Part 1

Produced by Bryan Ness, Jana Srna, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

EYE SPY

AFIELD WITH NATURE AMONG FLOWERS AND ANIMATE THINGS

BY

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1899

Copyright, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

CONTENTS

_A Naturalist's Boyhood_ _The Story of the Floundering Beetle_ _Fox-fire_ _A Homely Weed with Interesting Flowers_ _Two Fairy Sponges_ _Green Pansies_ _Mr. and Mrs. Tumble-bug_ _Those Horse-hair Snakes_ "_Professor Wiggler_" "_Cow-spit, Snake-spit, and Frog-spit_" _The Paper Wasp and His Doings_ _The Spider's Span_ _Ballooning Spiders_ _The Lace-wing Fly_ _The Perfumed Beetles_ _Mushroom Spore-prints_ _Some Curious Cocoons_ _Nettle-leaf Tent-builders_ _The Evening Primrose_ _The Dandelion Burglar_ _The Troubles of the House-fly_ _Tendrils_ _A Strange Story of a Grasshopper_ _Riddles in Flowers_ _Luck in Clovers_ _Barberry Manners_ _A Woolly Flock_ "_What Ails Him?_" _The Cicada's Last Song_ _Index_

List of Designs

_Initial_ _Initial. Buttercup Leaves_ _Three Views of a Helpless Beetle _Down Among the Buttercup Leaves_ _An Adventurous Baby_ _The Adopted Home_ _Initial. Fox-fire and Fungus_ _A Luminous Fragment_ _Three Specimens by Day_ _Three Specimens by Night_ _A Fox-fire Bugaboo_ _The Bugaboo by Daylight_ _Initial. The Figwort_ _A Flower with Three Welcomes_ _Sipping the Nectar. Fig. 1_ _In Flight with Pollen. Fig. 2_ _Transferring the Pollen to Stigma. Fig. 3_ _Fifth Day--Pod Enlarging_ _Singular Method of Branching and Flowering_ _Initial_ _The Rose Mischief-maker_ _The Fairy Using Her Magic Wand_ _The Elfin Sponge of the Oak_ _The Real Fairy of the Oak Sponge_ _The Elfin Sponge of the Brier Rose_ _The Inhabited Rose Sponge_ _Initial. Pansies_ _The Materials_ _Making a Whole Plant Green_ _A Tumbler Concealed Near By_ _Initial. The Sacred Scarabæus_ _Mr. and Mrs. Tumble-bug Rolling the Ball_ _Sinking the Ball_ _Young Tumble-bug Digging out from His Dungeon_ _Initial_ _Amos_ _Dangerous Ground for Grasshoppers and Crickets_ _Busy Grasshoppers_ _Initial. Lilacs_ _"Professor Wiggler" at Home_ _The Lilac Twig in June_ _Tunnelling the Twig_ _"Professor Wiggler" Moth_ _Initial. Grasses and Weeds_ _The Home of the "Spume-bearer"_ _The Real Culprits_ _Initial. A Nest of the Paper Wasp_ _A Wolf in the Fold_ _He was Hanging Head Downward_ _Off for the Paper Nest_ _Initial. Brooklyn Bridge_ _Bridging the Brook_ _From Tree to Tree_ _Initial. Preparing for Flight_ _Draped in the Glittering Meshes_ _Spider-egg Cocoon_ _Initial. The Lace-wing Fly_ _The Wolf in the Fold_ _A Tempting Aphis Brood_ _Where the Aphides Swarm_ _Initial. A Woodland Path_ _The Perfumed Beetles_ _Initial. A Spore-print_ _Spore Surface of a Polyporus_ _Spore Surface of a Polygaric_ _Method of Making Spore-prints_ _Spore-print of a Boletus_ _Initial. A Nocturnal Bird_ _From a Correspondent_ _The Contents of the Cocoon_ _Where the Cocoon Came From_ _"The Owl on Muffled Wing"_ _Initial. Nettles_ _Leaf-tents of the "Comma" Caterpillar_ _A Design for a Jeweller_ _Initial. The Evening Primrose_ _Two Kinds of Buds_ _The Evening Primrose_ _"The Worm i' the Bud"_ _The Chrysalis and its Moth_ _The Substitute for the Bud_ _Initial. Dandelions_ _The Nest-builder_ _Initial. A Fly Model_ _An Interrupted Toilet_ _An Episode of Fly time_ _A Victim of Fly Fungus_ _Initial. Sweet-peas_ _An Impossible and Real Tendril_ _Grape Tendrils Evolved from Blossoms_ _The Star Cucumber and its Compound Tendrils_ _The Prank of a Tendril_ _Initial. An Impaled "Quaker"_ _The Haunt of the Grasshopper_ _The Birth of the Parasites_ _The Two-formed Flowers_ _Puzzling Forms and Faces_ _A. Fertilization of a Flower, as Believed by Grew and Linnæus_ _B. Linnæus's Idea was Wrong_ _C. and D. What Sprengel did not Explain_ _The Way in which the Flower is Fertilized_ _Initial. Clover Leaves_ _A Rowen Field_ _A Five-Leaved Specimen_ _Sleeping Clover_ _Initial. A Barberry Branch_ _"In Arching Bowers"_ _Barberry Blossoms, Showing Sepals and Petals Open. Fig. 1_ _Barberry Blossoms, Showing the Approach of the Bee. Fig. 2_ _Initial. A Woolly Flock_ _One of the Flock Magnified_ _A Winged Aphis_ _Initial. Woodbine Branch and Sphinx Caterpillar_ _What Happened the Next Day_ _What He Should Have Become_ _The Mischief-Maker_ _Initial. Bearing Off the Prey_ _A Section of the Sand-bank_ _In the Dungeon_

_EYE SPY_

A Naturalist's Boyhood

I am enjoying a book, a picture, a statue, or, say, a piece of music. I know these to be the finished works of the man or the woman, but I invariably hark back to the boy or the girl.

What I want to discover is the precise time, in the lives of certain boys and girls, when the steel first struck the flint, the spark flew, and out streamed that jet of fire which never afterwards was extinguished.

I was reading an article entitled "Professor Wriggler," written by Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, which appeared in "Harper's Young People," in the number of October 31, 1893. I need not tell you that both old and young, at home and abroad, delight in reading what Mr. Hamilton Gibson has written, because he was not alone the most observant of naturalists, but a distinguished artist and a sympathetic author.

He thus filled a peculiar position in the literary and artistic world which is seldom given to any one man to fill. Besides being a naturalist from his boyhood, he was able to write better than most people what he wished to write, and to illustrate his articles in a way that was unique. Mr. Gibson's death a few days ago, therefore, has closed the career of a man who had the ability to interest a large number of people not only in natural history, but in art and literature.

The news of Mr. Gibson's death came to me suddenly, and as I was reading it I recalled an interesting talk I had with him less than a year ago about his work early in life and the way he got his start. I had been reading one of his articles to a lady, who, when she heard the name of the author, said:

"Why, I knew Mr. Hamilton Gibson long ago. When he was a lad he painted a lovely drop-curtain for us. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen then."

The next time I met Mr. Hamilton Gibson I asked him about this drop-curtain. "Do you remember it?"

"Certainly I do. We had a temperance society at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and we gave a grand entertainment. I made the drop-curtain. It represented a wood. There was a rock in the foreground, and a Virginia-creeper was climbing over it."

"Was it an original composition?" I asked.

"I made many studies of the rock and the Virginia-creeper from nature. On the other side of the curtain I painted a drawing-room. There were a marble mantelpiece, a clock, and lace curtains. I don't think I enjoyed painting the clock as much as the Virginia-creeper."

"To paint a drop-curtain at fifteen or sixteen means that you had then a certain facility. But that could not have been your beginning. When did you break your shell? What chipped or cracked your egg so that your particular bird emerged, chirped, and finally took flight? That was what I wanted to know."

"Is that what you are after?" asked Mr. Hamilton Gibson. "From my baby days I was curious about flowers and insects. The two were always united in my mind. What could not have been more than a childish guess was confirmed in my later days." Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson paused. I could see he was recalling, not without emotion, some memories of the long past.

"I was very young, and playing in the woods. I tossed over the fallen leaves, when I came across a chrysalis. There was nothing remarkable in that, for I knew what it was. But, wonderful to relate--providentially I deem it--as I held the object in my hand a butterfly slowly emerged, then fluttered in my fingers."

"You were pleased with its beauty," I said.

"Oh! It was more than that. I do not know whether I was or was not a youngster with an imagination, but suddenly the spiritual view of a new or of another life struck me. I saw in this jewel born from an unadorned casket some inkling of immortality. Yes, that butterfly breaking from its chrysalis in my hand shaped my future career."

"But some young people may feel passing impulses, but how account for your artistic skill and literary powers?"

"As to the art side, at least deftness of hand came early. I had the most methodical of grandmothers. Every day I had a certain task. I made a square of patch-work for a quilt. I learned how to sew, and I can sew neatly to-day. I knew how to use my fingers."

"Did you like patch-work?" I inquired.

"I simply despised it. Sewing must have helped me, for it was eye-training, and when I went to work with a pencil and a paint-brush I really had no trouble. I read a great deal. I devoured Cooper's novels and the Rollo series: but there was one special volume, 'Harris on Insects,' I never tired of. I studied that over and over again. It was the illustrations of Marsh which fascinated me. I never found a bug, caterpillar, or butterfly that I did not compare my specimens with the Marsh pictures. I learned this way much which I have never forgotten."

"Had you any particular advantages?"

"Yes; my brother was a doctor, and he let me use his microscope, and so I acquired a knowledge of the details of flowers and insects that escape the naked eye. I pulled flowers to pieces, but not in the spirit of destruction, but so that I might better understand their structure. When I was ten I had a long illness. When I was getting better I was permitted to take an hour's or so turn in the garden. That hour I devoted to collecting insects and flowers. On my return to my room, what I had collected amused me until I could get out again next day or the day after."

"It was pleasure and study combined," I said.

"I was not conscious that I was studying. Then in my sick-room I began to draw and paint the insects. I think I was conscientious about it, and careful--perhaps minutely so. I tried to put on paper exactly what I saw, and nothing else. You say you like 'Professor Wriggler.' I drew him when I was ten or eleven, and I could not make him any more accurate to-day than I did thirty years ago."

"Were you encouraged at your work?" I inquired.

"Yes; once I was much pleased. I came across a curious insect. I could not find it in the books. I made a drawing of it and sent it to a professor of the Smithsonian, asking him to give me its scientific name. Back came by return mail my sketch, and under it the Latin name. The professor wrote me that if the people who were always annoying him with pictures of impossible bugs would only send him as accurate a picture as was mine, he never would have any more bother."

"Did you have any setbacks?"

"Yes; and I haven't forgotten it up to to-day. I was always collecting, and I had brought together every insect I had found in my neighborhood. As I took them home I pinned them in the drawers of an old-fashioned bureau. In time the whole of the drawers, bottom and sides, were full of pinned specimens, and there was room for no more. I had saved enough money to buy a cabinet, and I went to New York and purchased one. When I returned home the first thing I did was to look at my precious collection. When I opened a drawer there was a confused mass of wings only. One single wretch of a black ant had got in, and had passed the word to 10,000 other black ants. They had eaten the bodies of my insects in all the drawers. That quite broke my heart."

"But your writing. How did that come about?" I asked.

"I don't think that you can develop in one direction only. You must unbosom yourself. You are forced to tell or to write about the things you have most at heart. When I was a small boy I wrote a book for myself, and called it 'Botany on the Half-shell.' The first thing I ever wrote which was printed was an article for one of Messrs. Harper's publications, and I made the pictures for it. That was my début."

"Then your work went hand in hand?"

"Certainly. The one was the stimulant of the other. We all grew up together. The days spent in my room when I was ill helped me. I think I studied flowers then, so that their forms and colors were indelibly impressed on my mind. When I was older I made a small bunch of flowers in wax. Not a detail escaped me. I made moulds of all kinds of leaves. Once I put together a rose, some sprigs of mignonette and heliotrope in wax, and gave them to my dear old friend, Henry Ward Beecher. He was delighted with my flowers, and put them on his study table. Presently Mrs. Beecher came in. She ran to the flowers and broke the rose all to pieces."

"How could she have done that?" I asked.

"It must have been with her nose. She wanted to smell the rose."

Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson showed me some monster drawings of flowers--Brobdingnagian ones. The flowers opened and closed when you pulled a string, showing their interior structure. Here were bees or other insects, and they flew into the flowers, collected the honey, and, above all, the pollen, and buzzed out again. He explained to me how plant life would perish if it were not for certain insects, which bring a new existence to flowers; for without these winged helpers there would be no longer any varieties of flowers or seeds.

You will see, then, that in tracing the beginning of Mr. Hamilton Gibson's career what I mean by harking backward.

I am certain, too, that in every boy and girl there is something good and excellent. Like the flower visited by the bee, all it wants is impulse. Then, as Mr. Hamilton Gibson explained it to me, will come the blossoming, and lastly perfect fruitage.

BARNET PHILLIPS.

The Story of The Floundering Beetle

Among my somewhat numerous correspondence from young people, I recall several wondering inquiries about a certain fat, floundering "beetle," as "blue as indigo"; and when we consider how many other observing youngsters, including youngsters of larger growth, have looked upon this uncouth shape in the path, lawn, or pasture, will speculate as to its life history, it is perhaps well to make this floundering blue beetle better acquainted with his unappreciative neighbors.

What are the lazy blue insects doing down there in the grass, for there are usually a small family of them. With the exception of their tinselled indigo-blue coat, there is certainly very little to admire in them. But what they lack in beauty they make up for in other ways. There are many of their handsomer cousins whose history is not half as interesting as that of this poor beetle that we tread upon in the grass. His neighbor insect, the tiger-beetle, running hither and thither with legs of wonderful speed, and with the agility of a fly on the wing, readily escapes our approach; but this clumsy, helpless blue beetle must needs plead for mercy by his color alone, because he has no means to avert our crushing step. A little girl who met me on the country road recently summed up the characteristics of the blue beetle pretty well. The portrait was unmistakable. "I've got a funny blue bug at home in a box that I want to show you," said she; "he's blue and awful fat, and hasn't got any wings, but when you touch him, he just turns over on his back, and trembles his toes and leaks big yellow drops out of his elbows." I have shown her beetle--three views of him, in fact--about the natural size, one of them on his back and "leaking" at his elbows, for such is the infallible habit of the insect when disturbed--a trick which has also given him the name of the "oil beetle." He is also known as the indigo beetle.

But of what use can such a queer beetle be to himself or any one else--a beetle that is not only without wings, but is so fat and floundering that he can hardly lift his unwieldy body from the ground, and which, upon being surprised, can only "play possum," and exude great drops of oil (?) upon our palm as we examine him?

But as he pours the vials of his wrath upon us he would doubtless fain have us understand that he was not always thus unable to take care of himself, that he was not always the clumsy, crawling creature that he now is. As he lies there on his back, the yellow, oily globules of surplus "elbow grease" swelling larger and larger at his leaky elbows, and one by one falling on the paper beneath him, we may almost fancy the monologue which might be going on in that blue head of his.

"Yes, I am indeed a clumsy creature," he might be saying, as he stares upward into our faces with fixed indigo eyes, "and my cumbersome body is a burden. But I was not always what you now see. Ah, you should have seen me as a baby! Was there ever such a lively, acrobatic, venturesome, plucky baby as I, even when I was a day old? Shall I tell you some of my feats? Everybody knows me as I am _now_; but I have taken care that few shall learn my earlier history. It takes a sharp eye to follow my pranks of babyhood, and no one has been smart enough to do it yet, but I will at least let you into the secret of my life as far as it has been found out. I am little over a year old. I was born under a stone in a meadow last April, when I crept out of a golden-yellow case so small that you could hardly see it. I believe your books say I was about a sixteenth of an inch long at that time. Ah! when I think of what I _was_ and what I _could do then_, and look at what I am _now_, I sometimes wonder whether that lively babyhood of mine has not all been a mocking dream.

"Do you wonder that I am as blue as indigo, and am occasionally forced to resort to my oil-tank to still the troubled waters of my later experience? Well, as I was saying (pardon this fresh display of tears), when I crept out of that filmy egg-sac I was just ready for anything, and spoiling for adventure. I found myself with a slender, agile body of thirteen joints, and three pairs of the sprightliest, spider-like legs you ever saw, each tipped with three little sharp claws. Now I knew that these long legs and claws were not given to me at this early babyhood for nothing, so I looked about for something to try them on. I had not a great while to wait, for as I crept along through the grass roots beneath the edge of the stone, I heard a welcome sound, which is music to all babies of my kind. I remembered having heard the same music in my dreams while inside the little yellow case, but now it seemed louder than ever, and in another minute I was almost blown off my feet by the breeze which the noise made, and a great black, hairy giant, as big as a house, pounced down just outside the stone. He had a great black head, and six enormous legs as big round as trees. Think how a bumblebee would look to a wee baby not half as big as a hyphen in one of your books! Did I run when I saw him coming? Not a bit of it. I just waited until he came close to me, and then I jumped on his back, and put those eighteen little claws of mine to good use as I crept over his great spiny body, and finally found a snug resting-place beneath it. And then I waited, clinging tightly with my clutching feet. In another moment I had begun to take my first outing; and did ever baby have such a ride, and to such music! After the bumblebee had remained under the stone a little while he turned and went out again. No sooner did he get to the edge than he spread his great buzzing wings, and away we went over the world, higher and higher, miles high, over big oceans and mountains. I could see them all beneath me as I clung to the underside of the bee. I believe I must finally have got dizzy and faint, for I remember at last finding myself at rest in a queer thicket of greenish poles with big yellow balls at the top of them, and great giant leaves fringed with long, glistening hairs. They told me afterwards it was a willow blossom.

"It seemed a very good place to rest, so I dropped off from my bee and remained. Everywhere about me, as I looked, the air was yellow with these blossoms, and full of the wing-music of the bees. But, as I have said, I was a restless baby, and having had a taste of travel I soon tired of this idle life, and began to get ready for another ride. My chance soon came. This time it was a honey-bee. She alighted in the flower next to mine, but I quietly piled over and clutched upon her leg, and was soon snugly tucked away under her body, with my flat head between its segments. And now for the first time I began to feel hungry; and what was more natural than to take a bite from the tender flesh of this bee, so easily available? I did it, and liked it so well that I adopted this bee for my mother for quite a long while, taking many, many long rides every day, and always coming back to the prettiest little house on a bench under the trees. This was a sort of bee hotel, with many hundreds of guests. It was all partitioned off inside into little six-sided rooms, and the walls were so thin that you could see through them. Indeed, I soon came to like this little home so well that one morning I decided that I would not leave it again. I had begun to get tired of my roving life. I saw a lot of little white fat babies tucked away in some of these little rooms, and this very bee which I had adopted as my mother was engaged in bringing food to some of these babies and sealing them up in their nests. This was enough for me. I concluded to bring my roving habit to a close, and become a bee baby in truth; so watching for my opportunity, I loosened my clutch upon the mother bee, and dropped into one of the little rooms.

"Then I became sleepy, and can tell you nothing more than that when I woke up I didn't know who or what I was. My six spider legs had gone, and I had a half-dozen little short feet instead; and instead of the sprightly ideas of my baby days, the thought of such a thing as even moving was a bore. But I was hungrier than ever, and the first thing I did was to fall upon another fat youngster who disputed the room with me, and make short work of him. That was breakfast. When dinner-time came, I found it right at my mouth. That busy mother of mine had fully supplied my wants, and packed my room full to the ceiling with the most delicious, fragrant bread of flowers made of pollen and honey.