Part 2

Our bed is soft and warm and is made of tiny bits of paper which we children helped our mother to tear up and it is lined with some nice soft cotton which she picked out of a comforter one night when every-one had gone to church.

We have never been out very much but now, our mother says, we are big enough to help get the living. When she told us this, we all said: “Squeak, squeak, squeak,” which, in mouse language, meant that we were glad and thought it would be fine fun to leave our nest and go out into the big world.

But mother said: “Children, before you go I want to tell you something; listen well to what I shall say.”

And so we six little mice sat very solemnly in a row, on our hind legs and pricked up our ears and listened quietly while she went on. “You go through a narrow passage till you come to a little round hole and when you have squeezed through this you will find yourself in a big room called a kitchen. You must then run quickly across the floor and into the door of a bathroom. There is also a hole behind the bathroom door which you may need to jump into if anything happens. Next comes a nice, large pantry and in there you will find everything that we mice like to eat. Bring what you can carry, after you have eaten all you can, but do not eat too much or you will never be able to squeeze through the hole again. Now you must never go in the daytime, but wait until night.”

After telling us this, my mother left the nest saying that she was going to call on one of our neighbors who lived in an old felt hat, very near us. She said she might be gone some time, so, while my brothers and sisters were taking a nap, I thought to myself: “I don’t see why mother told me not to go in daylight. I am sure everything seems perfectly quiet now and I don’t think anything could hurt me; and I do feel so hungry. I guess I will go on a little trip, and ‘we shall see what we shall see.’” With that I crept out of the nest without making the least bit of noise and followed the directions my mother had given me.

Soon I found myself in the pantry and O! how good everything did smell. I found some cheese and I ate a very big hole in a white cake with icing on it and was just thinking what I could carry home as a surprise for the children when I heard a rushing noise like the patter of feet and I jumped behind some glass jars that were on the floor in the corner.

To my horror I saw very near me, for I could see right through the glass jar, a funny thing with long white wool and sharp teeth, a long, pointed nose and a terrible big red tongue hanging out of its mouth and little sharp black eyes that seemed to be looking clear through me. Oh! how I trembled and oh! how I wished then that I had obeyed my mother.

I saw now, when it was too late, that she knew best. Just then a big giant with dresses on came into the pantry and I heard her say: “That dog thinks there is a mouse in here.” So it was a dog and I remembered now that my mother had said one day that there was a spitz dog in that house.

The lady went out but the dog smelled me and was determined not to give me up so he ran to the big giant with dresses on and whined and whined until she came in again and said: “Well, Zip, I guess there must be a mouse here since you insist on it.” So she went out and got a long stick with a lot of straws on the end of it (she called it a broom), and with that she poked around all over the pantry, and the funny thing with long, white wool and sharp teeth kept smelling around and clawing at the glass jars till I thought I should die of fright. “It must be behind those jars, the way Zip acts,” she said; and she took the broom and knocked over all the jars with a crash. Well! I thought my time had surely come. My eyes filled with tears and my heart almost broke as I thought of my dear mother and all my sisters and brothers so happy at home.

But just in that terrible moment I happened to remember what my mother had said about running into that other hole in case anything should happen, so with one bound I was on the floor and the funny thing with long, white wool and sharp teeth made a grab for me. I could feel his hot breath close upon me and I could almost feel his sharp teeth when I heard the big giant with dresses on say: “Catch him, Zip.”

But surely a kind fate must have been with me for I was too quick for them. I never ran so fast in my life. I fairly flew till I found the hole behind the door and jumped in and ran along till I found myself once more at home, where all the family were frightened almost to death at my absence.

After that terrible experience I shall always do what my mother tells me to, for after all, she knows best.

Jessie Juliet Knox.

ABOUT A SPARROW.

There have been tales told about this curious little rowdy among birds. He was a nuisance; he drove our song and grub-eating birds away; he also littered the cornices of buildings and made of himself a pest in general. There have been other tales told about the cute chap who perches upon a wire near the window and rocks his clever head toward you when you tap against the pane; and still another story is told concerning the lynching of one by a flock of the brisk chaps. Some say they took a bit of twine, fastened it to a wire, secured the victim, and induced him to put his head through a loop; then drew the twine and scattered, leaving a lot of wise men to gaze upon the wonderful spectacle, which the newspapers took up and printed. I have watched birds for years and I never saw an incident of the sort—the lynching of a sparrow by his fellow sparrows! A sparrow has been caught in the loop of a bit of twine fastened to a wire or a cornice; but no sparrow ever deliberately put the twine up and lynched one of his rowdy brood. He wouldn’t do it simply because he hasn’t got bird instinct enough to follow out such a tragedy. I will tell you a little incident concerning a sparrow which I know to be true. It didn’t find a place in any newspaper, either, simply because I never gave it much thought until now, hence never mentioned it before.

I had noticed upon arising for several mornings in the early spring a half dozen or so of sparrows congregated in a sunny spot of the roof below. At first I paid no attention to it, for the sparrow is apt to go where he pleases, man’s wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. But the little chaps were there every morning, and in the same sunny spot. I was curious to know why they came there, and I went down stairs one morning to watch them from a more close point of observation. I got there before they came. I stood back of a closed blind, peeped through the slats and waited. When the sun-rays fell upon the spot close to the window the little fellows began to come—each with a morsel of food. They twittered and hopped about as if they were enjoying the morning fancy. Then they scattered and took wings to chimneys, cornices and wires. I opened the blinds and looked out. I saw one lone, little sparrow feeding. I bent over the sill. He did not fly away. I reached out and took him in. He fluttered and struggled. His eyes were covered with a film. He was blind.

H. S. Keller.

THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW. (_Zonotrichia albicollis._)

“The sparrows are all meek and lowly birds.” They are not clothed in a plumage of gorgeous hues, but are endowed with melodious voices in harmony with their surroundings. “Theirs are the quaint lullaby songs of childhood.” Their plain coats are a means of protection, for they frequent the fields, the hedges and the low shrubs of the woodland borders. Some of their relatives, the grosbeaks, the goldfinch and the finches, are more brilliantly colored and are more arboreal in their habits.

The White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) is one of the handsomest of the sparrows. It is one of the exquisite parts of nature. Migratory in habits, its range covers all of Eastern North America, nesting from Michigan and Massachusetts northward and wintering from the latter state southward to Florida.

Its scientific name is descriptive of the marked color characteristics of its crown and throat. Zonotrichia means hair or crown bands, and albicollis is from the Latin meaning white-throated. It is sometimes called Peabody Bird, especially by the New Englanders, with whom Peabody is an important traditional name, and they hear the birds say in its song “I—I Pea-body, Pea-body, Pea-body.” This rendering of its plaintive song is a caricature, yet the name clings to the bird even in other parts of the country. The reserved manner of its movements would hardly lead one to expect that a beautiful song could flow from its white throat. This song is so well defined that the notation may be written on the musical staff. Mr. Chapman says: “In September, when the hedgerows and woodland undergrowths begin to rustle with sparrows, juncos and towhees, I watch eagerly for the arrival of these welcome fall songsters.” We cannot forbear quoting the words of that great student of bird life, Audubon, who says of the White-Throat’s habit in autumn, “How it comes and how it departs are quite unknown to me. I can only say that, all of a sudden, the edges of the fields bordering on creeks or swampy places and overgrown with different species of vines, sumac bushes, briers and the taller kinds of grasses, appear covered with birds. They form groups, sometimes containing from thirty to fifty individuals, and live together in harmony. They are constantly moving up and down among these recesses, with frequent jerkings of the tail, and uttering a note common to the tribe. From the hedges and thickets they issue one by one, in quick succession, and ramble to the distance of eight or ten yards, hopping and scratching, in quest of small seeds, and preserving the utmost silence. When the least noise is heard or alarm given, and frequently, as I thought, without any alarm at all, they all fly back to their covert, pushing directly into the thickest part of it. A moment elapses, when they become reassured, and ascending to the highest branches and twigs open a little concert, which, although of short duration, is extremely sweet. There is much plaintive softness in their note, which I wish, kind reader, I could describe to you; but this is impossible, although it is yet ringing in my ears, as if I were in those very fields where I have so often listened to it with delight. No sooner is their music over than they return to the field, and thus continue alternately sallying forth and retreating during the greater part of the day. At the approach of night they utter a sharper note, consisting of a single twit, repeated in a smart succession by the whole group, and continuing until the first hooting of some owl frightens them into silence. Yet, often during fine nights I have heard the little creatures emit, here and there, a twit, as if to assure each other that all’s well.”

The nest, too, is a neat creation of small roots, coarse grass, bark and moss and lined with a bedding of fine grass and moss. It is usually placed on the ground in fields or open woods, where it is protected by the taller grasses. Sometimes, however, low bushes or the lower branches of trees are selected. So careful is the White-Throat in the constructing of its nest not to disturb the surrounding vegetation, and so neutral is the color of the material used, that one may hunt for a long time without finding it unless he luckily stumbles upon it.

A PLANT THAT MELTS ICE.

To say that a plant can melt ice is to assert a miracle seemingly too great for even Nature’s powers to compass, but a traveler lately returned from the Alps has witnessed this wonderful phenomenon, while Grant Allen and other authorities confirm the fact that the Alpine Soldanella melts for its blossom a passage through the ice by power of its own internal heat.

The majority of tourists visit the Alps in August; therefore they miss a rare sight, that of a daring little shrub opening its fringed blue buds in the very middle of the snow sheet, and often showing its slender head above a layer of ice, in the most incredible fashion.

We may regard the Alps as unpeopled solitudes, but to Alpine plants they are a veritable world of competing life types.

Those only fitted for the struggle survive.

The botanists tell us that the Soldanella is heavily handicapped in the race. In the first place, it is obliged to eke out a livelihood in the mountain belt just below the snow line; further, it is a very low growing variety, and is quickly obscured and overtopped by the dense and rapid growth of its taller rivals; hence its anxiety to seize its one chance in life at the earliest possible moment.

To attain the end of its being, the perpetuation of its species, it must steal a march upon its companions, as it were, and show itself while they are still locked in sleep, and when its insect fertilizers, fresh from their cocoons, can see and visit it.

To accomplish its purpose it has made ample preparations.

All through the previous summer its round leaves, admirably fitted to their purpose, have been spread to the mountain sun and gathered in the fuel to be burned later on.

When winter arrives the leaves had grown thick in rich material and so leathery that no amount of snow could injure them.

The first warmth of spring melting the edges of the snow sheet sends the moisture trickling down to the Soldanella’s roots. This, acting upon them as water upon malting barley, brings about germination.

The plant, absorbing the oxygen in the air under the ice and combining it with the fuel in its own substance, melts its way into the open air. A fragile flower forcing its way through a solid crust of ice. Literally, not metaphorically, a slow combustion store.

This novel feat is accomplished every season, yet comparatively few observers note it.

Louise Jamison.

THE HUMMINGBIRDS. _Maxime miranda in minimus!_

Minutest of the feathered kind, Possessing every charm combined, Nature, in forming thee, designed That thou shouldst be, A proof within how little space She can comprise such perfect grace, Rendering the lovely, fairy race Beauty’s epitome. —_Charlotte Smith._

The discovery of

“The rare little bird of the bower, Bird of the musical wing,”

being coincident with that of the New World, the ancients were denied the exhilarating shock of delight that has been vouchsafed to their descendants when that

“——Quick feathered spangled shot, Rapid as thought from spot to spot, Showing the fairy humming-bird,”

and their writings lack the glamour of his “glossy, varying dyes;” for, according to Lesson, the first mention which is made of hummingbirds in the narratives of adventurers who proceeded to America, not with the design of studying its natural productions, but for the discovery of gold, dates from 1558.

Of the name hummingbird or hum-bird, Professor Newton says its earliest use, as yet discovered, is said to be by Thomas Morton in The New England Canaan, printed in 1632, while in 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wrote: “So have all Ages conceaved, and most are still ready to sweare, the Wren is the least of Birds, yet the discoveries of America, and even of our own Plantations, shewed us one farre lesse, that is the Hum-bird, not much exceeding a Beetle.” Mr. Ridgway cites the case of Mr. Benjamin Buttivant, writing from Boston in 1697, who told of a hum-bird that he fed with honey, that was “A Prospect to many Comers.”

“The earliest notice of the common Ruby-throat that I have been able to find,” Mr. Ridgway continues, “is an extract from a letter written from Boston in New England, October 26, 1670, by John Winthrop, Esq., governor of Connecticut, to Francis Willoughby, Esq., and published in the philosophical Transactions.” This letter reads as follows:

“I send you withal, a little Box, with a Curiosity in it, which perhaps will be counted a trifle, yet ’tis rarely to be met with, even here. It is the curiously contrived nest of the Humming-Bird, so called from the humming noise it maketh as it flies. ’Tis an exceeding little Bird, and only seen in Summer, and mostly in gardens, flying from flower, sucking Honey out of the flowers as the Bee doth; as it flieth not lighting on the flower, but hovering over it, sucking with its long Bill a sweet substance. There are in the same Nest two of that Bird’s eggs. Whether they used to have more at once I know not. I never saw but one of these Nests before, and that was sent over formerly with some other Rarities, but the vessel miscarrying, you received them not.”

Of the long bill with which it sucketh the sweet substance, the tongue is the essential feature, so far as sustenance is concerned; consisting of a long double cylinder, “like a double-barreled gun,” Goodrich thought—a most convenient instrument for imbibing nectar—flattened and sometimes barbed at the end, for the capture of the minute insects that constitute the less æsthetic portion of their nutriment—for it has been many times demonstrated that, airy and fairy as they are (the size of the stomach not exceeding the globe of the eye, and scarcely a sixth part as large as the heart, which, in turn, is remarkably large, nearly the size of the cranium), they cannot live by ambrosia alone, nor yet by love, but must vary both with an occasional relish of aphides and infinitesimal spiders.

Of “that Bird’s two eggs,” Mr. Chapman says: “As far as known, all hummingbirds lay two white eggs—frail, pearly ellipses—that after ten days’ incubation develop into a tangle of dark limbs and bodies, which no one could think of calling birds, much less winged gems.”

It has been a matter of doubt to many whether hummingbirds ever rested at all or spent their lives in the air exclusively, but Mr. Gould states authoritatively: “Although many short intermissions of rest are taken during the day, the bird may be said to live in the air—an element in which it performs every kind of evolution with the utmost ease, frequently rising perpendicularly, flying backwards, pirouetting or dancing off, as it were.”

It was the belief of the Duke of Argyle that no bird could fly backward, a theory that he stated with emphasis in his Reign of Law, but it has been proved that he reckoned without “the winglet of the fairy hummingbird,” which seems to be the exception to prove a reigning law of Nature.

Montgomery makes of the whole Trochilidæ family this inspired explanation:

“Art thou a bird, a bee, or butterfly? ‘Each and all three;—a bird A bee collecting sweets from bloom to bloom, A butterfly in brilliancy of plume.’”

The blooms from which he collects his sweets are of the tubular flowers almost exclusively, as a mark, possibly, of his appreciation of their invention for him and at his request, as told by Albert Bigelow Paine:

“The clover, said the humming-bird, Was fashioned for the bee, But ne’er a flower, as I have heard, Was ever made for me.

A passing zephyr paused, and stirred Some moonlit drops of dew To earth; and for the humming-bird The honeysuckle grew.”

Of his manner of hanging before his tubular flowers Goodrich says: “He poises or suspends himself on wing for the space of two or three seconds so steadily that his wings become invisible and you can plainly discern the pupil of his eye, looking round with great quickness and circumspection. The glossy green of his back and the fire of his throat, dazzling in the sun, form altogether a most interesting appearance.”

This appearance Alexander Wilson pictures thus:

“While richest roses though in crimson drest, Spring from the splendors of his gorgeous breast. What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly! Each rapid movement gives a different dye; Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling show, Now sink to shade, now like a furnace glow!”

It is little wonder that Buffon exclaimed, “Nature has loaded it with all the gifts of which she has only given other birds a share!” Yet Mr. Ridgway considers the Count de Buffon’s laudation as excessive because the “absence of melodious voice is, as a rule, a conspicuous deficiency of the tribe”; and in 1693 Mr. Hammersley of Coventry stated, “God, in many of his creatures, is bountiful, but not lavish, for I did observe the hummingbirds for several years, and never heard them sing.”

Goldsmith says that all travelers agree that they have a little interrupted chirrup, but Labat asserts that they have a most pleasing melancholly melody in their voices, though small and proportioned to the organs that produce it.

It is known that a few of the more robust species of Jamaica and Mexico warble a pigmy melody, and Mr. Gosse says that the Vervain hummingbird of Jamaica is the only one known to him that has a real song, warbling in a very weak but very sweet tone a continuous melody for ten minutes at a time.

But the poet Rogers apprehended something more than is perceptible to the scientific consciousness, for he exclaims in The Voyage of Columbus:

“—There quivering rise Wings that reflect the glow of evening skies! Half bird, half fly, the fairy king of flowers Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant hours; Gem full of life and joy and _song divine_!”

Could the compressed, intense, vehement little sprite be expanded to the dimensions of the ordinary folk of air, would the magnified musical and physical representation be as entrancing as are the fleeting glimpses of the fairy and the elusive hints of melody that so nearly escape us now?

For this electric spark, like an erratic meteorite of topaz and ruby and gold,

“As if inlaid With brilliants from the mine, or made Of tearless rainbows, such as span Th’ unclouded skies of Peristan,”

hovering between heaven and earth in a mist created by its own prismatic wings, might almost be believed an exemplification of light itself as scientifically defined, “a form of radiant energy,” and it is the nearest approach to a disembodied spirit that lies within the range of mortal vision. So while it is believed that its song is but a feeble twittering, it may yet be as much musician as it is bird, and emit strains of melody too exquisite and finely drawn for human apprehension, and of which the notes that reach us are but the deeper tones of a delicate and etherial ariose.

Juliette A. Owen.

EACH IN ITS OWN WAY.

There’s never a rose in all the world But makes some green spray sweeter; There’s never a wind in all the sky But makes some bird-wing fleeter; There’s never a star but brings to heaven Some silver radiance tender; And never a rosy cloud but helps To crown the sunset splendor; No robin but may thrill some heart His dawnlight gladness voicing; God gives us all some small, sweet way To set the world rejoicing. —Selected.

THE PARULA WARBLER. (_Compsothlypis americana._)

Hither the busy birds shall flutter, With the light timber for their nests, And, pausing from their labor, utter The morning sunshine in their breasts. —James Russell Lowell.