about curiously and spied Mrs. Woodpecker on a near tree listening to her husband’s wonderful drumming. Mrs. Woodpecker was thinking what a fine nest such a strong husband could cut out and what quantities of corn and nuts he could hammer into the bark of the trees for an extra food supply. In a very short time the woodpeckers selected the balm-of-Gilead tree by the gate for their home and the work began of cutting and tossing the tiny shavings and so making a hole large enough to accommodate Mrs. Woodpecker while she sat over the ivory eggs waiting the day of their hatching.

So the plan to improve the yard suited all but Baby Jim, who wailed long and loud because his ant city would be destroyed. In vain did the family try to comfort him. He could not be persuaded to abandon his flock.

Having now written a brief outline of the doctrine of Evolution, I believe that I cannot do better than conclude this very imperfect sketch with a quotation from the immortal Shakespeare:

One of the most interesting characteristics of the Octopi and allied cephalopods is their facility for changing color when danger is near. These changes are caused by little pigment cells just beneath the skin, which expand and contract. Thus, if a person is looking at an octopus in captivity and the animal is so placed that it cannot escape, the observer will be astonished to see the body of the animal suddenly assume a deep pinkish color which in turn is succeeded by a blue and then by a green, and finally a return to pink. The body is covered with these little pigment cells, the different colors—pink, blue and green—being so evenly scattered over the surface than when each color cell is expanded the whole body assumes that tinge. This is one of the most wonderful characteristics of the Mollusca.

The animal is made into soup by some of the natives while others boil it in a pot. The shells are used by the natives to make beautifully carved figures, the contrast of the dark outer coating against the light, pearly, inner coating producing a striking effect. The shell is also used in England and on the Continent to produce elegant cameos.

If any person devoted his time to the correction of popular errors, there is no probability that he would have any spare moments for eating or sleeping. The serious aspect of the present condition of popular knowledge, however, is the apparent absence of desire upon the part of many young people to grasp the principles of natural science. I am not exaggerating when I say that there are plenty of fairly educated persons in every large city who deny that man is an animal, and who insist that a whale must be a fish, because it lives in the sea.

The proofs of the truth of Evolution are of two kinds—palaeontological and embryological. The palaeontological evidence has found its way into popular books, and even into some of the literary newspapers. The history of the horses, of the crocodiles, of the rhinoceros is known in detail. All the stages have been found which intervene between the four-toed Eohippos of the Lower Eocene and the zebra and horse of the present day. Thanks to the late Professor Marsh, of Yale, not only are the successive steps in the evolution of the foot-structure preserved, but so also are the various stages in the evolution of the teeth. The occasional appearance of a three-toed horse points very plainly to a three-toed progenitor, a striking example of atavism, that is, the reappearance of a characteristic which has “skipped” one or more generations.

The orioles of America belong to a very different group of birds and are related to our blackbirds, the bobolink and the meadowlark. All these birds belong to the family Icteridae, the representatives of which are confined to the New World.

They are wary birds and it is often necessary to make a long detour in order to reach a spot near to a flock, without attracting their attention, as they ride the crest of the waves in a heavy surf. The younger birds will remain in the surf so close to the shore that frequently they are cast high and dry upon the beach. When this happens it is very amusing to watch them awkwardly scramble back and enter the water again. The older birds are usually much more shy, remaining far out on the water where they congregate in pairs, though sometimes there may be six or eight together.

A wise provision of nature has been pointed out whereby ants are kept away from the nectar which they would devour without accomplishing the purposes for which it was created. Every rocky hillside on which the Trailing Arbutus is frequently found, swarms with ants which are debarred from the blossoms by hairs which project upward from the inner surfaces of the corolla and the outer surfaces of the ovary and style and effectually prevent the ants from entering but are not sufficiently rigid to keep out the larger insects.