Chapter 11

I knew a farmer in New York who had a very large bob-tailed churn- dog by the name of Cuff. The farmer kept a large dairy and made a great deal of butter, and it was the business of Cuff to spend nearly the half of each summer day treading the endless round of the churning-machine. During the remainder of the day he had plenty of time to sleep and rest, and sit on his hips and survey the landscape. One day, sitting thus, he discovered a woodchuck about forty rods from the house, on a steep sidehill, feeding about near his hole, which was beneath a large rock. The old dog, forgetting his stiffness, and remembering the fun he had had with woodchucks in his earlier days, started off at his highest speed, vainly hoping to catch this one before he could get to his hole. But the wood-chuck seeing the dog come laboring up the hill, sprang to the mouth of his den, and, when his pursuer was only a few rods off, whistled tauntingly and went in. This occurred several times, the old dog marching up the hill, and then marching down again, having had his labor for his pains. I suspect that he revolved the subject in his mind while he revolved the great wheel of the churning-machine, and that some turn or other brought him a happy thought, for next time he showed himself a strategist. Instead of giving chase to the wood-chuck, when first discovered, he crouched down to the ground, and, resting his head on his paws, watched him. The woodchuck kept working away from his hole, lured by the tender clover, but, not unmindful of his safety, lifted himself up on his haunches every few moments and surveyed the approaches. Presently, after the woodchuck had let himself down from one of these attitudes of observation and resumed his feeding, Cuff started swiftly but stealthily up the hill, precisely in the attitude of a cat when she is stalking a bird. When the woodchuck rose up again, Cuff was perfectly motionless and half hid by the grass. When he again resumed his clover, Cuff sped up the hill as before, this time crossing a fence, but in a low place, and so nimbly that he was not discovered. Again the woodchuck was on the outlook, again Cuff was motionless and hugging the ground. As the dog neared his victim he was partially hidden by a swell in the earth, but still the woodchuck from his outlook reported "All right," when Cuff, having not twice as far to run as the chuck, threw all stealthiness aside and rushed directly for the hole. At that moment the woodchuck discovered his danger, and, seeing that it was a race for life, leaped as I never saw marmot leap before. But he was two seconds too late, his retreat was cut off, and the powerful jaws of the old dog closed upon him.

The next season Cuff tried the same tactics again with like success, but when the third woodchuck had taken up his abode at the fatal hole, the old churner's wits and strength had begun to fail him, and he was baffled in each attempt to capture the animal.

The woodchuck always burrows on a sidehill. This enables him to guard against being drowned out, by making the termination of the hole higher than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three feet, then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the surface of the ground for a distance of eight or ten feet farther, according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing up in October or November and coming out again in April. This is a long sleep, and is rendered possible only by the amount of fat with which the system has become stored during the summer. The fire of life still burns, but very faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all closed and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is continued, but at longer intervals, and all the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig one out during hibernation (Audubon did so), and you find it a mere inanimate ball, that suffers itself to be moved and rolled about without showing signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it presently unrolls and opens its eyes, and crawls feebly about, and if left to itself will seek some dark hole or corner, roll itself up again, and resume its former condition.

A GOOD SEASON FOR THE BIRDS

The season of 1880 seems to have been exceptionally favorable to the birds. The warm, early spring, the absence of April snows and of long, cold rains in May and June,--indeed, the exceptional heat and dryness of these months, and the freedom from violent storms and tempests throughout the summer,--all worked together for the good of the birds. Their nests were not broken up or torn from the trees, nor their young chilled and destroyed by the wet and the cold. The drenching, protracted rains that make the farmer's seed rot or lie dormant in the ground in May or June, and the summer tempests that uproot the trees or cause them to lash and bruise their foliage, always bring disaster to the birds. As a result of our immunity from these things the past season, the small birds in the fall were perhaps never more abundant. Indeed, I never remember to have seen so many of certain kinds, notably the social and the bush sparrows. The latter literally swarmed in the fields and vineyards; and as it happened that for the first time a large number of grapes were destroyed by birds, the little sparrow, in some localities, was accused of being the depredator. But he is innocent. He never touches fruit of any kind, but lives upon seeds and insects. What attracted this sparrow to the vineyards in such numbers was mainly the covert they afforded from small hawks, and probably also the seeds of various weeds that had been allowed to ripen there. The grape-destroyer was a bird of another color, namely, the Baltimore oriole. One fruit-grower on the Hudson told me he lost at least a ton of grapes by the birds, and in the western part of New York and in Ohio and in Canada, I hear the vineyards suffered severely from the depredations of the oriole. The oriole has a sharp, dagger-like bill, and he seems to be learning rapidly how easily he can puncture fruit with it. He has come to be about the worst cherry bird we have. He takes the worm first, and then he takes the cherry the worm was after, or rather he bleeds it; as with the grapes, he carries none away with him, but wounds them all. He is welcome to all the fruit he can eat, but why should he murder every cherry on the tree, or every grape in the cluster? He is as wanton as a sheep-killing dog, that will not stop with enough, but slaughters every ewe in the flock. The oriole is peculiarly exempt from the dangers that beset most of our birds: its nest is all but impervious to the rain, and the squirrel, or the jay, or the crow cannot rob it without great difficulty. It is a pocket which it would not be prudent for either jay or squirrel to attempt to explore when the owner, with his dagger-like beak, is about; and the crow cannot alight upon the slender, swaying branch from which it is usually pendent. Hence the orioles are doubtless greatly on the increase.

There has been an unusual number of shrikes the past fall and winter; like the hawks, they follow in the wake of the little birds and prey upon them. Some seasons pass and I never see a shrike. This year I have seen at least a dozen while passing along the road. One day I saw one carrying its prey in its feet,--a performance which I supposed it incapable of, as it is not equipped for this business like a rapacious bird, but has feet like a robin. One wintry evening, near sunset, I saw one alight on the top of a tree by the roadside, with some small object in its beak. I paused to observe it. Presently it flew down into a scrubby old apple-tree, and attempted to impale the object upon a thorn or twig. It was occupied in this way some moments, no twig or knob proving quite satisfactory. A little screech owl was evidently watching the proceedings from his doorway in the trunk of a decayed apple-tree ten or a dozen rods distant. Twilight was just falling, and the owl had come up from his snug retreat in the hollow trunk, and was waiting for the darkness to deepen before venturing forth. I was first advised of his presence by seeing him approaching swiftly on silent, level wing. The shrike did not see him till the owl was almost within the branches. He then dropped his game, which proved to be a part of a shrew-mouse, and darted back into the thick cover uttering a loud, discordant squawk, as one would say, "Scat! scat! scat!" The owl alighted, and was, perhaps, looking about him for the shrike's impaled game, when I drew near. On seeing me, he reversed his movement precipitately, flew straight back to the old tree, and alighted in the entrance to the cavity. As I approached, he did not so much seem to move as to diminish in size, like an object dwindling in the distance; he depressed his plumage, and, with his eye fixed upon me, began slowly to back and sidle into his retreat till he faded from my sight. The shrike wiped his beak upon the branches, cast an eye down at me and at his lost mouse, and then flew away. He was a remarkably fine specimen,--his breast and under parts as white as snow, and his coat of black and ashen gray appearing very bright and fresh. A few nights afterward, as I passed that way, I saw the little owl again sitting in his doorway, waiting for the twilight to deepen, and undisturbed by the passers-by; but when I paused to observe him, he saw that he was discovered, and he slunk back into his den as on the former occasion.

SHAKESPEARE'S NATURAL HISTORY

It is surprising that so profuse and prodigal a poet as Shakespeare, and one so bold in his dealings with human nature, should seldom or never make a mistake in his dealings with physical nature, or take an unwarranted liberty with her. True it is that his allusions to nature are always incidental,--never his main purpose or theme, as with many later poets; yet his accuracy and closeness to fact, and his wide and various knowledge of unbookish things, are seen in his light "touch and go" phrases and comparisons as clearly as in his more deliberate and central work.

In "Much Ado about Nothing," BENEDICK says to MARGARET:--

"Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth--it catches."

One marked difference between the greyhound and all other hounds and dogs is, that it can pick up its game while running at full speed, a feat that no other dog can do. The foxhound, or farm dog, will run over a fox or a rabbit many tunes without being able to seize it.

In "Twelfth Night" the clown tells VIOLA that

"Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings--the husband's the bigger."

The pilchard closely resembles the herring, but is thicker and heavier, with larger scales.

In the same play, MARIA, seeing MALVOLIO coming, says:--

"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."

Shakespeare, then, knew that fact so well known to poachers, and known also to many an American schoolboy, namely, that a trout likes to be tickled, or behaves as if he did, and that by gently tickling his sides and belly you can so mesmerize him, as it were, that he will allow you to get your hands in position to clasp him firmly. The British poacher takes the jack by the same tactics: he tickles the jack on the belly; the fish slowly rises in the water till it comes near the surface, when, the poacher having insinuated both hands under him, he is suddenly scooped out and thrown upon the land.

Indeed, Shakespeare seems to have known intimately the ways and habits of most of the wild creatures of Britain. He had the kind of knowledge of them that only the countryman has. In "As You Like It," JAQUES tells AMIENS:--

"I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs."

Every gamekeeper, and every farmer for that matter, knows how destructive the weasel and its kind are to birds' eggs, and to the eggs of game-birds and of domestic fowls.

In "Love's Labor's Lost," BIRON says of BOYET:--

"This fellow picks up wit as pigeons peas."

Pigeons dp not pick up peas in this country, but they do in England, and are often very damaging to the farmer on that account. Shakespeare knew also the peculiar manner in which they feed their young,--a manner that has perhaps given rise to the expression "sucking dove." In "As You Like It" is this passage:--

"CELIA. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

"ROSALIND. With his mouth full of news.

"CELIA. Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.

"ROSALIND. Then shall we be news-crammed."

When the mother pigeon feeds her young she brings the food, not in her beak like other birds, but in her crop; she places her beak between the open mandibles of her young, and fairly crams the food, which is delivered by a peculiar pumping movement, down its throat. She furnishes a capital illustration of the eager, persistent newsmonger.

"Out of their burrows like rabbits after rain" is a comparison that occurs in "Coriolanus." In our Northern or New England States we should have to substitute woodchucks for rabbits, as our rabbits do not burrow, but sit all day in their forms under a bush or amid the weeds, and as they are not seen moving about after a rain, or at all by day; but in England Shakespeare's line is exactly descriptive.

Says BOTTOM to the fairy COBWEB in "Midsummer Night's Dream:"--

"Mounsieur Cobweb; good mounsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipp'd humble-bee on the top of a thistle, and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag."

This command might be executed in this country,

for we have the "red-hipp'd humble-bee;" and we have the thistle, and there is no more likely place to look for the humblebee in midsummer than on a thistle-blossom.

But the following picture of a "wet spell" is more English than American:--

"The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, The plowman lost his sweat; and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard; The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And crows are fatted with the murrain flock."

Shakespeare knew the birds and wild fowl, and knew them perhaps as a hunter, as well as a poet. At least this passage would indicate as much:--

"As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, Rising and cawing at the gun's report, Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky."

In calling the choughs "russet-pated" he makes the bill tinge the whole head, or perhaps gives the effect of the birds' markings when seen at a distance; the bill is red, the head is black. The chough is a species of crow.

A poet must know the birds well to make one of his characters say, when he had underestimated a man, "I took this lark for a bunting," as LAFEU says of PAROLLES in "All's Well that Ends Well." The English bunting is a field-bird like the lark, and much resembles the latter in form and color, but is far inferior as a songster. Indeed, Shakespeare shows his familiarity with nearly all the British birds.

"The ousel-cock, so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill.

"The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark. And dares not answer nay."

In "Much Ado about Nothing" we get a glimpse of the lapwing:--

"For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground, to hear our conference."

The lapwing is a kind of plover, and is very swift of foot. When trying to avoid being seen they run rapidly with depressed heads, or "close by the ground," as the poet puts it. In the same scene, HERO says of URSULA:--

"I know her spirits are as coy and wild As haggards of the rock."

The haggard falcon is a species of hawk found in North Wales and in Scotland. It breeds on high shelving cliffs and precipitous rocks. Had Shakespeare been an "amateur poacher" in his youth? He had a poacher's knowledge of the wild creatures. He knew how fresh the snake appears after it has cast its skin; how the hedgehog makes himself up into a ball and leaves his "prickles" in whatever touches him; how the butterfly comes from the grub; how the fox carries the goose; where the squirrel hides his store; where the martlet builds its nest, etc.

"Now is the woodcock near the gin,"

says FABIAN, in "Twelfth Night," and

"Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits,"

says CLAUDIO to LEONATO, in "Much Ado."

"Instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmozet,"

says CALIBAN, in The Tempest." Sings the fool in "Lear:"--

"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long That it had it head bit off by it young."

The hedge-sparrow is one of the favorite birds upon which the European cuckoo imposes the rearing of its young. If Shakespeare had made the house sparrow, or the blackbird, or the bunting, or any of the granivorous, hard-billed birds, the foster-parent of the cuckoo, his natural history would have been at fault.

Shakespeare knew the flowers, too, and knew their times and seasons:--

"When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight."

They have, in England, the cuckoo-flower, which comes in April and is lilac in color, and the cuckoo-pint, which is much like our "Jack in the pulpit;" but the poet does not refer to either of these (if he did, we would catch him tripping), but to buttercups, which are called by rural folk in Britain "cuckoo-buds."

In England the daffodil blooms in February and March; the swallow comes in April usually; hence the truth of Shakespeare's lines:--

"Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty."

The only flaw I notice in Shakespeare's natural history is in his treatment of the honey-bee, but this was a flaw in the knowledge of the times as well. The history of this insect was not rightly read till long after Shakespeare wrote. He pictures a colony of bees as a kingdom, with

"A king and officers of sorts"

(see "Henry V."), whereas a colony of bees is an absolute democracy; the rulers and governors and "officers of sorts" are the workers, the masses, the common people. A strict regard to fact also would spoil those fairy tapers in "Midsummer Night's Dream,"--

"The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And, for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,"--

since it is not wax that bees bear upon their thighs, but pollen, the dust of the flowers, with which bees make their bread. Wax is made from honey.

The science or the meaning is also a little obscure in this phrase, which occurs in one of the plays:--

"One heat another heat expels,"--

as one nail drives out another, or as one love cures another.

In a passage in "The Tempest" he speaks of the ivy as if it were parasitical, like the mistletoe:--

"Now, he was The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, And sucked my verdure out on't."

I believe it is not a fact that the ivy sucks the juice out of the trees it climbs upon, though it may much interfere with their growth. Its aerial rootlets are for support alone, as is the case with all climbers that are not twiners. But this may perhaps be regarded as only a poetic license on the part of Shakespeare; the human ivy he was picturing no doubt fed upon the tree that supported it, whether the real ivy does or not.

It is also probably untrue that

"The poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies,"

though it has suited the purpose of other poets besides Shakespeare to say so. The higher and more complex the organization, the more acute the pleasure and the pain. A toad has been known to live for days with the upper part of its head cut away by a scythe, and a beetle will survive for hours upon the fisherman's hook. It perhaps causes a grasshopper less pain to detach one of its legs than it does a man to remove a single hair from his beard. Nerves alone feel pain, and the nervous system of a beetle is a very rudimentary affair.

In "Coriolanus" there is a comparison which implies that a man can tread upon his own shadow,--a difficult feat in northern countries at all times except midday; Shakespeare is particular to mention the time of day:--

"Such a nature, Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow Which he treads on at noon."

VI

FOOTPATHS

AN intelligent English woman, spending a few years in this country with her family, says that one of her serious disappointments is that she finds it utterly impossible to enjoy nature here as she can at home--so much nature as we have and yet no way of getting at it; no paths, or byways, or stiles, or foot-bridges, no provision for the pedestrian outside of the public road. One would think the people had no feet and legs in this country, or else did not know how to use them. Last summer she spent the season near a small rural village in the valley of the Connecticut, but it seemed as if she had not been in the country: she could not come at the landscape; she could not reach a wood or a hill or a pretty nook anywhere without being a trespasser, or getting entangled in swamps or in fields of grass and grain, or having her course blocked by a high and difficult fence; no private ways, no grassy lanes; nobody walking in the fields or woods, nobody walking anywhere for pleasure, but everybody in carriages or wagons.

She was staying a mile from the village, and every day used to walk down to the post-office for her mail; but instead of a short and pleasant cut across the fields, as there would have been in England, she was obliged to take the highway and face the dust and the mud and the staring people in their carriages.

She complained, also, of the absence of bird voices,--so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of the locust.

All this is unquestionably true. There is far less bird music here than in England, except possibly in May and June, though, if the first impressions of the Duke of Argyle are to be trusted, there is much less even then. The duke says: "Although I was in the woods and fields of Canada and of the States in the richest moments of the spring, I heard little of that burst of song which in England comes from the blackcap, and the garden warbler, and the whitethroat, and the reed warbler, and the common wren, and (locally) from the nightingale." Our birds are more withdrawn than the English, and their notes more plaintive and intermittent. Yet there are a few days here early in May, when the house wren, the oriole, the orchard starling, the kingbird, the bobolink, and the wood thrush first arrive, that are so full of music, especially in the morning, that one is loath to believe there is anything fuller or finer even in England. As walkers, and lovers of rural scenes and pastimes, we do not approach our British cousins. It is a seven days' wonder to see anybody walking in this country except on a wager or in a public hall or skating-rink, as an exhibition and trial of endurance.