Part 5

Want of water will cause the common garden snail to go into a state of the most complete and curious lethargy. This is the snail of the genus Limax, not the larger one of the genus Helix. In the latter the phenomenon of hibernation is especially remarkable. In November the snail forms just a soft, silky membrane across the external opening of its shell. On the inner surface of that it deposits a coating of carbonate of lime, which immediately hardens the gypsum. This partition is again lined with a silky membrane. The snail then retires a little further into the shell and forms a second membranous partition, retiring again and again until there are six of these partitions between the snail and the lime-coated door at the entrance of the shell. In the recess behind all these partitions the snail lies torpid until May. All this time it lives without motion, without heat, without food, without air, without circulation or the exercise of any of its functions. If this snail is prevented from hibernating for several seasons by keeping it in a warm room, it will gradually waste away and die. A case is known where several snails of this genus were shut in a perforated box without food or water. They retired into their shells and closed them with a thin membrane. They remained so for three years, but revived when put into torpid water. They had been driven into torpidity by drought. The blood of this animal is white.

It may be of interest to state in connection with these animals who pass half the year, or less, in sleep, that there are several species of fish, reptiles, and insects which never sleep during their stay in this world. Among fish it is now positively known that pike, salmon, and gold-fish never sleep at all. Also that there are several others of the fish family that never sleep more than a few minutes during a month. There are dozens of species of flies which never indulge in slumber, and from three to five species of serpents which the naturalists have never been able to catch napping.

Apollo has peeped through the shutter, And awakened the witty and fair; The boarding-school belle's in a flutter, The two-penny post's in despair. The breath of the morning is flinging A magic on blossom and spray, And cockneys and sparrows are singing In chorus on Valentine's day.

--_Praed._

THE CAPE MAY WARBLER.

(_Dendroica tigrina._)

LYNDS JONES.

There is hardly another group of birds that yields so satisfactory returns for earnest study as the American wood warblers. All shades and patterns of color are theirs, from somber to brilliant, from the plainest to the most intricate and exquisite pattern. Almost all degrees of vocal ability are found among them, from the simple twitter of the Tennessee to the wild thrilling challenge of the Louisiana water thrush or the ventriloquial antics of the yellow-breasted chat. Many bird students, it is true, regard the group as too difficult for any but the professional ornithologist to attempt; and that may be true of the females and of the autumnal plumages of the young, but the spring males are a constant inspiration and delight to one who admires variety in beauty.

It may be objected that the small size of the warblers renders their field study difficult, even if the foliage does not prove a serious hindrance. One must remember, however, that most small birds are not wary and that they may be closely approached, so that, with a good field-glass (and every bird-student should use one) their colors and the pattern of their dress can readily be made out even in the lower tree tops, where many of them feed. Foliage is always in the way, but even that can be circumvented by patience and perseverance.

The study of adult males in spring is greatly aided by the fact that each species, with some exceptions, has one or more patches of color peculiar to itself. Thus in the Cape May warbler the ear patches are rufous. Other species possess rufous colors, but none of them in this place.

The Cape May warbler belongs among the less common species, but may be common for a day or two during the height of the migration. It is very fond of orchards where it feeds among the foliage, snatching an insect here, a larva there, and cleaning the bundle of eggs from the leaf over yonder with an untiring energy. They also associate more or less with the other warblers in the woods. They are of great value to the fruit grower.

This species is found from the Atlantic coast west to the plains and north to Hudson's Bay, passing the winter in the tropics. It breeds from northern New England to Hudson's Bay and probably in northern Minnesota. The nest is built in a low bush in a wooded pasture or open woodland, said to be partially pensile. The nest and eggs are not readily distinguishable from those of several other warblers. The males sing frequently from their perch on the topmost twig of a spruce tree, thus misleading one as to the whereabouts of the female and nest. The song resembles somewhat that of the black and white warbler, but is rather less wiry. It cannot be represented on paper.

The tongue of this bird is worthy of special notice. It is cleft at the tip, and is provided with somewhat of a fringe. This character is not peculiar to this species, but is found in some honey creepers and in at least one foreign family of birds, thus suggesting, at least, the relationship of the warblers as a group. It might be asked, what is the significance of this character as regards feeding-habits? Apparently nothing, since the feeding-habits and food do not differ from those of other warblers not having the cleft tongue as greatly as the tongues themselves differ in structure. It is apparently an aberrant character developed somewhat at random among groups nearly related, or perhaps a remnant of structure.

SNOWFLAKES.

Falling all the night-time, Falling all the day, Silent into silence, From the far-away;

Stilly host unnumbered, All the night and day Falling, falling, falling, From the far-away,--

Never came like glory To the fields and trees, Never summer blossoms Thick and white as these.

To the dear old places Winging night and day, Follow, follow, follow, Fold them soft away;

Folding, folding, folding, Fold the world away, Souls of flowers drifting Down the winter day.

--_John Vance Cheney._

A TIMELY WARNING.

While a British brig was gliding smoothly along before a good breeze in the South Pacific, a flock of small birds about the size, shape, and color of paroquets settled down in the rigging and passed an hour or more resting. The second mate was so anxious to find out the species to which the visiting strangers belonged that he tried to entrap a specimen, but the birds were too shy to be thus caught and too spry to be seized by the quick hands of the sailors. At the end of about an hour the birds took the brig's course, and disappeared, but towards nightfall they came back and passed the night in the main-top. The next morning the birds flew off again, and when they returned at noon the sailors scattered some food about the decks. By this time the birds had become so tame that they hopped about the decks, picking up the crumbs. That afternoon an astonishing thing happened. The flock came flying swiftly toward the brig. Every bird seemed to be piping as if pursued by some little invisible enemy on wings, and they at once huddled down behind the deck-house. The superstitious sailors at once called the captain of the brig, who rubbed his eyes and looked at the barometer. A glance showed that something was wrong with the elements and the brig was put in shape to out-ride a storm. The storm came down about twenty minutes after the birds had reached the vessel. For a few minutes the sky was like the waterless bottom of a lake--a vast arch of yellowish mud--and torrents of rain fell. Why it did not blow very hard, no one knows; but on reaching port, two days later, the captain learned that a great tornado had swept across that part of the sea. The birds left the vessel on the morning after the storm and were not seen again.

A WINDOW STUDY.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

One of the best places to study birds is from behind the blinds of a conveniently-placed window, where one can see without being seen.

My window one July looked into the tops of tall spruce trees, relieved here and there by a pine, a birch, or a maple. This was the home of the most fascinating and the most bewildering of feathered tribes, the warblers, and a rugged old spruce tree was a favorite "Inn of Rest" for every bird in the vicinity.

In all the years that I have known birds I have carefully avoided becoming interested in warblers, so tiny, so restless, so addicted to the upper branches, so every way tantalizing to study. But here, without intention on my part, fate had opened my windows into their native haunts, even into the very tree-tops where they dwell. "He strives in vain who strives with fate." After one protest I succumbed to their charms.

My principal visitor was a beauty, like most of his distinguished family, having a bright yellow head, set off by a broad black band beginning at the throat and running far down the sides, and he bore the awkward name "black-throated green warbler."

A bewitching and famous singer is this atom in black and gold. And not only is his song the sweetest and most winning, but the most unique, and--what is not generally known--the most varied.

The song that has been oftenest noticed, and is considered characteristic of the species, is sometimes syllabled as "trees, trees, beautiful trees," sometimes as "hear me Saint Theresa." But in my intimate acquaintance with some of the family that July I noted down from my window alone eight distinctly different melodies. My special little neighbor, who spent hours every day in the old spruce, sang the regulation carol of his tribe, but he also indulged in at least one other totally unlike that. Those two I have heard and seen him sing, one directly after the other, but he may have had half a dozen arrangements of his sweet notes.

Sometimes the mate of my spruce-tree neighbor appeared on the tree, going over the branches in a businesslike way, and uttering a loud, sharp "chip."

One morning there suddenly broke out in the old spruce a great clatter of "tick-et! tick-et!" in the voice of a nestling. I snatched my glass and turned it at once upon a much-excited warbler, my black-throated green. He was hopping about in a way unusual even with him, and from every side came the thread-like cries, while the swaying of twigs pointed out a whole family of little folk, scrambling about in warbler fashion and calling like bigger bird babies for food. They were plainly just out of the nest, and then I studied my spruce-tree bird in a new role, the father of a family.

He was charming in that as in every other, and he was evidently a "good provider," for I often saw him after that day going about in great anxiety, looking here and there and everywhere, while a small green worm in the beak told plainly enough that he was seeking his wandering offspring.

During the remainder of the month I frequently saw, and more frequently heard, the little family as they followed their busy parents around on the neighboring trees.

One day I noted the singer flitting about the top of the spruce, singing most joyously, and almost as constantly as before the advent of the nestlings, while the mother was hurrying over the lower branches of the same tree, collecting food for one youngster. Suddenly the song ceased, and the tiny papa joined the family party below, and addressed himself with his usual energy to the business of filling that greedy mouth.

Over and under and around and through the branches he rushed, every few seconds returning to stuff a morsel into the always hungry mouth, till he actually reduced that infant to silence, and then he slipped away, returned to his tree top, and resumed his lovely "tee-tee-tweetum!"

Somewhat later I heard the baby black-throats at their practice, droll, quavering attempts to imitate the musical song of their father. They soon mastered the notes, but the spirit was as yet far beyond them.

This happy life went on before my window till, almost at the end of July, a heavy fog swept in one evening from the ocean, and when, the next day, a cool north wind blew it back whence it came, it seemed to take the whole tribe of warblers with it. August was now upon the threshold, and in the bird world at least

"Summer like a bird had flown."

FIVE LITTLE WOODMEN.

E. F. MOSBY.

Out of the woods they come, visiting our homes wherever they see a standing invitation in the shape of a tree. But each one has his preferences. One likes the evergreens best, another the bare trunk where it is easy to break the bark, and still another likes a fresh tree like the magnolia, glossy and full of life even in winter. You have guessed these are birds? Yes; and the small downy woodpecker comes first, and in all weathers. The other day after a sun-rise of gold and a splendid rainbow arch, swiftly blotted out by a black storm with scudding rain and flying leaves, I caught sight of a tiny downy, in the very heart of all the uproar of the elements, busily pecking his way up a tree near my window. On another winter day, sunny and calm, he came flying overhead with a loud rattling note that spoke of good cheer in most neighborly fashion. It is a family, at the very least, that visits us. There are variations in size, if I mistake not, and one day a pair arrived together; the female with her glossy black velvet crown almost as handsome with her broad white satin stripe down the middle, and black and white markings, as her mate, who, indeed, only outshines her by the lovely band of red on the head or nape of his neck, as you choose to call it. I fancy she is the more anxious housekeeper. At least, it was her persistent call-note, rather sharp in tone, that drew me from my lounge to watch her quick movements on the bark, and it is she that more quickly takes flight. He seems never disturbed by his inquisitive human neighbors, nor even the impudent sparrows--though he can send these to the right about if he pleases--and his tap, tap, tap, like a small drummer on the tree-trunk, is always pleasant to hear. I am glad to know they both have a cozy little home, a hole on the southern side of a tree, where the sun shines on good days, and fancy them tucked into round balls of feathers, only to be distinguished by the red on top, and comfortably asleep, when neither pleasure nor necessity invites them abroad.

The yellow-bellied sapsucker is also a winter guest, but he is far more timid than the downy, and I have often seen him routed by the sparrows or scared off by a sudden sound. The male is very gay in plumage, with much mottled yellowish brown on back, conspicuous white stripes on wings, beautiful clear yellow and black in front, scarlet on his head and cardinal at his throat. The female has a white throat and cardinal or black cap. I have noticed one with a cardinal cap that had little black feathers sticking here and there like an emery bag. They are very full of fun, even riotous in play, and shout, in their summer home--the woods of the north--but they are very quiet when wintering with us, and often flit away without a sound.

Of the nuthatches, the pretty white-breasted one with his soft bluish-grey coat and shining black head, is our familiar resident and the red-breasted an occasional winter companion. They are charming little birds, not specially musical, though their call is vigorous and friendly, but very pretty and gentle, and awakening perpetual wonder and admiration at their feats as acrobats, running as lightly head downwards as in a natural position, and showing equal swiftness and grace in every movement, whether with aid of wings or without. They never seem in the least afraid of us, but raise their softly rounded heads and look at us with a most delightful confidence.

The brown creeper is like a bit of the trunk in his brown tints, mottled as if in mimicry of the play of light and shadow on the bark. He is as truly a tree-creature as ever Greek fable devised, and can so flatten himself, when alarmed, against a tree that no inch of his light breast is visible, and it is difficult, indeed, to recognize him as a separate being. He is the one species found in America of quite a large Old World family, and has some odd characteristics. First, his long tail, used to aid him in climbing, is rather curved and stiff and generally worn by constant use. His bill is also curved, so that the profile of his figure is like a relaxed bow as he works his plodding way up the side of the tree, diligently seeking insects, eggs, and larvæ, in the minute crevices of the bark. He sticks his little nest, made, of course, of bits of dead wood, bark, and twigs, between the tree and a strip of loose bark, very like a part of the tree itself, and the eggs are spotted and dotted with wood colors, brown in different shades, and lavender. Altogether his life is a tree-study; the tree is to him home, model, hunting-ground, hiding-place, and refuge. He never descends by creeping, but when he wants to search a lower part of the trunk, he flies to the base, and begins it all over again. In the summer fir-wood, farther northward, it is said he sings, but in winter-time we hear only a faint squeak, a little like one bough scraping against another.

The black-and-white creeping warbler is very like our sober brown creeper in habit, but he, like most of his gay brethren, is only a summer guest. In his place we have Carolina chickadees and golden-crowned kinglets--and even, by good luck, an occasional ruby-crowned. All these tiny creatures have the most charming and airy ways of flitting from bough to bough, swinging lightly from the utmost end of a bough, daintily dropping to unexpected resting-places, and rarely pausing for a second's breathing-time anywhere. The Carolina chickadee is said to have a longer note and more varied _repertoire_ than his northern cousin, yet whenever I have heard him in winter weather, there is the same silvery and joyous tinkle of showering _Chick-a-dee-dee-dees_ from the pretty gray and black-capped flock that I have heard in Massachusetts. Perhaps the variations are more evident in his summer singing.

I have left the kinglet for the last, but it is hard to do justice to this lovely little bird that, if the food-supply be all right, will often elect to stay with us in winter rather than migrate to Mexico. His colors are exquisite, olive-green bordered by darker tints that throw the green above and the yellow-tinted white below into fine relief; a brilliant crown of reddish-gold, bordered by black and yellow, and every feather preened to satiny smoothness. He gleans his food merrily, singing or calling softly to himself as he works. His nest is built in the far northern forests, sometimes swinging as high as sixty feet, and woven of pale green mosses, lined with strips of the silky inside back and down for the many nestlings.

THE COCOA-NUT.

The fruit of the cocoa-nut palm, (_Cocos nucifera_), which is the most useful tree of all its tribe to the natives of the regions in which it grows, is one of the most valuable and important of commercial products. On the Malabar and Corvomandel coasts of India the trees grow in vast numbers; and in Ceylon, which is peculiarly well situated for their cultivation, it is estimated that twenty millions of the trees flourish. The wealth of a native in Ceylon is estimated by his property in cocoa-nut trees, and Sir Emerson Tennent notes a law case in a district court in which the subject in dispute was a claim of the twenty-fifth twentieth part of an acre of palms. The tree is very beautiful and lofty, growing to a height of from sixty to one hundred feet, with a cylindrical stem which attains a thickness of two feet. It terminates in a crown of graceful leaves. The leaf sometimes attains a length of twenty feet, consists of a strong mid-rib, whence numerous long, acute leaflets spring, giving the whole, as one traveler described it, the appearance of a gigantic feather. The fruit consists of a thick external husk or rind of a fibrous structure, within which is the ordinary cocoa-nut of commerce. The nut has a very hard, woody shell, inclosing the kernel, within which again is a milky substance of a rather agreeable taste.

The cocoa-nut palm is so widely disseminated throughout tropical countries that it is impossible to distinguish its original habitat. It flourishes with equal vigor on the coast of the East Indies, throughout the tropical islands of the Pacific, and in the West Indies and tropical America. It is most at home, however, in the numerous small islands of the Pacific Ocean. Its wide dissemination is accounted for by the shape of the fruit, which, dropping into the sea from trees growing along the shores, would be carried by the tides and currents to be cast up and to vegetate on distant coasts.

The uses to which the various parts of the cocoa-nut tree are applied in the regions of their growth are almost endless. The nuts supply a considerable proportion of the food of the people, and the liquor enclosed within them forms a pleasant and refreshing drink. The liquid may also be boiled down to sugar. When distilled it yields a spirit which is known as "arrack." The trunk yields a timber which is known in commerce as porcupine wood, and is used for building, furniture, and firewood; the leaves are plaited into fans and baskets, and for thatching roofs of houses; the shell of the nut is employed as a water vessel, and the outer husk or rind yields the fiber which is used for the manufacture of ropes, brushes, cordage and the like. Cocoa-nut-oil is an important article of commerce. It is obtained by pressing or boiling the kernels, which are first broken up into small pieces and dried in the sun. It is estimated that one thousand full-sized nuts will produce upwards of twenty-five gallons of oil. The oil is a white, solid substance at ordinary temperature, with a peculiar rather disagreeable odor. Under pressure it spreads into a liquid and a solid, the latter being extensively used in the manufacture of candles.

Within late years the oil has also been manufactured into cocoa-nut butter, retaining, however, in a greater or less degree a distinct flavor of the nut.

The monkeys and orang-outangs are very expert in destroying the tough outer covering of the cocoa-nut, though quite two inches thick. They insert their teeth into the tapering end of the nut, where the shell is very uneven, hold it firmly with the right foot, and with the left tear the covering to pieces. Then thrusting a finger into one of the natural apertures they pierce a hole, drink the milk, break the shell on some hard object and eat the kernel.

THE BLACK WALNUT AND BUTTERNUT.

The black walnut (_Juglans nigra_) is found in the rich, deep soils, from western Massachusetts, west to southern Minnesota and southward to central Texas and northern Florida. It is not found along the gulf or Atlantic coasts to any extent, but abounds west of the Allegheny mountains, especially in the Mississippi Valley. The tree grows rapidly and to a great size, one specimen on Long Island having attained a circumference of twenty-five feet.