Part 4

In looking over BIRDS AND ALL NATURE I have noticed with pleasure some articles from the pen of Caroline Crowninshield Bascom that have particularly pleased me. Her interpretations of what her pet cats and birds have to say, their manifestations of intelligence, and the sentiments of affection, or envy, jealousy, and malice; their obedience and their moralities under her judicious training. A woman who can train a cat to live in harmony with a bird, to see each other caressed in turn by a beloved mistress, should be on the county school board as a successful educator. For boys and girls can be more easily trained than those in the lower forms of life. I trust Miss Bascom will not try to harmonize the cat with rats and mice, lest those natural-born thieves increase to such an extent that every municipality will be compelled to have traps and police in every nook and corner, in every cellar and garret of all our private and public buildings. There is a limit, dear Miss Bascom, to peace and good will on earth.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. _New York, July 1, 1899._

THE INFLUENCE OF PICTURES.

J. P. M'CASKEY.

If it is a very good thing to hang attractive pictures on the walls of the home, then it is doubly so thus to ornament the walls of the schoolroom. "In the emptiest room," says Ruskin, "the mind wanders most, for it gets restless like a bird for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. Bare walls are not a proper part of the means of education; blank plaster about and above them is not suggestive to pupils." The landscape makes a bright opening through the dead wall like a window; flowers and ferns are suggestive of the garden, the lane, the field, the woods, the purling stream; of song-birds in the air or among the branches, and blue sky overhead. Animals suggest a life with which we should be more or less familiar. The portrait speaks the man, what we know of him, suggesting trains of thought that may be most interesting and profitable.

A mother wondered why her three brave lads had all gone to sea from an inland home. She was speaking, in her loneliness, with a friend who had called upon her, and she could not suggest any reason why they should all have adopted the sea-faring life when none of their friends or relatives had been sailors. The man observed a picture of a full-rigged ship hanging above the mantel. It was perhaps the only picture in the room, at least the only one at all conspicuous. A thought struck him. "How long has that picture been hanging there?" he asked. "Oh, it has been there ever since the boys were little children." "It was that," he said, "that sent your boys away. The sea grew upon their imagination until they longed for it, and sought it, and so they are gone."

So a striking or attractive picture, in the schoolroom as in the home, may sink deep into the heart of the child, and mean far more to him than much of the work which the school program usually imposes. He may forget the name and lose all recollection of the personality of the teacher and of most of his schoolmates, but the striking picture is a picture still. That he will always remember. In our experience, as we grow older, if we are at all observant, we know more and more the value of these things--how great a factor in education they may become!

Men wonder sometimes how they can expend a modest sum of money to good purpose in giving pleasure and profit to others. Get some pictures of good faces, and flowers, and landscapes, and other proper subjects, and put them upon the walls of your nearest school-house, or of some other in which you may be interested. When you have done this for one school you may want to do it for a second, or you will suggest to some other generous heart the like gift of enduring value. What chance have boys and girls with a dead-alive teacher in a school-house whose blank walls are eloquent of poverty? Oh, the weariness of it!

Real, genuine, helpful, beautiful art is now brought within reach of the million. The arts of chromo-lithography and half-tone engraving are putting exquisite pictures, at low cost, wherever there is taste to appreciate and enjoy them. In our homes they are everywhere. Why not everywhere also upon schoolroom walls bare of these choice educational influences? To many a child good pictures come like the ministrations of the angels. We feel this, we know it; and for the years remaining to us shall do what we can to make school-life better for the pictures on the wall.

THE SEA-CHILDREN.

COLE YOUNG RICE.

"Oh, mother, I lay A-dreaming one day By the wreck of the Alberdeen, And I heard a singing Under the sea Of children swinging-- Their hair was green!-- In seaweed swings, and they called to me-- Oh, mother, they called to me"--

"Hush, hush thee, my child! Thy prattle is wild, For the children that dwell in the sea Are the fishes swimming Amid white shells Whose pearly hymning But echoed to thee The strangled songs of the sinking swells-- My child, 'twas the song of the swells."

"And, mother," they said "Come to us!--oh, dread Not the waves tho' they fret and foam; They're far, far over Us while we play Beneath the cover Of our sea-home, All day, all day o'er the beds of the bay! Oh, mother, the beds of the bay!"

"Hush, hush thee, my child!"-- But strangely he smiled As he gazed at the weird-lit waves. For he heard a singing-- "Come to us, come!" He saw them swinging In crystal caves, And cried, "I'm coming! I'm"--ah, how numb His death-dewy lips--how numb!

NATURE STUDY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

At the Shaw banquet in St. Louis the subject for the evening was "Horticultural Education," and a good deal was said as to the introduction of the study in the public schools.

On the question of its interfering with other school work, Prof. Jackman of Chicago said: "The intimation has been thrown out here to-night that perhaps the child's study of nature might interfere with something else in the schools. I can assure such objectors that it will interfere with some of the things they are taught. It will interfere with some of the dull routine that you and I can recollect, which we passed through when we were in these schools. The children have waited all too long for such an interference."

State Superintendent of Schools Kirk, said: "It is my firm conviction that a large part of what we now call 'geography' should be eliminated from the school curriculum. Much of it is so worthless or misleading as to retard education and exhaust the children's energies without any definite purpose. Children should learn about the country they live in, rather than the remote regions of Asia and the Arctic Zone."

One speaker declared that the recreation time can be restfully utilized for nature-study work. Memory is good but observation is better, and teachers are asking for specimens of fruits, nuts, grains, grasses, woods, leaves, twigs, buds, and flowers.

BIRDS AND ORNITHOLOGISTS.

Birds has entered upon a new year with the satisfaction of having pleased its readers as well as having rendered actual service to the cause of education, ornithological literature and art. Nature with her usual prodigality has scattered thousands of rare and attractive birds throughout the world, and of these the editor of BIRDS selects the most interesting species, the loveliest forms and the richest plumage for preservation by means of magnificent illustrations, obtained through the expensive process of color photography. A unique treatment of text makes the magazine interesting and instructive to old and young alike. The people of this locality are noted for being lovers of birds and students of nature, and it has given the three greatest naturalists the world has ever known. This is the native heath of Audubon and Robert Dale Owen. Mr. S. G. Evans, the well-known dry goods merchant of this city, has a very fine and complete set of Audubon's birds. All this fills our eyes to think what the world lost in the death of William Hamilton Gibson. He made all life seem related to our lives, all being to appear one substance, all to be worthy of interest, sympathy, love, and reverence. There are strange and beautiful stories told of his power to attract and handle the shyest creatures. Once, it is said, he went to a public library in Brooklyn to make a sketch of some rare butterfly, and had found a book of plates from which he was studying his subject, when, lo! there floated into the great room one of the very specimens he desired to picture, fluttered down upon the open page, and at last rested with throbbing wings beside its own portrait. On one election day, Mr. Gibson went to vote, and as he was studying his ticket, there came in at the open door, no one knew whence, a stray pigeon, which flew at once to him and perched upon his shoulder. He caressed it in his tender fashion, and murmured to it, and then it flew away, no one knew whither. Once, too, as he sat upon his veranda at The Sumacs, his country home in Connecticut, describing to a visitor the peculiar markings upon the wings of a certain song-bird, he suddenly arose, stepped to a bush upon the lawn, and coaxed into his hand the very bird of which he was talking, and which he brought to show to his astonished guest. This sympathy with the world of life outside of man fills his text and his illustrations to overflowing.--_Evansville (Ind.) Courier._

ACCORDANCE OF NATURE.

For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she works in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave each other know. Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part, Rotated in the mighty heart. --_Emerson._

O painter of the fruit and flowers, We thank thee for thy wise design, Whereby these human hands of ours In Nature's garden work with thine. And thanks that from our daily need The joy of a simple faith is born. That he who smites the summer weed May trust thee for the autumn corn. Give fools their gold and knaves their power, Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall, Who sows a field or trains a flower Or plants a tree is more than all. For he who blesses most is blest, And God and man shall have his worth Who toils to leave as a bequest An added beauty to the earth. --_Whittier._

THE WATER LILY.

This is the name of an aquatic plant of the genus _Nymphæa_, distinguished for its usually very fragrant flowers and large, floating leaves; applied also to the yellow pond lily of the genus _Nuphar_. The species alba has a large flower filled with petals, so as almost to appear double; it raises itself out of the water and expands about seven o'clock in the morning, and closes again, reposing upon the surface, about four in the afternoon. The roots have an astringent, bitter taste. They are used in Ireland and in the island of Jura to dye a dark brown or chestnut color. Swine are said to eat it, goats not to be fond of it, kine and horses to refuse it. The flowers, the herb, and the root were formerly used in medicine, but are all now obsolete.

The lotus resembles our common white species in the form of the flower and leaves, but the latter are toothed about the edge. It is a native of the hot parts of the East Indies, Africa, and America, is very common in parks, lakes, and rivers in Jamaica and grows in vast quantities on the plains of lower Egypt, near Cairo, during the time they are under water. It flowers there about the middle of September and ripens toward the 12th of October. The Arabians call it _nuphar_. The ancient Egyptians made a bread of the seed of the lotus dried and ground.

All the species of water lilies grow well in large pots of water with a few inches of rich soil at the bottom. They are propagated by dividing the root, and some sorts which produce bulbs are increased by the offshoots from these. Mr. Kent, who cultivated these plants to great perfection, found that the bulbous-rooted nymphæa, if limited in their growth for want of water, or from cold or excessive heat, were apt to form bulbous roots and cease growing for the season. Hence the necessity of water and heat to make them flower freely.

The plant known especially in this country as the water lily, frequently as pond lily and sometimes as water nymph, was dedicated by the Greeks to the water nymphs. The fruit, which ripens under water, is berry-like, pulpy and thin, and each of its numerous seeds is enveloped in a thin sac. Of about twenty species two are found in the United States. Our common species has almost circular leaves, which often cover a broad surface of water on the margins of lakes and ponds, forming what are known as lily pads. The flowers are often over five inches across, of the purest white, and have a most agreeable sweet scent. In some localities the flowers are tinged with pink, and they are found, though rarely, with the petals bright pink throughout. The leaves also vary in size and sometimes are crimson on the under side. The root stalk, as large as one's arm and several feet long, is blackish outside and marked with scars left by the leaves and flower-stems; it is whitish within. Though the plant often grows in water several feet deep, the leaf and flower accommodate themselves to the depth, and they may sometimes be found where there are but a few inches of water.

At a place called Dutchman's Slough, we are informed by Mr. George Northrup, about half a mile above the outlet of Calumet Lake, south of Chicago, grow great quantities of water lilies, which are gathered every season for the Chicago market.

THE WHITE SWAN.

This magnificent bird is well known from being kept in a half-domesticated condition throughout many parts of Europe, whence it has been carried to other countries. In England, according to Newton, it was more abundant formerly than at present, the young being highly esteemed for the table. It was under special enactments for its preservation, being regarded as a "bird royal," which no subject could possess without license from the crown, the granting of which license was accompanied by the condition that every bird in the "game," the old legal term, of swans should bear a distinct mark of ownership on the bill. Originally this ownership was conferred on the larger freeholders only, but it was gradually extended, so that in the reign of Elizabeth upwards of nine hundred distinct swan marks, being those of private persons or corporations, were recognized by the royal swanherd, whose jurisdiction extended over the whole kingdom. At the present time the Queen's companies of Dyers and Vintners still maintain their swans on the Thames. The largest swanery in England is that belonging to Lord Ilchester.

It has been stated that the swan was introduced into England in the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion; but it is now so perfectly naturalized that birds having the full power of flight remain in the country. There is no evidence to show that its numbers are ever increased by immigration from abroad, though it is known to breed as a wild bird in the extreme south of Sweden, whence it may be traced in a south-easterly direction to the valley of the Danube.

The nest of the swan is a large mass of aquatic plants, is often two feet high and six feet in diameter. The eggs are from five to nine in number, of a grayish-olive color. The young are hatched in five to six weeks, and when hatched are clothed in sooty-gray down, which is succeeded by feathers of dark soot-gray. This suit is gradually replaced by white; but the cygnets are more than a year old before they lose all trace of color and become wholly white.

The swan of North America is considerably larger than that of the old world. The first species is the trumpeter, so-called, of which the bill is wholly black, and the second (_Cygnus columbianus_, or _americanus_) has the colored patches on the bill of less extent and deepening almost into scarlet.

Fossil remains of more than one species of swan have been found.

Our picture presents this stately bird swimming among water lilies, a sight that may be seen in summer in some of our American parks, notably the Central Park of New York City. Chicago and Cincinnati have some fine specimens. For portrait and sketch of the black swan, see Vol. III, pp. 66, 67.

NEBRASKA'S MANY BIRDS.

Nebraska is distinctively the bird center of the United States. It contains more species than any other state in the Union, and ornithologists who have studied its feathered possessions have classified 417 distinct species that may be seen within its boundaries. Of these 225 species breed here and the remainder are migrants who drop in on us at certain seasons and then pass on to their breeding-grounds. The natural features of Nebraska are largely responsible for this remarkable variety of feathered population. It includes a diversity of country that offers attractions for hundreds of songsters. For instance, the mocking-bird and the cardinal grosbeak, who are distinctive Southern birds, frequently appear in the southern corner of the state, and in the west we have a large number of what are usually regarded as mountain birds, but which come down from the foothills at intervals to the kingdom of Quivera.--_Omaha Bee._

LURLALINE.

_Old Irish Air._

There was a little water sprite, her name was Lurlaline; Amid the water lilies white sometimes she might be seen. She was a fairy child, Lurline, could sit secure and cool, Upon those lily leaves so green you see in some lone pool.

There would she sit the summer day, singing a song so bright; You never heard the song, you say, and don't believe it quite? But that perhaps is just because when you quite near her stood, You did not notice where she was, or listen as you should.

It happened in the month of June, the happy summer time. She always sang a lovelier tune and wove a lovelier rhyme, And you, too, like to Lurlaline, a lovelier song would sing, If only you knew what they mean, the flowers and ev'ry thing.

If you were like a water sprite--the water sprites know well The wondrous things of day and night, and all they have to tell; They know and love the creatures wild, and all the flowers that grow; They live with them and love them well, God's hidden pets they know.

And now if you want more to know what Amodine saw there, You first must love all things below, in water, earth, and air; You first must love all things that move among the trees and flowers, And then you shall have more to love in shining fairy bowers.

A CONTRIBUTION TO CHILD-STUDY LITERATURE.

It has been a blessed thing for the child and for humanity that the former has at last attracted our attention in a way to force upon us the conviction that it is time we found out what to do with him. People of scientific bent think this can be done by measurement and test experiments. Many fond and utterly unscientific mammas think it can be done by an all-absorbing deference to the child's whims; by setting the child on a pedestal and pouring ointments over him and bringing him sweetmeats and nectar on silver platters. I am not sure but it was this latter conduct on the part of the parent that called the attention of teachers to the need of a thorough study of the child and his requirements. For nothing else is so detrimental to the child's development as this growing tendency to pamper him.

The old method of treating the child was to ignore him; to let him be seen and not heard; to think that because he was young he could run errands all day, eat what was left at table, sleep in the coldest bed at night, and be thrust into the corner as an undesirable piece of furniture. Now the custom is exactly the reverse. In most well-to-do families the child is the central figure, and the parents stand around to minister to him. Nothing is too rich for him, and he becomes the darling, terror, and tyrant of the household.

As between the old boxing-glove method and this modern kid-glove method of handling the child the former is preferable--the hardier ones survive; but no character is proof against the seductive enervation of pampering.

These facts in regard to the development of youth have not escaped the notice of that keenest of observers, Rudyard Kipling. In "Captains Courageous" he has given us his opinion as to the best means of rescuing boys and girls who threaten to become utterly worthless, and of transforming them into useful men and women.--_Child-Study Monthly._

THE YELLOW PERCH.

(_Perca fluviatilis._)

This is a fresh-water fish and is generally distributed over Europe, northern Asia, and North America, and so well known as to have been, it is said, selected for the type of an entire family of spiny-rayed fishes, the _percidas_, which is represented in European fresh waters by several other fishes such as the pope and the pike-perch. It inhabits rivers as well as lakes, and thrives best in waters of a depth of not less than three feet; in large, deep lakes it frequently descends to depths of fifty fathoms and more. It occurs in Scandinavia as far north as the 69th parallel, but does not extend to Iceland or any of the islands north of Europe. In the Alps it ascends to an altitude of four thousand feet.

The shape of the body of the perch is well proportioned, but many variations occur, some specimens being very high-backed, others low and long-bodied. Sometimes such variations are local, and Agassiz and other naturalists at one time thought it possible to distinguish two species of the common perch of Europe; but it can be separated specifically from the North American form. The brilliant colors of the perch render it easily recognizable even at a distance. A rich greenish-brown, with golden reflections, covers the back and sides, which are crossed with five or seven bands. A large black spot covers the membrane between the last spines of the dorsal fin, and the lower parts are bright vermillion. In the large, peaty lakes of North Germany a beautiful variety is not uncommon, in which the golden tinge prevails, as in a gold-fish.

The perch is carnivorous and voracious. It wanders about in small shoals within a certain district, playing havoc among small fishes, and is therefore objectionable in waters where more valuable fry is cultivated. Perch of three pounds in weight are often caught; one of five would now be regarded as an extraordinary specimen, though in rare instances we read of individuals exceeding even that weight. An old fisherman, Mr. George Northrup, a man of rare intelligence, tells us that of thousands of perch caught by him he never took one that weighed above three pounds.

Perch are good, wholesome food and highly esteemed in inland countries where marine fish can be obtained only with difficulty. The nearly allied pike-perch is one of the best European food fishes. It is very prolific, begins to spawn when three years old, in April or May, depositing the ova on water plants.

MOUNTING OF BIRDS.