Part 2

Before the first potter of old had fashioned a vase or a jug the Eumenes fraterna had constructed his dainty little jugs of mud. But the making of jugs is not the only art man might learn from this little wasp. Upon examination we find the jug filled with small green caterpillars. After depositing her egg Mrs. Wasp thus provides for her baby when it shall appear upon the field of action. Now the peculiar part of this proceeding to which I wish to call attention is that the worm is not dead, but is merely in a comatose state. If it had been killed it would have putrified and entirely disappeared before the young wasp was hatched. Furthermore, the young wasp is fond of fresh caterpillar steak, preferably from the living animal. So Mrs. Wasp must have a method of preserving the fresh living victim for her rapacious progeny next spring, while he is too young to hunt for himself, and while the caterpillars are still securely hiding in their mummy cases, Mrs. Wasp finds the venturesome young caterpillar crawling somewhere, and pouncing upon him, carefully inserts her sting into the nerve ganglia that are located in a line along his dorsal surface. We don’t know how she learned the exact location of the ganglia and that a few well-directed stabs will produce more effect than hundreds of misdirected thrusts in other parts of the body, but it is certainly true that she selects the very segments in which the ganglia are located to inflict the wound. And she had the location of these nerve centers for a long time before biologists made the discovery. What a fine thing it would be for the biologist if he could learn the secret of thus preserving living animals instead of the stiff, discolored and uninteresting alcoholic specimens. Then think of the economic value of such a discovery. Animals could be fattened in summer at much smaller expense and then injected and set away until needed. We would have no more difficulty in providing our armies with beef on the hoof, and fresh meat could be shipped at much less expense over long distances, as no ice would be necessary. We would have no more complaint of embalmed beef and putrid canned goods.

The common mud wasp that builds in old garrets fills his nest with a species of spider much relished by the young wasp and exhibits much judgment in supplying exactly the right number to provide for the growing wasp until he is able to sally forth and seize prey for himself. These spiders—often seventeen or eighteen of them—are stupefied in the same manner as in the case of the potter wasp, and are living when the young wasp begins his repast. This habit is peculiar to many species of wasp and is, I think, worthy of careful study. I wish I had space to tell of the almost fiendish ingenuity that certain parasites show in maintaining themselves at the expense of their hosts.

The ground hog has a knack of spending his winter in a way that is at once economical and pleasant. They generally hibernate in pairs, rolling themselves up into balls. They do not seem to breathe or to perform any of the life functions during their long six months’ sleep. There is, I fear, no foundation of fact for the ancient fiction of the ground hog appearing and making weather prognostications on the second of February. A gentleman writing in the New York Sun of some years since says: “I took the trouble once to dig into a woodchuck’s burrow on Candlemas day, and a warm, cloudy day it was; just such a day when the ground hog is said to come out of his hole and stay out. I found two woodchucks in the burrow, with no more signs of life about them than if they had been shot and killed. From all outward appearances I could have taken them out and had a game of football with them without their knowing it.”

Nor is it true that hibernating animals live upon their accumulated fat, for digestion, as well as other active life processes, ceases. Hibernating animals always begin their long sleep upon an empty stomach, and food injected into their stomach is not digested. The fat disappears, it is true, but it is not in any strict sense digested. Any experienced hunter is aware that unless the entrails are removed from the shot rabbit the fat will disappear from about the kidneys. The fat may, and no doubt does, assist in some way in the long sleep. It may act as fuel to keep up the right living temperature. At any rate, it is true that hibernating animals eat voraciously and grow very fat just before they go to sleep. It is a peculiar fact that many hibernating animals bring forth their young during this period. This is especially true of woodchucks and bears. It is a common experience with hunters that only male bears are killed during the winter season.

Mr. Andrew Fuller of Ridgewood, New Jersey, according to the article above quoted, had an interesting experience with a pair of Rocky Mountain ground squirrels. After missing them for a month he accidentally found them curled up under some straw, apparently frozen stiff. He brought them to the house to show his wife the misfortune that had befallen his pets. Soon they seemed to thaw out and scampered about as lively as ever. No sooner were they put out in the cold than they resumed their sleep, which continued all winter, their bodies maintaining a fairly constant temperature, seldom falling below three degrees above the freezing point of water. They came out in the spring as chipper as if they had been asleep but one night. Many hibernating animals will if wakened by being placed in a warm room, eat eagerly, but they soon show a desire to resume their nap.

The Loir, a peculiar little native of Senegal, never hibernates in its native clime, but every specimen brought to Europe becomes torpid when exposed to cold. The common land tortoise—wherever he may be and he is a voracious eater of almost anything—always goes to sleep in November, and wakes some time in May.

Just as in the north numerous animals hibernate upon approach of cold, so in the south there are species that may be said to estivate during the hottest weather. While the northern animals curl up so as to retain heat, his southern cousin straightens out as much as possible to allow the heat to escape from all parts of the body.

But it was not my intention to write an essay upon hibernation and allied phenomena, but merely to speak of it as a subject that should be investigated. What a splendid arrangement it would be for the poor, the sick, and the melancholy folk if they could just hibernate for six months occasionally.

I will merely speak of the light of the so called lightning bug, with its over ninety per centum efficiency and no heat and no consumption of fuel to speak of. Why doesn’t some genius learn her language and find out how she does it? She has been trying for centuries to demonstrate it but we are too stupid to learn her secret.

Rowland Watts.

THE GREAT-TAILED GRACKLE. (_Quiscalus macrourus._)

The Great-tailed Grackle belongs to a family of birds that is “eminently characteristic of the New World, all the species being peculiar to America.” It is the family of the blackbird and oriole, of the bobolink and the meadowlark. It is called the Icteridae, from a Greek word ikteros, meaning a yellow bird. The majority of the one hundred and fifty or more species that are grouped in this family make their home in the tropics where their brilliant colors are emphasized by the ever green foliage and the bright sunshine.

The family is interesting because the species, though closely related, vary so widely in their habits. They “are found living in ground of every nature, from dry plains and wet marshes to the densest forest growth.” Here are classed some of the birds which are among the most beautiful of our songsters. Here, too, are classed some species that never utter a musical sound, and whose voices are harsh and rough. The sexes are usually dissimilar, the female being the smaller and generally much duller in color.

The Great-tailed Grackle is a native of Eastern Texas, and the country southward into Central America. The Grackles are sometimes called Crow Blackbirds. There are five species, all found in the United States, The Bronzed and the Purple Grackles are the most generally distributed and best known.

The Great-tailed Grackle, as well as the other species, usually builds rude and bulky nests in trees, sometimes at quite a height from the ground. It will also nest in shrubs and it is said that it will occasionally select holes in large trees. The males are an iridescent black in color and the females are brown and much smaller. Both sexes spend most of their time on the ground. Their feet are strong and large, and, when upon the ground, they walk or run and never hop.

THE EAGLE.

He clasps the crag with hooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. —Alfred Tennyson.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS.

What do we mean by the “Geographical Distribution” of birds? Are not birds to be found everywhere, over both land and sea? Are they not, then, universally distributed? As a class they certainly are, but not as species nor even orders. Parrots are not found in frigid regions, nor are snowflakes and snowy owls found in the tropical regions. Our Wood Warblers and Vireos are not found outside of America, while there are no birds of Paradise anywhere in America. We shall see that most of the birds found in the eastern hemisphere differ from those found in the western, speaking broadly, but that many of the island birds are different from birds of continents.

Since most birds migrate shorter or longer distances in search of a place to rear their young, and return again to warmer regions to pass the winter months, the question at once arises, What is the geographical distribution of such migratory birds? That is not so difficult as it may seem at first glance. We have only to inquire what governs the movements of the species in question in such a way that its appearance at certain places at certain known times may be confidently expected. The study of migration and breeding has shown that the impulse to move northward in the spring to the old nesting-places where the young are reared is more reliable than the impulse to move southward on the approach of cold. The birds are more certain to appear at their old summer homes in spring than they are to be found at any particular place during the winter. But if there be any objection to this view it will yet remain true that where a bird rears its young should more properly be called its home than the place to which it is forced by the approach of cold or the lack of food. In either case, therefore, we may regard the home of the bird, and therefore treat its distribution geographically as the place where it habitually rears its young. Having settled the question as to what shall determine the distribution of the separate species, it remains to study the physical conditions of the earth for the sake of finding what it is that determines the limits to which the different species may go.

We know that the distribution of land and water over the earth has not always been the same as it is now, but that many places that are now covered with water were once dry land, and that in many places where there is now land there used to be water. Now, America is wholly separated from Uro-Asia-Africa, but once they were connected together by a broad neck of land where Bering Sea now lies, and there may have been another neck of land connecting Europe with Iceland and Greenland and so with North America. Now Australia and New Zealand are wholly separated from all other lands, but they were not so long ago. So of the larger islands in general, they have not always been isolated as now, but connected with great land masses, sharing with them the animals which roamed over the whole vast regions. For in the earlier times before Man had appeared upon the earth, before the great Glacial Period, the whole earth was tropical in climate, making it possible for plants as well as animals to live anywhere upon the earth, as they cannot now. Then extensive migrations north and south were not necessary, but instead there were roamings about in all directions, or great invasions of new regions by hosts of animals of one kind.

As the land sank away here and there, and the sea covered it, barriers were thus formed to further roamings, except by the birds of strong flight or animals that could swim long distances, and there could no longer be an intermingling of the animals of the whole land surface of the world. Since all animals are inclined to change somewhat to meet or keep pace with the changes that are going on in vegetation and the general physical conditions of the earth, those that have been separated in this way will grow more and more unlike. In some such isolated regions there may not be much change in their environment and so they will change but little, if at all, and so will not keep pace with those in other regions where life is a constant struggle with others for supremacy. It is just as true in the natural world as in the commercial, that competition is necessary for the highest development. It is probably true that the disturbances which caused the land to sink in places and so disconnect what had been connected lands, possibly a splitting up of one great flat land mass, also brought about the changes which made out of one great tropical world the one that we know with its frigid, temperate and tropical zones. So that just at the time when the animals of the different regions were separated from each other forever there came these changes in physical conditions which would make them change to meet the new conditions. But that is a long story for the geologist to tell. Of course the sinking of the land in different regions occurred at different times, probably thousands of years apart in many cases. And the changes from tropical to temperate and frigid must have been very gradual also, or there would have been no animals left alive in the northern and southern regions. Only those near the equator could have lived.

Probably New Zealand was the first considerable land mass to be separated absolutely and for all time from all other land, because here we find the lowest type of birds and lower animals. There are no terrestrial indigenous mammals even. Such birds as were not able to fly across the now wide stretches of ocean did not continue to develop rapidly because there was little change in their environment and because there was little or no competition with other similar forms. So to-day we find them either very similar to what they were when their island home was made an island home, or else even degenerated into flightless creatures. Australia seems to have been the next tract of land cut off, for here, too, we meet with the lower forms which show the lack of the keen competition which their relatives further north had to sustain. When North America was cut off from Siberia, marking the close of more or less extensive interchange of communication of the animals of both regions, there was little difference in their animal life; but following this separation there came about a more rapid change in the Orient than in the Occident. It may not be quite clear why this was so, but that it was cannot be doubted, for some of the lower forms of animals which still inhabit America have been completely destroyed in the Orient. At the time of their separation these forms were found in both places. What seems a probable explanation of this more rapid change in the Orient may be briefly stated. The configuration of the Orient is such that animals would have a far greater range east and west than north and south. A great mountain range and a great desert are thrown as barriers across the way of the northward and southward movement. In America there is a continuous gateway to the north and south, but barriers to an eastward or westward movement. With such creatures as the birds freedom to move north and south would always lessen competition, while the crowding of one group or race upon another eastward or westward would increase the competition. But Geology tells us that in the Orient such westward invasions have actually occurred, causing the death of the less hardy forms and the modification of all forms of animal life.

It must not be understood, from what has been said, that all the animals, especially the birds, found in any one country or island, are different from the birds found in all others, for that is not true. There are many species of birds that are found practically all over the earth. But what is true is that each country or region of any considerable extent, or group of oceanic islands has some species which are not found anywhere else in the world.

From what has already been said it will be clear that the world may be divided into several different regions, according to the animals which are peculiar to the different ones. Following Newton’s system, because it seems the most logical, at least so far as the birds are concerned, we have first

THE NEW ZEALAND REGION.

Here we find the flightless Apteryx and a flightless goose now extinct, also the extinct Moa. There, are also peculiar forms among the shore-birds, the birds of prey, the parrots, and some rather curiously constituted passerine birds. There have been several species introduced in relatively recent times, some of which already show signs of change.

THE AUSTRALIAN REGION

is but slightly connected with the preceding. The line separating this region from the Indian passes between the islands of Bali and Lombok, through the Strait of Macassar, between Borneo and Celebes, thence northward between the Philippines and Sanguir and Pelew; including, further on, the Ladrones, Hawaiians, all of Polynesia except the northern outliers of the New Zealand group, and finally sweeping back to encompass Australia. Here we find the curious egg-laying mammal, Ornithorhynchus. But to pass at once to the birds. Here we find such peculiar forms as the megapodes, cassowaries, sun-bitterns, birds-of-paradise, lyre-birds, and many not so familiar. Of the higher birds there are but few compared with Europe or America. It is evidently a continent which has long been separated from the rest of the world.

THE NEOTROPICAL REGION

includes, broadly, tropical America. The forms found here bear certain resemblances to those found in the two regions already discussed; but this resemblance is probably rather because they are low in the scale of development than that there has ever been any direct land connection between them. Much the same conditions of life must have prevailed for all, thus making the rate of development nearly equal. Here we find the rhea, tinamou and hoactzin, which show low grade; but mingling freely with them the higher forms which seem to have come down from the north later and all but crowded out these lower ones. There is abundant evidence that the struggle for existence in South America has been far less severe than in North America.

THE HOLARCTIC REGION,

as the name implies, includes all of North America, Europe, Asia north of India, and the Himalaya mountains, northern Africa where the great Sahara forms the natural boundary, and all islands belonging to the north temperate and north frigid zones. Many have divided this great belt into Palearctic and Nearctic, but the intermingling of species between northeast Siberia and Alaska seems to make such a distinction impracticable. But these distinctions should be and are retained in the divisions of the Holarctic. When we understand that at least one-third of the species found in the Nearctic are also found in the Palearctic, we shall understand why these two are grouped under one region. There are no orders, and there seem to be no families which are found in the Holarctic and nowhere else. Indeed, it is difficult to find even genera which do not have some species ranging into the Neotropical, Ethiopian or Indian. But among the species we find many. Indeed, there are few species which nest in both the Holarctic and in the regions bounding it on the south, and many of these are found only on the southern boundaries of the Holarctic. In our part of the Holarctic, that is, the Nearctic, the familiar birds about us do not nest also in the tropical regions.

THE ETHIOPIAN REGION,

as the name suggests, includes the whole of Africa except that portion north of the Sahara desert, and Arabia and Egypt, with Madagascar and other islands in the immediate vicinity. It seems hardly necessary to even mention the forms that are peculiar to this peculiar region. Even the word Africa brings trooping to our minds a whole continent of peculiarities in more realms than one. Here we find the Ostrich, the plantain eaters, the colies and several, other families—nine in all. Of the lower groups there are the rollers, bee-eaters, horn-bills, the curious secretary-bird and many others. It is significant that among the Passerine birds there are but three families that are peculiar. So on the whole, this region has not developed so rapidly as the Holarctic. There has not been the intense struggle for supremacy here which we see in the north temperate and higher regions.

THE INDIAN REGION

completes the list. Broadly speaking, this region comprises that part of Asia which lies east of the Indus river south of the Himalaya mountains except the eastern half of the drainage basin of the Yang-tse-kiang river, reaching the coast just south of Shanghai, including the island of Formosa, the Philippines, Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Ceylon. This is the Oriental Region of Wallace. There are, apparently, but two families of birds peculiar to this region: the bulbuls and the broad-bills; but there are very many genera and species found nowhere else in the world. The king-crows, sun-birds, swallow-shrikes, argus pheasant, jungle fowl and the well-known peacocks belong here. Very many of the birds of this region are gaudily colored and striking in appearance.