Part 2

Our orchard is surrounded by a fence of weather-stained chestnut rails, whose punctured surface has been the scene of many a worm tragedy resulting in the survival of the fittest. We enter through a pair of lichen-covered bars, grey-tinted and sobered by age. How far less picturesque is our field and hedgerow when inclosed by that inhuman human invention, a barbed-wire fence, and trim swing gate. To be neat and up to date, is never to be picturesque, and seldom to be artistic. But our quiet entrance into the orchard has caused something of a disturbance among the inhabitants, if no great alarm. Fluttering hastily to a convenient tree top goes a dainty red-eyed vireo, who seems to me to have more of a grey than olive gleam to his shining back. As he alights upon the topmost bough—

“A bird’s bright gleam on me he bent, A bird’s glance, fearless, yet discreet,”

but to show that he is in no way seriously alarmed he flings down to us some sweet notes of liquid song. It is Wilson Flagg, I believe, that has dubbed him the Preacher, but to me he seems more correctly termed the Lover, for I can but interpret his accentuated notes into “Sweet Spirit, Sweet—Sweet—Spirit,” a continuous cry, as it were, of loving eulogy to the devoted little wife who is so carefully hidden in her pocket nest in a distant thorn tree. But all of this time we understand his clever machinations, as he carefully leads us in an opposite direction by his song allurements. He flits from tree to tree with a naive turn and flutter, keeping upon us all the time, an eye alert and keen, until he deems us at a safe distance enough to be left to our own clumsy device, when, with a quick turn, he wheels backward to the starting-point, and we hear a triumphant praise call to the beloved “Sweet Spirit.” Near a corner of the old orchard where there are great bunches of Elder and Sumach, we hear vehemently stitching, a busy little Maryland yellow throat, doing up his summer song work with an energetic “Stitch-a-wiggle, Stitch-a-wiggle, Stitch-a-wiggle, stitch ’em,” the “stitch ’em” brought out with such emphatic force that it seems the last satisfactory utterance of a work accomplished. His pert vivacity has been most delightfully illustrated by Ernest Seton-Thompson, in Frank Chapman’s “Bird Life,” and I am sure the snap-shot caught him on his last accentuated “stitch ’em.” Dr. Abbot tells us that these busy little people usually build their nests in the skunk cabbage plants, indicating that they must have an abnormal odor sense, but perhaps they allow their sense of safety to overcome their sense of smell. However, this pair of yellow-throats have built instead, among some thickly matted Elders, just above the ground.

Another fact that favors our orchard in bird minds, is its close proximity to a thickly foliaged ravine which affords such delightful security to feathered people. It is also a charming background for our sunny orchard, filled in below, as it is, with tall, ghostly stalks of black cohosh gleaming white in the shadows.

Near by, upon a bit of high ground, quivers a group of prim American aspens, the pale green of their bark gleaming against the dark shadows of a hemlock hedge. As we look at them, not a leaf is in motion, when all of a sudden one little leaf begins to gesticulate frantically, throwing itself about with violent wildness, then another leaf catches the enthusiasm of the soft summer air, then another, and another until all of the trees are a mass of gesticulating, seething little serrated atoms, for all the world like a congregation of human beings, vociferating, demonstrating, or contradicting some poor little human leaf that has dared to be moved by some passing thought in advance of his fellow kind. Darting through the quivering foliage comes a gleam of fire, which resolves itself into a scarlet tanager who calls to us, “look-see,” demanding our attention to his bright beauty, remembering possibly that his brilliant coloring is but a thing of short duration, for too soon will come winter and plain clothes. Perched upon a fence rail, but somewhat out of place in this shady corner, sits a blatant meadow lark, about whose golden breast is hung a gleaming neck chain and locket of shining black feathers, of which, from the pert poise of his head, we deem him justly proud, and he is at least a conspicuous spot of color against the green of the hillside. He eyes us impertinently as he inconsistently but musically calls to us, “You-can’t-see-me, You-can’t-see-me,” in the face of the most contradictory evidence of his own conspicuousness, varying his song to “Erie-lake-Erie,” with every other breath. As a child I used to wonder who taught him the name of the great lake on whose borders he makes his summer home. But to other people, other interpretations, for to Neltje Blanchan he says “Spring-o’-the-year, spring-o’-the-year,” and to Frank Chapman his song is a bar of high, trilling notes. Sing on, you wary warbler, for we have not time to search out your carefully hidden nest among the timothy grasses of the distant meadow, for we know that it would be like looking for the pearl in the oyster, so carefully is it concealed among the dried grasses, but which snakes and field mice depredate so effectually. In the distant valley we hear the soft echo of the Italian liquids of the wood thrush’s “A-o-le-le, a-oa-o-le.” Shy little songster, who so sweetly trills to us long after his feathered kind have tucked their busy little bills away in soft wings. Across the orchard comes the romantic “Coo-coo-coo-coo,” sometimes interpreted into “I-thou-thou-thou,” of the purple plumaged mourning dove, starting out on a high minor and softly falling to a low contralto. There are no more delightful representatives of romantic bird love, than these birds illustrate. More frequently than in any other species you see the devoted pair going about together, on the telegraph wire, on the tree top, on the wing, always together, undulating their graceful necks with marked devotion. Many a bird lover has criticised Mr. Dove for his remarkable fondness for a lady who is a so decidedly slack housekeeper, and who is satisfied with so shiftless a nest in which to deposit the two white eggs, for the few carelessly thrown together sticks can prove anything but a bed of down to the tender bird babies. However, perhaps these romantic birds consider that “love is enough” as they follow Le Gallienne’s refrain of:

“The bird of life is singing on the bough, His two eternal notes of ‘I and Thou’— Oh, hearken well, for soon the song sings through And would we hear it, we must hear it now.” Alberta A. Field.

THE CANADA GROUSE. (_Dendragapus canadensis_.)

The Canada Grouse, also called the Spruce Partridge, frequents the evergreen forests and swamps and the shrubby areas of British America east of the Rocky Mountains, and in Alaska it is a resident of the Pacific coast. In its southern flights it seldom passes beyond the latitude of the northern portion of New England and Minnesota.

This bird is an interesting member of the bird family Tetraonidae, which also includes the birds variously called bob-white, quail and partridge, the ptarmigans and the prairie hen. The family includes about two hundred species, about one-half of which belong to the Old World. There are twenty-five distinct species of the subfamily of grouse. These are practically confined to the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and are strictly speaking non-migratory. In fact, nearly all the birds of this family are resident throughout the year in the localities where they are found.

They are terrestrial in their habits, and when frightened they usually depend on hiding in places where their dull colors will least attract attention, but they will, occasionally, fly into trees when flushed.

The Canada Grouse, like all the related species, is a bird of rapid flight. The feathers of their small wings are stiff, causing a whirring sound during flight. The male during the mating season gives a great deal of attention to his appearance. He is quite black in general color and more or less barred with white underneath and above with gray or reddish brown. The female is not quite as large as the male, and is not as dark in color. Above the eye of the male there is a small area of bare skin, which is a bright vermilion color.

These gentle and retiring birds mate in the early spring and remain together through the breeding season. Captain Bendire states that he has good reason for believing that the mating may last for more than one season, as he has frequently found a pair, in the depth of winter, when no other individuals of the same species were near. The nest, consisting of loosely arranged blades of grass and a few stalks and twigs, is built by the hen on a slight elevation of ground, usually under the low branches of a spruce tree.

The number of eggs varies greatly. Mr. Ridgway says that they vary in number from nine to sixteen. The eggs also vary greatly in color from a pale, creamy buff through various shades to brownish buff, and are irregularly spotted with a deeper brown, though occasionally they are spotless.

During the spring and summer months the food of the Canada Grouse consists very largely of the berries of plants belonging to the Heath family, such as the blueberry, the huckleberry and the bearberry, as well as the tender buds of the spruce. In the winter it feeds almost entirely on these buds, and the needle-like leaves of the spruce, the fir or the tamarack trees. At times they seem to show a preference for certain trees, and will nearly strip the foliage from them.

As a food for man their flesh is far from satisfactory. It is dark-colored and strongly flavored with the odor of their natural food. However, certain Indian tribes are said to relish them and hunt them extensively.

Mr. Bishop, in “Forest and Stream,” relates the following very interesting account of the strutting of the male Canada Grouse while in captivity. He says, “I will describe as nearly as I can his conduct and attitude while strutting: The tail stands almost erect, the wings are slightly raised from the body and a little drooped, the head is still well up, and the feathers of breast and throat are raised and standing out in regular rows, which press the feathers of the nape and hind neck well back, forming a smooth kind of cape on the back of the neck. This smooth cape contrasts beautifully with the ruffled black and white feathers of the throat and fore breast. The red comb over each eye is enlarged until the two nearly meet over the top of the head. This comb the bird is able to enlarge or reduce at will, and while he is strutting the expanded tail is moved from side to side. The two center feathers do not move, but each side expands and contracts alternately with each step the bird walks. The movement of the tail produces a peculiar rustling, like that of silk. This attitude gives him a very dignified and even conceited air. He tries to attract attention in every possible way, by flying from the ground up on a perch, and back to the ground, making all the noise he can in so doing. Then he will thump some hard substance with his bill. I have had him fly up on my shoulder and thump my collar. At this season he is very bold, and will scarcely keep enough out of the way to avoid being stepped on. He will sometimes sit with his breast almost touching the earth, his feathers erect as in strutting, and making peculiar nodding and circular motions of the head from side to side; he will remain in this position two or three minutes at a time. He is a most beautiful bird, and shows by his actions that he is perfectly aware of the fact.”

There seems to be a diversity of opinion regarding the method followed by this grouse to produce the drumming sound. Mr. Everett Smith, as quoted by Captain Bendire, says, “The Canada Grouse performs its drumming upon the trunk of a standing tree of rather small size, preferably one that is inclined from the perpendicular, and in the following manner: Commencing near the base of the tree selected, the bird flutters upward with somewhat slow progress, but rapidly beating wings, which produce the drumming sound. Having thus ascended fifteen or twenty feet it glides quietly on the wing to the ground and repeats the maneuver.” According to this and other authorities a tree, usually spruce, having a diameter of about six inches and inclining at an angle of about fifteen degrees, is selected. Frequently these trees are used so extensively and for so long a time that the bark on the upper side will be much worn. Other authorities, and among them Indians, who live in the regions frequented by this grouse, claim that the drumming is produced while flying from the branches of a tree to the ground, repeating the operation several times in succession. Another authority describes the drumming of the male as follows, “After strutting back and forth for a few minutes, the male flew straight up, as high as the surrounding trees, about fourteen feet; here he remained stationary an instant, and while on suspended wing did the drumming with the wings, resembling distant thunder, meanwhile dropping down slowly to the spot from where he started, to repeat the same thing over and over again.”

The Canada Grouse is easily domesticated and would make an interesting and amiable bird pet, because of their peculiar habits.

Seth Mindwell.

DO PLANTS HAVE INSTINCT.

Instinct has been defined as a spontaneous impulse, especially in the lower animals—that moves them, without reasoning, toward actions that are essential to their existence, preservation and development. Instinct, imbedded in their organic structure, is the guide of animal life as reason is the guide of rational life. Instinct is said to be incapable of development and progress.

It is instinct that guides the wild goose in his long flight to meet the changing requirements of food and nesting. It is instinct that enables the carrier pigeon, though taken hoodwinked and by night to distant points, to wing his way unerringly homeward. Instinct leads the thrifty squirrel to stock his larder with nuts in anticipation of the period that must pass ere nuts are ripe again, and teaches him to destroy the embryo plant by biting out the germ so that his chestnuts will not sprout and thus be spoiled for food. The same wonderful power enables the bee to build her comb upon the strictest mathematical principles so as to obtain the greatest storage capacity and strength of structure with smallest consumption of wax, and then to store it with one of the most perfect and concentrated of foods. These and many other well-known cases of animal instinct will occur to the reader, but the object of this article is to mention a few phenomena of plant life, whereby they make, what we should designate in human beings, an intelligent adjustment to environment or provision for their future life and development.

As autumn approaches, even before Jack Frost strikes the first rude signal for winter quarters for insect and plant, or the wintry blasts compel the trees to furl sail and scud under bare poles, the forest trees begin to prepare for unfavorable conditions by forming and securely tucking away the bud that is next year to develop into leaf and flower. Before the leaf drops off, a substantial layer of cork is made to close up the pores through which the sap had so freely flowed during the growing season.

My older readers know, of course, that the green color of the leaf is due to the numerous corpuscles of chlorophyll which fill the cells. This same chlorophyll has an important mission to fulfill. These little green bodies are the only real food-making machines in nature. Upon the product of these tiny mills all animate nature depends for food. Their motive power is light, and their raw material the inorganic fluids absorbed by the roots from the soil, and their product is sugars and starches. It will be seen that chlorophyll is one of the most precious, as well as one of the rarest of substances, for while there may appear a great quantity it is superficial, never entering deeply into the substance of the plant.

The trees, by a sort of instinct, shall we say, withdraw their cohorts of green-liveried workers from the front as autumn approaches and deck themselves in the more gaudy but less wholesome colors of declining life. It is after the chlorophyll is withdrawn that the layer of cork is formed. The sturdy oak usually holds his brown leaves until they are whipped off by the wind.

The plants have been using light as a motive power for ages, while man, with his much-vaunted reason, is just beginning to utilize the kindred force, electricity, in arts and sciences. Man makes light draw a few pictures in sombre black and white, while nature flings broadcast landscape and life scenes in varied tints and shades.

In the process of photosynthesis much more energy is received than is necessary to run the machinery, so the plant, with commendable frugality, uses it in laying on what botanists call warming-up colors. If you will notice the peach twigs the next time you take a walk, you will see that the more tender shoots and the buds are decked in rich reds and browns. That this is not for mere ornament may be practically demonstrated by wrapping the bulbs of two similar thermometers, the one with a green leaf, the other with a brown or red leaf, say of begonia or beet. Then put the two in the sunlight and you will soon find a difference of from six to ten degrees in favor of the warming-up color. Speaking of buds, have you examined the horse chestnut bud? It is prepared for the winter in the most substantial manner. The future leaf is first wrapped in a quantity of finest silky wool, then a number of tough light green cases are put on, and this is followed by compact brown scales neatly overlapping, with a complete coating of wax, so that the interior is effectively protected from the cold and moisture. The use of the warming-up colors is quite common with plants.

In the far north the same plant that requires the whole long growing season to mature its seed, will crowd the whole process into a few weeks. It will suspend growth and all other processes, or run them on short time and devote itself almost entirely to producing seed, and the seed itself will have much thicker shell.

I was interested last autumn in the pathetic struggle of a humble little Chenopodium album that had started life late and under unfavorable circumstances. It came up in September under the north piazza near the beaten foot path; close up to the building. I was first attracted by the fact that, though it was not over a foot high, it had bloomed and was making seed at a desperate rate, while its sisters earlier in the season reached several feet in height before blooming. But, alas! for the vanity of the poor little creature, the cold weather during the Christmas holidays came on, and the steam being shut off, the side of the building grew cold and my struggling little friend was frozen, and soon its lifeless remains were the sport and derision of the rude January winds. I pitied the poor little vagabond despite the bad record of her family. Indeed plants, like people, must suffer sometimes because of an evil ancestry. In this case I was touched by the pathos of the situation, and really hoped the pertinacious little wretch might proudly scatter her well-matured seed upon the hard-beaten path as an inspiration to the many boys that passed daily, grumbling because of the hardness of their lot. But the only moral I can now draw is the foolishness of delaying in the right start.

Sometimes the supply of light-energy is so great that the little chlorophyll machines cannot use it in their legitimate work, nor does the plant use it in preparing the warming-up color. Then the disc-shaped corpuscles turn their edges instead of their flat surfaces to the light, or sometimes move deeper down into the leaf. In some cases the leaf itself turns edgewise instead of broadside to the sun.

There are many plants so constituted that they cannot live from year to year in our northern climate, and they must make some provision for preserving their species, and right cunningly do they do this. At a certain period of its growth the potato, for example, puts its starch-making machinery to work on full time, and hurries the starch down below the surface of the ground, and stores it up in what we call a tuber. These tubers have stored in them a number of embryo potato plants, whose lack-luster eyes we see peeping out on all sides. When the time for growth comes, the young plant starts with a reserve-food supply sufficient to keep it growing for some time. We have all noticed, no doubt, how large a plant will grow from a potato, even in a comparatively dark cellar. We must not think that tuber-bearing vines and nut-producing trees are actuated entirely by philanthropic motives. Each nut is the young tree sent forth with his patrimony strapped to his back, ready to make a good start in the world as soon as the favorable time comes.

There are many devices for spending the winter that limits of time and space will prevent me writing about. Many of them more curious than the simple examples I have cited.

Plants are themselves generally unable to move from their fixed positions, so if they are to become prominent in the world they must send out their children—and many and ingenious are their devices for accomplishing this end. Most of my readers are familiar with the parachutes of the silk weed, dandelion and various members of the Compositae family. How they sail through the air. A walk through the autumn forests will make one the unconscious, perhaps unwilling, carrier of numerous Spanish needles, stick tights, burrs and seeds of various plants who have taught their children to steal rides in all sorts of provoking ways. I imagine the wicked old mother laughs as her ugly baby clings to your clothing, sure of a safe ride to a more favorable place for growing. Many plants achieve the same end in a more pleasant way. They produce fruits and berries so luscious that some bird or animal will carry it some distance for the sake of the pulp. Man himself, philanthropist as he is, when he finds that a plant has produced a luscious fruit or palatable seed, will help the distribution and growth, and bring his superior intelligence to the assistance of the plant’s slow instinct to improve its product. A book might be written upon the methods of seed dissemination. In fact, there is a very interesting book upon the subject.

We will just notice briefly the marvelous adaptation of plants to their environment. In the dry plains of Arizona grows a peculiar thick-leaved, stunted, cactus-like plant, suited to withstand the drouth. In the forests of Central South America a great vine climbs to the tops of the tallest trees and there flaunts its gay colors to the breeze. In Damara Land, southwest tropical Africa, upon a small upland section, and nowhere else in the world, grows the marvelous Welwitschia mirabilis, with no real leaves, but with its two cotyledons, persistent and growing to enormous length, living a century and acquiring a great trunk, the flower-stalk growing up from the bare trunk while the two great leaves, if I may so designate them, whip about in the breezes for a century without change, except as they fray out at the ends. These three so dissimilar plants all had a common, not so remote, ancestor, but have grown so unlike in their effort to adapt themselves to their environment, that no casual observer would suspect they were akin.