Part 15

He replied, that, in one respect, the regularity is surprising, for they are found, as it were, in families; each formation containing a collection of species often peculiar to itself, and differing widely from those of the adjoining one; so that at any two points, in similar formations, however distant, we are sure of meeting the same general assemblage of fossil remains. For instance, if the fossils found in the chalk of Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, or in the cliffs of Dover, or even in Poland, or Paris, be examined, eight or nine species out of ten will be found to be the same. Again, if collections of fossils from the _carboniferous_ limestone, of any of the above places, are compared, they will be found to agree in the same manner with each other: but if you compare the collection from the chalk, with that from the limestone, you would not find one single instance of agreement; indeed very few appearances of it that could deceive even your unpractised eye.”

“I wish, uncle, I could make these curious comparisons with my own eyes.”

“So you shall, my dear Bertha. I have a few specimens of remarkable fossils, though I have no regular collection; and when we reach home, I will endeavour to shew you some instances of these facts, as they interest you and Caroline so much.”

_15th._--I have made another extract from the Canada letters for my dear mamma.

_“Loghouse, February 24th._

“Here we are at last; and though we must bear a good deal of inconvenience for some time, yet we feel all the enjoyment of being really _at home_.

“On Monday morning, Feb. 10, we left Cobourg, Mr. * * * * and I on one seat, with a little girl between us; the maid and the other two children on the seat before us, and our charioteer in front. We had blankets and cloaks to roll about our feet, and a basket of cold meat and bread. Another sleigh carried our bedding, trunks, and luggage, besides baskets of poultry and our two dogs.

“We travelled twenty miles that day very pleasantly; passing through miles and miles of forest. I was delighted with this new scene. Every now and then, we came to small _clearings_, with loghouses, and generally with a good stock of cattle and poultry.

“At four o’clock, we reached the inn; and we passed the night there very comfortably, sleeping on the floor in the sitting-room, where we spread our mattresses and blankets.

“Next day, our road lay through thick woods; indeed, it scarcely deserved that name, for it was merely a track through the snow where other sleighs had lately passed. We turned backwards and forwards through the crowded trees, and often had showers of snow from branches which our heads touched: the boughs of the beautiful hemlock pine were so loaded with it, and bent down so low, that we were obliged to lie down, to pass under them; and twice we were obliged to stop and cut a passage where trees had fallen across the way. We drove for nine miles through woods without seeing any habitation, except two Indian huts.

“When we arrived at the banks of the river, near the mills, we found that the ice had given way, so that the sleighs could not cross; and the miller’s boat could not ply, because there was still a broad border of ice on each side of the river. We sent a man across to beg of our friend Mr. ----, who was settled there, to send his oxen and sleigh to a part of the river called the Little Lake, two miles lower down; and we determined to walk across. This delay was very embarrassing, but our travels were nearly at an end, and that gave us spirits to proceed with vigour through the snow, which came far above our ancles. The friends who came from the opposite side to meet us, carried the two youngest children; the workmen carried our bedding, and every thing else was left at the mills. With this assistance we contrived to cross, and being soon packed into the sleigh, we proceeded in the shades of evening to our home, through nearly five miles of wood. Our loghouse was quite illuminated by the glare of the fires which had been prepared for us, and even if there had been no fire, we must have been warmed by the joy our friend shewed at seeing us here.

“The house was not quite finished, and we found it rather cold at night; but every day since we have made it more and more comfortable. Our books fill up one side of the parlour, and give it a comfortable look; and as it has two windows, one to the south, and one to the west, we have now the delightful warm sun shining in from ten till past five.

“This is really a pretty spot--even now, though the ground is covered with snow. The river is broad, and rushes by with great noise and rapidity, carrying down lumps of ice from the lake; it winds beautifully, and the banks are fringed with fine spreading cedars and lofty hemlock pines.

“We have been most prosperous in everything, voyage, journey, and health; and when I look back and think of all we have gone through since you and I parted, I cannot help feeling surprise, mixed with gratitude, to that merciful Being, who has watched over us and protected us all.”

_16th._--I was talking to Mary after dinner, about the ant and the little puceron, and praising their mutual good feeling; but she said there were very few instances of such friendship among insects, and a great many of their hostility to each other. She mentioned the following fact, which will, I think, amuse Marianne.

The _pierce-bois_, or wood-boring bee, an inhabitant of warm countries, and distinguished by her beautiful violet wings, is remarkable for boring long cylindrical cells in decayed trees, or even in window frames. She first bores obliquely into the wood with her strong mandibles, and then follows the direction of the fibres, forming a hole or tunnel of more than a foot in length, and half an inch in diameter. At the inner end of this pipe she deposits an egg, along with a sufficient store of honey and farina, for the support of her future offspring; and covering it with a thin partition, made of the particles of wood she had scooped out and cemented together with wax, she proceeds to deposit another egg and another supply of provision; and so on till the whole pipe is full. I must also tell you, that from the innermost cell she had previously bored a small channel to the outside of the wood, as a kind of back door, by which the young produced from the first laid eggs should escape in succession, each of them instinctively piercing the partition in the right direction. But now, mamma, for my fact: there is a small species of beetle that watches the operations of the bee, and slily deposits its egg also in the cell. If this egg should escape the vigilance of the poor bee, it is hatched into a larva before her own eggs, and consuming all the food she had so industriously prepared, the right owner of the dwelling perishes.

The wood-boring-bee reminded my uncle of the _teredo_ or ship-worm, which destroys the planks on ships’ bottoms, by piercing them in all directions; and he told us that the ingenious Mr. Brunel had himself stated to a friend of his, that it was from the operations of this worm that he had borrowed the method which has been adopted in forming the tunnel under the Thames.

Mr. Brunel observed that the teredo’s head is covered with a strong armour, through a little hole in which it perforates the wood first in one direction and then in another, till the arched way is complete; when it daubs both roof and sides with a kind of varnish. In like manner, Mr. B. conducts his operations in the tunnel; removing the ground in front, through the small apertures of a strong iron frame, which he calls the _shield_, in imitation of the teredo’s armour; and then constructing a circular arch of brick-work, with strong cement, so as to resist the utmost pressure of the water. The shield is then moved forward nine inches (the length of a brick), a fresh ring of brick-work is built, and a fresh portion of ground is excavated.

This curious anecdote led to another of the same nature, an ingenious contrivance borrowed from a lobster’s tail. On the other side of the Clyde, opposite the city of Glasgow, there was abundance of fine water, which it was desirable to convey across the river for the use of the inhabitants; but so as not to interfere with the shipping, and not to be contaminated with the salt water. Mr. Watt, the celebrated engineer, undertook to carry it in iron pipes fitted one into the other like the joints of a lobster’s tail, so that when laid across the river they should adapt themselves to the form of the bottom. He perfectly succeeded; these flexible pipes have been in use for twenty years, and the inhabitants have been admirably supplied with this necessary of life, through that great man’s happy power of observation.

_17th._--My aunt has been very unwell for the last three days; she is now recovering, but still requires constant care. My cousins are most assiduous and tender nurses. They are attentive, without being officious, and they arrange the time of their attendance, so as to permit each to have some leisure for her own daily occupations. This gratifies my aunt particularly; I have frequently heard her say, that it is a duty of those who attend on the sick to be as cheerful as possible, and that nothing contributes to cheerfulness so much as employment. She thinks it no proof whatever of real sensibility, to lay aside all one’s usual pursuits because a friend or relation is ill; it only weakens the mind, and produces on the countenance that expression of anxiety which distresses or alarms the patient.

I do not know exactly what my aunt’s illness has been--her eyes have been so much affected, that she has been condemned for some time to total idleness, and hitherto she has not been permitted to listen to much reading or even conversation. I should have thought that a person who is so active in general, would have been doubly sensible of the weight of idle time. But her mind has such various stores of knowledge, deep and light, that she never can be in want of novelties to employ it; to-day I was allowed to stay with her for some time, and she repeated to me some beautiful moral reflections, as well as some lighter poetical compositions on which she had employed her mind last night. It is thus she beguiles the wakeful hours, and habituates herself to think more slightly of the sufferings which she sometimes endures.

_19th, Sunday._--My dear aunt is certainly much better.--By her desire I was permitted to take care of her while the rest of the family went to church; and I was thus left sole guardian of this good patient, so precious to us all.

Immediately after they went away, she fell into a gentle slumber, and as I had not provided myself with a book, and was fearful of disturbing her by walking to the book-case, I sat quietly near the bed, so that I could watch her. For want of other employment I amused myself with comparing my former with my present life; and though on the whole they are very different, there is one point, dear mamma, in which they are perfectly similar--for the friends I am now with are, just like you, really and rationally religious. My reverie over, I repeated to myself some of our favourite sacred poetry, among which was Mrs. Barbauld’s address to the Deity. I then tried to recollect the various religious books I had read since I came here; and afterwards I endeavoured to arrange the knowledge which I had acquired not only from them but from my uncle’s conversations.

While I was engaged in these reflections, my aunt awoke, and having taken her medicine, she desired me to read to her some of the Old and New Testament; and then, as she insisted on it, I went out for a short time, leaving her maid in the room.

My mind, of course, dwelt on that good and amiable aunt, to whom I owe so much; and every turn I made in the garden brought me to some object that reminded me of the kind things she had said to me in our walks, and the many opportunities she had taken of giving my mind a right direction. Her religion is always cheerful, and she has the art of introducing little useful reflections into common conversation, so as to double the impression they make. Just where I was then sauntering, she had said to me only a few hours before she was taken ill, “You see that the embryo plant contained in this seed will not vegetate without heat and moisture--and so, my dear niece, our good dispositions, whatever they may be, will wither away without the continual help of Him who is ever ready to assist us, and to open our minds to the high views of a future state which He has set before us; nor, Bertha, can it be considered one whit more wonderful that we should hereafter change into a life of immortality, than that the larva should burst into a beautiful butterfly, or that these little black seeds should expand into luxuriant foliage, and deck their branches with splendid flowers.”

The wind had been very high all that morning, and many broken branches were scattered about the shrubbery: my aunt seemed to delight in the “wild music of the wind-swept grove;” and as we sheltered ourselves from the blast, she pointed out to me the numbers of minute insects that were enjoying their short day of existence, unmindful of its terrors; and the birds that were struggling through it with materials for their nests; and the bees who could scarcely withstand its power, yet were urged on by their instinctive industry to begin their winter’s store. “How that hoarse storm,” she exclaimed, “and all these tokens of the opening spring, remind one of the Almighty power and benevolence!”

I immediately quoted the well known line,

Which Nature’s works through all their parts proclaim.

“Well applied, Bertha. In every department of nature we find sufficient proofs of that omnipotence and goodness. The astonishing force of an unseen agent, like the wind, comes home indeed to the feelings at this moment, and leads one to reflect on its wonderful causes and its beneficial effects; but when we view with the astronomer the countless stars and the regular movement of the planets in their orbits; or, with the chemist, trace the infinite variety of matter up to the different proportions in which a few elementary substances are combined; or if we examine the microscopic perfection of the commonest of these flowers; or the young leaves already formed and wrapped up for months in the buds; or the beautiful preparation of hard scales and downy net-work for the preservation of the young plant inclosed in the seeds,--the mind is absolutely lost in admiration!

I read His awful name emblazoned high, With golden letters on the illumined sky, Nor less the mystic characters I see Wrought in each flower, inscribed on every tree; In every leaf that trembles in the breeze, I hear the voice of God among the trees.”

_20th._--For some days past, the rooks have been very busy, building their nests.--There are a few tall trees near this, which stand in a clump apart from the rest; Frederick says that the rooks have a fancy for them, and build there year after year. No creatures seem to be more attached to the place where they have lived; nor can any be more sociable, as they generally place several nests together. But their sociable disposition does not imply honesty towards each other; for when a pair are constructing their nest, one always remains to guard it while the other goes in search of materials, lest it might be pillaged by the neighbouring rooks. Frederick and I observed a transaction of this nature to-day; and it caused a great uproar, for the crime is always punished by expelling the thieves from the society.

White of Selborne says, they depart on foraging excursions in the morning, and return in the evening; and that, after the young have taken wing, there is a general desertion of the nest trees; but he says the families return in October, to repair their dwellings.

Among their favourite food is the grub of the chaffer-beetle, which, if allowed to multiply, would lay waste the corn-fields and meadows;--and yet how many mistaken people accuse these poor rooks of doing mischief!

Frederick contrived to get one of them to shew me, that I might know how to distinguish them from other species of the crow family. The rook is black, tail somewhat rounded, plumage glossy, the bill is more straight and slender, and its base is encircled by a naked white skin which is scaly, and takes the place of those black projecting feathers or bristles, which, in the other species of crow, extend as far as the opening of the nostrils.

Rooks, I am told, are birds of passage in France, but in England they are stationary. In Siberia, they are the forerunners of summer; and in France, they announce the approach of winter.

Now that they are busy building their nests, they make a noisy, hoarse cawing, which I have not yet persuaded myself to like; but it is agreeable to Mary and Caroline--I suppose, because it is united in their minds with the idea of spring.

_21st._--After sitting a little time with my aunt, who, I am delighted to tell you, is much better, I had a botanising walk with Miss Perceval. What a very agreeable companion she is!

She told me that few countries, so limited in extent, comprise such a variety of plants as the British islands. Yet few of them are peculiar to these countries: those of our southern districts may be almost all found in France and Germany; those of Scotland are nearly common with the productions of Sweden and Denmark; and our elevated hills supply a vegetation similar to that of Norway and Lapland. The climate of Ireland varies so little from that of the corresponding parts of England and Scotland, that there is scarcely any difference in their native plants. She mentioned, however, two; the _menziesia polifolia_, or St. Patrick’s heath, and the _saxifraga geum_, with its varieties, which are found wild in Ireland only. I reminded her of the arbutus, but she seemed to doubt that it is a native of Killarney, which surprised me, as you told me that it was; and my uncle expressed the same opinion lately. On the contrary, she is inclined to believe the tradition, that the Monks of Mucross Abbey introduced it there from Spain--for, she says, trees are seldom found, in a state of nature, confined to one spot only: and it is well known that the arbutus does not grow naturally in any other part of Ireland; it grows, however, abundantly on all the shores of Spain, and from thence she thinks it may have been originally brought.

She gave me a very satisfactory reason why the native vegetable productions of Great Britain are inferior in number to those of countries on the continent; few seeds are furnished with the means of flying across the Channel so as to have naturalised themselves here. Where no sea intervenes, they are gradually but continually spreading from one place to another. On the road sides and in the corn-fields of France, Germany, and Holland, we see many plants which have been imported for our gardens; even in the Flora Danica there are many belonging to that small country, which are not possessed by us; and all the mountainous regions of Europe, though separated by a great distance, have several species in common, while we can boast of very few which are found in Great Britain only.

Miss P. told me, however, of some; for instance, the Isle of Man cabbage has not yet been observed in any other parts of the world than in that island, in the Hebrides, and on the north-western shores of England and Scotland. One of the most interesting of our British plants, she says, is pipewort; for in no part of the continent of Europe is it, or any individual of this genus, to be found; and, what is very remarkable, though all the other species of the family are inhabitants of the tropics, yet ours is found in one of the most northern of the Hebrides, and in a lake which is peculiarly cold.

It is the same among the _cryptogamous_ tribes, such as lichens, fungi, and mosses. Though we think Britain rich in that extensive class, most of them are known in other parts of Europe, or in North America; and she says it is a singular fact, that the lower we descend in the scale of vegetation, the more universally are the individuals of those tribes dispersed over the surface of the globe. In Carolina, for example, a large proportion of the _fungi_ are the same with those of France and Germany, while among what she calls the _phenogamous_ plants, or those which have _visible flowers_, there are scarcely any that are common to Europe.

The _mosses_ too, which have been received from the higher parts of North America, and from Kamtschatka, are almost all indigenous in Europe.

_22nd._--I had often wished to see the contents of a set of nice little drawers under the book-cases on one side of the library; at last, to my great satisfaction, I have been allowed to examine the small geological collection which they contain. It consists of specimens of the different _series_ of rocks, accompanied by the organic remains which distinguish them.

My uncle first shewed us some bits of hornblende, primary limestone, mica-slate, and granite, as specimens of the inferior order, or ancient primitive rocks, destitute of all organic remains, and having something of a crystalline appearance.

Next he shewed us the drawers containing the transition or submedial series, including grey wackè, transition limestone, quartz, common slate, and serpentine; they contain some specimens of the lowest scale of organized beings, such as zoophytes, madrepores, and testacea, but very sparingly, and all different from those now known.

Then came the medial order, or carboniferous rocks of old red sandstone, mountain limestone, and all the parallel strata of coal, slate-clay, and freestone, which he calls _coal measures_. He shewed us abundant remains in them of animals, but very few of which have any resemblance to existing species. Some of the limestone or marble specimens were polished on one side, so as to shew their beautiful veins and colours. On several bits of the coal and black slate, I saw the impression of leaves, branches, and seeds, but no shells, or any kind of animal remains: there was one perfect fern leaf, but my uncle says, of an unknown family, and a great many reeds. There was also, a flat block of greyish freestone, on which the regular scales of some seed vessel, like a very large fir cone, were deeply marked; and on another, I am sure I could distinctly trace the imbricated form and the spines of the common prickly pear of the Brazils. Indeed, my uncle thinks that all these vegetable remains seem nearly allied to the plants of tropical climates; and he says, it would be a most interesting employment for some naturalist to devote himself to the study of what might be called _subterranean botany_. These coal measures occupy several drawers; for besides the Staffordshire, Newcastle, and other coals, he has specimens of the seventeen coal beds of the forest of Dean, and a large collection of their organic remains, which he has taken great pains in arranging.