Part 27

Jan. 20th.—A keen frost, and the ground covered with snow, present a scene of apparent suffering and want to many of our poor little birds; but the preservation of the fowls of the air, which sow not nor gather into barns, has been beautifully instanced to us, as a manifest evidence of a superintending Providence: the full force of this testimony is most strongly impressed upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with rigor, and we marvel how the life of these beings can be supported when the waters are bound up, and earth and all its products hidden by a dense covering of snow. Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by picking the refuse of our corn-stacks, by seeds scattered about our homestalls and cattle-yards, but multitudes of others are in no way dependent upon man for shelter or support, do not even approach his dwelling, but are maintained by the universal bounty of Providence; as the woodlark, the meadow-lark, the chats, and several others; but by what means they are maintained in a period like this is not quite manifest. The portion that they require is probably small, yet it must be insect food, and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily engaged in providing for their wants upon the furze sprays, amidst frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches and pools; and as no insect but the winter gnat is now found in such places, it is probable that this creature, which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields them in this season much of their support. Some of the insectivorous birds have at such periods no apparent difficulty in supporting their existence, finding their food in a dormant state in mosses, lichens, and crevices of trees and buildings; but for those which require animated creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be procured but this gnat, and it possibly has been endowed with its peculiar habits and dispositions for a purport like this. We have many examples in nature of similar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence and requirements of another. The molusca and insects of the deep continue the life of some, the feeble races of the air and waters maintain the beings of others, and the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those which inhabit with him; but where this chain ends, human faculties will probably never be able to ascertain. The remarkable fact which our microscopes make known to us, that all infusions of natural substances in water will produce life, however extraordinary the form may be, seems to denote a continuation of being beyond any possible comprehension, and probably subservient to the existence of each other: the minute creature that floats a hardly perceptible atom in the water of the ditch, and which subsists many of the animals which inhabit those places, feeds upon smaller than itself, and those again, possibly, upon more minute ones which the vegetable infusions of those places give existence to: here the investigation terminates, but the thread unbroken continues, probably through endless gradations, perceptible to infinity alone.

Having applauded the operations of Nature with so much cordiality, possibly I may be called her “enthusiastic adorer,” but the epithet must be disclaimed. None can respect the works of creation more, but ’tis not with an ecstasy that glows, fades, and expires, but with a calm deep- rooted conviction implanted in the boy, and increased by years of notice and experience. I have followed her footsteps, though far, very far distant, as an humble admirer of perfection, nor can my veneration cease whilst reason continues undisturbed.

* * * * *

Sept. 8th, 1828.—A remarkably dry and exhausting day, not from any peculiar influence of the solar heat, but from the arid state of the air, which was very distressing to our feelings, and all tender vegetation became languid and suffering under its influence. I endeavored to ascertain the power of absorption possessed by the air at the time by an experiment, rude enough to be sure, yet it tended in some measure to indicate the rapid manner in which fluids are exhaled in particular states of the atmosphere. A linen cloth twelve inches square, which had absorbed an ounce avoirdupois of water, was suspended in the shade in a free current of air, and in the course of ten minutes it had lost 436 grains, equal to one-sixteenth of its weight. This great evaporation was principally effected by the absorbent power of the air, and manifested in some degree the exhausting influence that was passing over the earth and the vegetation exposed to the current of air; and as the roots could not derive sufficient moisture from the soil to supply what was thus drawn from the leaves, the foliage became languid and flaccid in consequence. The linen, containing the same quantity of water, was then spread upon a short turf in the sun and in the space of ten minutes it lost 368 grains, and this was effected without any particular influencing current of air; accordingly, the evaporation from an acre of moist land covered with vegetation would exceed one hundred and twenty-two cwt. of water in an hour! As the quantity drawn from the vegetation on the soil may be equal to the shelter its foliage affords to the earth, no very accurate data can be drawn from this experiment; for different soils will give out their moisture more or less easily, and succulent vegetables be more influenced than those of a drier nature; but it served at the time to indicate the portion of moisture that was escaping from a given horizontal surface. From the invisible and insensible nature of evaporation, its influences are not always considered; but such an action on the surfaces of things as that related above, must put into operation all the inherent powers of matter susceptible of impulse, and probably would produce effects which we might suppose to be accomplished by the agency of other means.

Nov. 10.—Many effusions of the mind have been produced by the approach or existence of the seasons of our year, which seem naturally to actuate our bodily or mental feelings through the agency of the eye, or temperature of the air. The peculiar silence that prevails in autumn, like the repose of wearied nature, seems to mark the decline and termination of being in many things that animated our summer months; the singing of the bird is rare, feeble, and melancholy; the hum of the insect is not heard; the breeze passes by us like a sigh from nature: we hear it, and it is gone for ever. But it is the vegetable tribes, which at this season most particularly influence our feeling, and excite our attention. We see the fruits of the earth stored up for our use in that dull season “in which there will be neither earing nor harvest,” the termination and reward of the labors of man. But this day, November 10, presented such a scene of life and mortality, that it could not be passed by without viewing it as an admonition, a display of what has been, and is. There had occurred during the night a severe white frost; and, standing by a green-house filled with verdure, fragrance, and blossom, I was surrounded in every direction by the parents of all this gaiety, in blackness, dissolution, and decay. But the very day before, they had attracted the most merited admiration and delight by the splendor of their bloom and the vigor of their growth; but now just touched by the icy finger of the night, they had become a mass of unsightly ruins and confusion. Once the gay belles of the parterre, they fluttered their hour, a generation of existent loveliness; their youthful successors, unpermitted to mingle with them, peeped from their retreats above, seeming almost to repine at their confinement; they have bloomed their day, another race succeeds, and their hour will be accomplished too. This was so perfectly in unison with the shifting scenes of life, the many changes of the hour, that it seemed inseparably connected with a train of reflection, with the precepts which all nature points out—her still small whisperings for the ears of those that can hear them.

The extraordinary tendency that Nature has to produce, and the vigilant perseverance she maintains to occupy all substances as a soil for her productions, when they arrive at a state fitting for her purposes, is a well-known fact, and is perfectly in consistency with the uniform habit she preserves, of letting “no fragment be lost.” All things tend upwards, from some original, through an infinity of gradations, though the beginning and termination may not always be perceived, nor the links of this vast chain be found. The most obscure plants, agarics or mucor, as far as we know, perfect their seed, and give birth to other generations; but there is a fine green substance, observable upon the sprays of trees, stems of various shrubs in every hedge, upon old rails and exposed wood-work, leaving a powdery mark upon one’s coat that has rubbed against such places, which I have always considered as the very lowest rudiment of vegetation. This matter, submitted to examination in the microscope, presents no foliage or plant-like form, but appears a kind of pollen, a capsule, or a perfected seed, suspended on a fine fibre; but from the extreme smallness of it I speak with hesitation, not being able to define it satisfactorily with the most powerful lens. If it be, as I have conjectured, a perfected seed, it probably is the origin of many of those minute mosses, that become rooted, we know not by what means, upon banks, stones, barks, &c., in such profusion; but here all investigation ceases: by what agency this fine seed has been so profusely scattered, or from what source it sprang, is hidden from us, and we can no more satisfactorily conjecture, than we can account for those myriads of blighting insects, which so suddenly infest our grain, our fruits, and our plants. There is an inquisition, where all human knowledge terminates; the bounds of nature have never been defined.

Without considering the various sources of enjoyment and pleasure bestowed upon an intelligent creature, what a scene of glorious display might be opened to man through the agency of the eye alone! Motives we must abandon, as probably they are beyond our comprehensions; but were the powers of vision so enlarged or cleared as to bring to observation the now unknown fabrication of animate and inanimate things, what astonishment would be elicited! The seeds, the pollen of plants, the capillary vessels and channels of their several parts, with their concurrent actions, the clothing of various creatures, and all that host of unperceived wisdom around us! Yet probably the mind, constituted as it now is, would be disturbed by the constant excitement such wonders would create; but at present, though sparingly searched out by the patient investigator, and but obscurely seen, they solace and delight; “cheer, but not inebriate.”

“Oh good beyond compare! If thus thy meaner works are fair, If thus thy bounties gild the span Of ruin’d earth and sinful man, How glorious must that mansion be Where thy redeem’d shall live with thee!”

* * * * *

And now I think I have pretty well run over my diary, the humble record of the birds, the reptiles, the plants, and inanimate things around me. They who have had the patience to read these my notes, will probably be surprised that I could take the trouble to register such accounts of such things; and I might think so too, did I not know how much occupation and healthful recreation the seeking out these trifles have afforded me, rendering, besides, all my rural rambles full of enjoyment and interest: companions and intimates were found in every hedge, on every bank, whose connexions I knew something of, and whose individual habits had become familiar by association; and thus this narrative of my contemporaries was formed. Few of us, perhaps, in reviewing our by-gone days, could the hours return again, but would wish many of them differently disposed of, and more profitably employed: but I gratefully say, that portion of my own passed in the contemplation of the works of nature is the part which I most approve—which has been most conducive to my happiness; and, perhaps, from the sensations excited by the wisdom and benevolence perceived, not wholly unprofitable to a final state, and which might be passed again, could I but obtain a clearer comprehension of the ways of Infinite Wisdom. If in my profound ignorance I received such gratification and pleasure; what would have been my enjoyment and satisfaction, “if the secrets of the Most High had been with me, and when by His light I had walked through darkness?”

APPENDIX.

BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

NOTE A. THE “CONEYGAR” AND “LODGE FARM,” p. 11.

It is one of the pleasing characteristics of an old and highly civilized country, that appropriate local names for the smaller hamlets, farms, and single rural dwellings, are in general and familiar use. Every thing which gives to the household home, whether of rich or poor, a pleasant distinctive character, an additional hold on the memory and the affections of its inmates, must always prove a merit; and many, assuredly, have been the instances in which the familiar name of the family roof has continued through life a hallowed sound to the wanderers of the household band it once sheltered. In England, this custom—so natural, so kindly, when undisturbed by pretension—is very general, and it is almost needless to say that wherever these names go back for half a century or more, they are always appropriate, and often peculiar, or it may be, interesting from historical or other associations. In very many instances, not only do the farm-house and the cottage bear suitable names, but even the different fields about them are all marked in the same way; this meadow, that grain-field, yonder copse, the knoll beyond, shall each be called by some simple term, familiar to the household of the farmer of the present day, as it was perhaps to his forefathers of past generations.

NOTE B. THE POTATO, p. 30.

It has been clearly ascertained that the potato is indigenous to South America. Mr. Darwin, in his “Journal of Researches,” speaking of the Chonos Archipelago, on the coast of Chili, writes as follows:

“The _wild potato_ grows on these islands in great abundance, in the sandy, shelly soil, near the sea beach. The tallest plant was four feet in height. The tubers were generally small, but I found one, of an oval shape, two inches in diameter; they resembled, in every respect, and had the same smell as English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much, and were watery and insipid, without any bitter taste. They were undoubtedly indigenous here: they grow as far south, according to Mr. Low, as lat. 50°, and are called _Aquinas_ by the wild Indians of that part; the Chilotan Indians have a different name for them. Professor Henslow, who has examined the dried specimens which I brought home, says they are the same with those described by Mr. Sabine,[77] from Valparaiso, but that they form a variety, which by some botanists has been considered specifically distinct. It is remarkable that the same plant should be found on the sterile mountains of central Chili, where a drop of rain does not fall for more than six months, and within the damp forests of these southern islands.” Darwin’s “Journal of Researches,” Vol. II. p. 23, American edition.

NOTE C. THE WYCH ELM, (_Ulmus Montana_,) p. 46.

The following account of the wych elm is given by Mr. Downing in his “_Landscape Gardening_:”

“The Scotch, or wych elm, (_ulmus montana_.) This is a tree of lower stature than the common European elm, its average height being about forty feet. The leaves are broad, rough, pointed, and the branches extend more horizontally, drooping at the extremities. The bark on the branches is comparatively smooth. It is a grand tree, ‘the head is so finely massed, and yet so well broken, as to render it one of the noblest of park trees; and where it grows wild amid the rocky scenery of its native Scotland, there is no tree which assumes so great, or so pleasing a variety of character.’ In general appearance the Scotch elm considerably resembles our white elm. Its most ornamental varieties are the spiry-topped elm, (_U. m. fastigiata_,) with singularly twisted leaves, and a very upright growth; the weeping Scotch elm, (_u. m. pendula_,) a very remarkable variety, the branches of which droop in a fan-like manner; and the smooth-leaved Scotch elm, (_u. m. glabra_.)”

NOTE D. THE CARPENTER BEE, (_Megachile Centuncularis_,) p. 53.

The term _carpenter bee_ is now usually confined, in England, to those insects of the bee tribe which chisel out or rasp their nests in posts, or palings, &c. Their cells “consist of a tunnel excavated in the wood, and divided by thin partitions of clay into five or six compartments, each with its supply of pollen for the single inhabitant who is to emerge from the egg deposited therein.”

The bee referred to by Mr. Knapp, page 53, although inhabiting, at times, a wooden cell also, like the true “carpenter,” is more generally classed with the “upholsterer bees,” or those which line their nests with cuttings from leaves, and flowers. This leaf-cutter bee is thus alluded to in “Acheta Domestica:”

“Having excavated, or found her hole, (a cavity in ground, or wood, or wall, from six to ten inches deep,) she proceeds to construct within it, of the pieces of the leaf she cuts off, several cells, of the shape and about the size of a thimble, which she inserts successively, the bottom of one into the mouth of that below it. It takes from nine to twelve pieces of leaf to complete each cell, and as each is finished she stores it with a rose-colored conserve made chiefly of pollen and honey, collected from the flowers of the thistle. When to this magazine of sweets is superadded the egg from whence its future consumer is to spring, the provident provider of the store covers in the whole with three more pieces of leaf, cut in a circle, _as truly accurate as compasses could describe_. Room being left above the cover for the insertion of a succeeding cell, our “upholsterer” thus proceeds till her nursery tunnel is completely filled up.”

* * * “The leaves employed by the leaf-cutter, are materials of somewhat stubborn texture, those sometimes of the mountain ash, and birch, as well as the rose, herein enhancing the skill of their employer. It would seem, however, that pliability and thinness are qualities somewhat regarded, and most wonderfully discerned by the little artist in question; for we have noticed in more than one summer, the smooth, delicate, tender leaves of a dark variety of China rose, almost scolloped by the circles and ovals of her excision, while the foliage of the “cabbage” close by, has been left untouched, as if too coarse and common for her purpose.”—_Acheta Domestica._

Reaumur relates that a gardener at Rouen, once chancing to dig up the nest of a leaf-cutter bee, was so utterly amazed with the singular skill of the contrivance that he was terrified, and hastened with it to the priest of the parish, believing it to be nothing less than the work of witchcraft. Monsieur le Curé, it appears, had something of the same suspicions; he advised the man to carry the nest to Paris; the gardener, however, took it first to a distinguished Naturalist living at Rouen, who relieved the poor fellow’s mind by opening one of the cases and showing him the grub within.

We learn that there are several leaf-cutting or upholsterer bees, in the United States, although it is not probable that either is precisely similar to that alluded to by Mr. Knapp, and the author of Acheta Domestica.

NOTE E. THE ROSE-BEETLE, (_Cetonia Aurata_,) p. 53.

The Rose-Chafer, or Rose-Beetle, the _Cetonia aurata_ of entomologists, is a beautiful insect, very common in England but unknown in our own country. “On the back of the corslet burnished green and gold are the prevailing hues, on breast-plate, cuisse, and gauntlet the lustre of the precious metal is predominant, mingled with changeable reflections of purplish crimson,” says the writer of Acheta Domestica. “Like the rest of its tribe, this pretty beetle undergoes the usual triple metamorphosis of insect life. From an egg laid within the earth, he emerges a grub or larva, to feed on roots, most usually those of the rose. * * Thus, hermit-like, and upon this hermit’s fare, he lives in dark seclusion for four years, and when these are over, constructs for himself, about the month of March, a still more straitened cell—an earth-formed case, resembling a pigeon’s egg. He proceeds, under its cover, to the second stage of _pupa_—from thence to the third and last estate; and after remaining another fortnight under ground, for his enameled mail to acquire hardness, comes forth in all his splendor to meet the roses. The antennæ are of curious and very elegant formation. They each terminate in a knob composed of several laminæ or plates, opening or shutting like the leaves of a book, and which also like a book, can be put away at the pleasure of their insect owner, on a shelf or deep cavity on either side its head. They are always thus put carefully away when the chafer is inactive, or asleep. It has been noticed as a singular fact that the rose-beetle has been found not unfrequently, while in its two first stages, the tenant of an ant-hill, and that without being attacked by its carnivorous inhabitants. It is hence called, in some countries, “king of the ants;” and it is said also that German cattle dealers invest it with supernatural powers, and feed it carefully in beds as a means of insuring prosperity to their herds and fortunes.”—_Acheta Domestica, second series, p. 72, English edition._

The true rose-chafer has not been found among our American beetles.

NOTE F. DYER’S BROOM, (_Genista Tinctoria_) p. 58.

There are many species of Broom in the old world. The common Broom of England has large, yellow, butterfly-shaped blossoms, and growing, as it does, in large patches on waste lands, produces a vary brilliant effect when in bloom. But it is also very useful in its way. The twigs were probably the first besoms of the housewives of old, in days when witches were believed to ride on broom-sticks to their gatherings; certain it is, at least, that our brooms of the present hour derive their name from the early use of the twigs of the plant for similar purposes.

Cordage, matting, and even coarse cloth have been made of the fibres of the Broom. Houses are sometimes thatched with the twigs, which have been also used for tanning instead of oak bark.

It was a sprig of the Broom or Genet, as it is called in French, worn in the helmet of a count of Anjou, of olden time, which became at length a family badge, and gave the name of Plantagenet to the race of English kings, who for three centuries reigned over our forefathers.

Dyer’s Broom, woad-waxen, _genista tinctoria_, has become naturalized here and there in some parts of New York and New England.

NOTE G. THE DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS BY PLANTS, p. 62.