Birds and all Nature, Vol. V, No. 2, February 1899

Only those animals having a backbone are equipped with noses that are unquestionably adapted to smelling, but insects, crabs, and mollusks perceive odors to a limited extent. Some of them are readily deceived by odors similar to those they seek. Lubbock calls attention to the fact that the carrion fly will deposit its eggs on any plant that has a smell similar to that of tainted flesh.

We are unable to say just what the nature of a smelling substance is which makes it so perceptible to our olfactory organs. Many things, both organic and inorganic, have the power to affect us in a way which cannot be perceived by the organs of taste nor touch. The upper third of the interior of the human nose has the sole function of recognizing them. We have almost no names for the various smells, but they are as distinct as day and night and arouse within us the most intense feelings.

We are not only without names for smells, but we are far from being agreed as to the qualities of them. To one person the odor of sweet peas is delightful, while to another it is quite the reverse. Sometimes we consider a smell pleasant merely because of the associations it brings. The odor of pine lumber is grateful to one who has spent a season in the lumber districts where sawmills abound; and so the smell of an ordinary lumber pile gives pleasure to one where to another it is somewhat disagreeable.

The sense of smell is one that tires most readily. After smelling certain odors for awhile one loses temporarily the power to notice them at all. The sense does not tire as a whole, but it merely becomes inoperative with respect to the odor continually present. Almost any perfume held to the nose soon loses its charm, and is only effective again after a temporary absence. But while one perfume is not sensed a new one presented to the nostrils is eagerly appreciated, showing the sense to be fatigued only with regard to what has been there for some time. The owner of a large rendering establishment in a city was called upon by a committee of citizens who objected to the smells arising from his plant. He went out with the committee to inspect the premises and declared with evident honesty that he could detect nothing disagreeable in the air nor any sort of a scent that did not properly belong to a rendering establishment. Those who work where there are strong and disagreeable odors soon become so accustomed to peculiar smells that they do not notice them at all, although they are keen to detect any unusual odor, as when the liquor in a tanner's vat has not in it the proper admixture of materials.

All the lower animals seem to be positive as to the direction of the source of any scent, but man is powerless in the matter. He merely knows an odor is present, but is unable to tell without moving about whether it comes from one side of him or another. A blindfolded boy cannot tell which side of his nose is nearest to a suspended orange.

To affect this sense a substance must be dissolved or scattered through the atmosphere to be breathed. Whether such substances are divided and used up in giving out odors is still a question. Some of them, as the essential oils, waste away when exposed to the air, but a grain of musk remains a grain of musk with undiminished power after years of exposure. The experiment is such a delicate one in connection with the musk that it has never been settled to the satisfaction of science.

Substances which scatter themselves readily through the air are usually odorous, while those which do not are generally without smell. But many of these when transformed into vapors, as by the application of heat, become strongly odorous. Bodies existing naturally in the gaseous state are usually the most penetrating and effective as odors. Sulphuretted and carburetted hydrogen are examples of these.

College boys sometimes procure from the chemical laboratories of their institutions materials which are used with telling effect on the social functions of higher or lower classes; in one instance a banquet was cleared of guests by the conscienceless introduction of chemicals just before the festivities were to have begun. Efforts to introduce powerful gases as weapons in war have failed because the effect is not confined to the enemy.

Gases which are offensive are not always positively harmful, but as a rule those which offend the nose are to be avoided. Some deadly gases do not affect the sense of smell at all, as in the case of earth damp which stupefies and kills men in mines and wells without warning. But the nose is a great detector of bad air, especially that of a noxious character, and sewer gas as well as other poisonous airs which bring on the worst types of fever are offensive to one who is not living all the time within their range.

But a small part of the mucous membrane of the nose is the seat of this important sense. The olfactory cells are not as easily examined and traced in their connections as are the end organs of the sense of taste. Yet the anatomist finds in the structure of the noses of the flesh-eating animals sufficient indications of their superiority over man in the exercise of the sense of smell. The peculiar development of the membrane and the complicated structure of the nasal cavities in the region occupied by the cells which are supposed to connect with the extreme divisions of the olfactory nerve are all that one would expect from the differences in endowment.

Aside from peculiar powers of smell there are other endowments of noses which are remarkable. The common hog has a snout that is easily moved and has great strength. He can take down a rail fence with it quite as skillfully as a boy would do it. He can turn a furrow in the soil in search of eatable roots, and when the ground is frozen to a considerable degree of hardness he pursues his occupation with unabated zeal and no evident embarrassment.

The fresh-water sturgeon has a large gristle in his nose which boys sometimes convert into a substitute for a rubber ball. His nose is a useful instrument in securing food from the mud in the river bottom. The rhinoceros has a fierce horny protuberance rising from his nose which is valuable to him in war. Indeed some are equipped with two horns, one behind the other. The female rhinoceros with one horn guides her calf with it, causing him to move ahead of her, but the female of the kind with two horns does not use them upon her offspring at all except in anger, and her calf is content to follow her in feeding.

On the coast of California is a large seal called the sea elephant which is notable because the adult male has a proboscis fifteen inches in length when in ordinary temper, but under excitement it is noticed to extend itself considerably beyond its ordinary length. The shrew, the tapir, and the horse also possess something of a proboscis which is useful in feeding.

But the elephant is the greatest animal as to the development of this organ. Insect-eating animals have snouts of gristle, but the organ of prehension of the elephant is composed almost entirely of muscles of the most varied and curious structure. Cuvier counted twenty thousand muscles in an elephant's trunk, and then gave up his unfinished task.

This great mass of muscular endowment McCloskie says has improved his intelligence which is not so great as is popularly supposed. "Observation shows the elephant after all to be rather a stupid beast; it is the monkey, the fox, and the crow which are credited by the Hindoos with brute-cuteness, whilst the highest measure of rationality evinced by the elephant is when he plucks off the branch of a tree, using it as a whisk to drive off flies that torment him. It seems that he is very much afraid of flies, will take fright at a mouse, and is always timid and suspicious, none of these being traits of a large mind."

The nose has been connected always with the highest emotions of man. As cats are transported into the seventh heaven by the presence of their favorite weed and rats are similarly affected by rhodium, so man carries a perfume in his pocket-handkerchief for his own delectation or that of his friends, and in many instances weaves into his worship certain rites in which the burning of incense and the offering of a sweet savor has a prominent part. The Eskimo shows his appreciation of his organ of smell by putting it forward to touch that of his friend whom he meets on terms of special endearment.

Antony Van Corlear's large and rubicund nose is gravely recorded by Irving to have been the means of bringing a great boon to the early inhabitants of New Amsterdam because when he fell asleep in a boat one day, the effulgence of the sun at high meridian fell upon his shining feature, was reflected into the deep with such an undiminished power that the beam came into violent contact with a sturgeon, and, by causing the death of the fish at a time when the Dutch were willing to experiment a little in the matter of gustation, thus introduced the habit of eating this excellent fish to the founders of a great commonwealth.

That the near neighbors of the American Dutch also held the nose in high esteem is attested by the fact that when among the American English any of their divines in one of their interminable sermons came upon a series of unusually great thoughts and carried the congregation into the heights of sacred felicity they acknowledged the divinity of the occasion by "humming him through the nose." Much of their singing also was given an unction otherwise impossible to it by their peculiar nasal attitude while worshiping by use of the psalms.

While the nose is a most prominent feature of the countenance and the beauty of the face depends largely upon that member's appearance, there is no one who can say just what shape the nose should have to be most beautiful. Socrates proved his nose to be handsomer than that of Alcibiades because it was better adapted to use. As the nose is used for smelling and the eye for seeing, Socrates maintained that the handsome eyes and nose of the polished young Greek were less useful and less adapted to the purposes for which such organs exist, and therefore the bulging eyes and violently turned-up nose of the philosopher were held to be more beautiful than those of Alcibiades.

THE WHITE IBIS

(Guara alba.)

LYNDS JONES

THE white ibis might well serve as the text of a symposium upon the evils of plume-hunting to supply the constant demand of the millinery trade. Suffice it to say here that this species, in common with many other members of its family, and many other birds as well, has decreased to the point of almost complete extermination within the last fifteen years from this cause alone. Surely it must be true that the living bird in its natural environment is far more pleasing to the æsthetic sense than the few feathers which are retained and put to an unnatural use.

As lately as 1880 the white ibis was decidedly numerous in the various rookeries of the southern states, wandering as far north as the Ohio river, and touching southern Indiana and southern Illinois. Two were seen as far north as southern South Dakota. They are now scarcely common even in the most favored localities in Louisiana and Texas, being confined to the gulf states almost entirely, and even there greatly restricted locally.

Like many of their near relatives, the herons, the ibises not only roost together in rookeries, but they also nest in greater or less communities. Before their ranks were so painfully thinned by the plume-hunters, these nesting communities contained hundreds and even thousands of individuals. But now only small companies can be found in out-of-the-way places.

The nest is built upon the mangrove bushes or upon the broken reeds and rushes in the swamps, and is said to be rather more carefully and compactly built than are the herons' nests. The eggs are three or four, rarely five in number, and are laid about May 1 in many localities, later in others. They appear large for the bird. In shape they are usually rather long ovate, and in color are gray or ashy-blue, irregularly and rather heavily blotched and spotted with reddish and umber browns of various shades. Some specimens are very pretty.

The story of their great abundance, persecution, rapid decline, and almost death, if written, would read like some horrible nightmare. Confident in the apparent security of their ancestral gathering-places, they fell an easy prey to the avaricious plume-hunter who, from some vantage-point, used his almost noiseless light rifle or air-gun with deadly effect, tallying his victims by the hundred daily. We are sometimes led to wonder if there is anything so sacred as money.

We might be able to derive some comfort from the thinning ranks of many of our birds, perhaps, if we could be sure that when these were gone the work of extermination would cease. But when one species disappears another, less attractive before, will be set upon, and thus the crusade, once begun, will finally extend to each in turn. This is not theory but fact. Nor will the work of extermination cease with the demand for plumes. Not until repeated refusals of offered plumes have impressed upon the mind of the hunter the utter futility of further activity in this line will he seek some other occupation. It is a shame upon us that killing birds should ever have become an occupation of anyone. A strong public sentiment against feather adornments will yet save from destruction many of our native birds. Can we not arouse it?

THE HELPLESS

ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE

AS the nesting-season of our feathered friends approaches the mind naturally reverts to the grief in store for so many of them. Notwithstanding the efforts of the several Audubon societies, the humane journals, and in rare instances earnest pleas from the pulpit, fashion decrees that the wearing of bird plumage, and the birds themselves, is still de rigueur among women. The past season, certainly, showed no diminution of this barbarous fashion – a humiliating thing to record – and so the beautiful creatures will continue to be slaughtered, not by hundreds or thousands, but by millions upon millions, all for the gratification of woman's vanity and a senseless love of display.

Alas, that the "fair" sex in whom the quality of mercy is supposed to exist in a high degree, should still wear above their serene brows – often bowed in worship – the badge of inhumanity and heartlessness. That mothers who have experienced all the pangs as well as joys of motherhood can aid in breaking up thousands of woodland homes by wearing the plumage which makes the slaughter of these birds one of commercial value and necessity. Soon accounts will be published of the fabulous sums to be gained by the heron hunters, and in order to supply the demand for the filmy, delicate aigrette to adorn my lady's bonnet, the nesting colony of these snowy egrets will be visited by the plume-hunters and the work of slaughter begin. Love and anxiety for their nestlings will render them heedless of danger, and through all the days of carnage which follow, not one parent bird will desert its nest. Fortunately the birds are instantly killed by the bullet, else, stripped of the coveted plumes they will be thrown in a heap, there slowly to die within sight and hearing of their starving, pleading little ones. These have no value for the plume-hunter, and so off he goes with his spoil, leaving thousands of orphaned nestlings to a painful, lingering death. And all this for a plume, which, in these days of enlightenment marks the wearer either as a person of little education, or totally lacking in refinement of feeling. It is trite to say that motherhood no more than womanhood necessarily implies refinement in the individual, but surely in the former, one would, in the nature of things, expect to find engendered a feeling of tender pity for any helpless animal and its offspring.

It is this phase of the question which particularly appeals to people in whom love, as well as compassion for all helpless creatures is strong, not a sentiment newly awakened, or adopted as a fad. That genuine love for animals is inherent and not a matter of education the close observer, I think, will admit. Not that a child cannot be brought to recognize, when caught in any act of cruelty to some defenseless creature, the wanton wickedness of his act, but that no amount of suasion can influence him to treat it with kindness for love's sake rather than from the abstract moral reason that it is right.

How can this love for animals exist in a child who has never known the joy of possessing a household pet? In whose presence an intrusive dog or cat is ever met with a blow, or angry command to "get out?" When somebody's lost pet comes whining at the door, piteously pleading for a kindly pat, and a morsel to eat, and is greeted with a kick, or possibly a bullet, under the pretense that the exhausted, panting little animal might go mad? How can a child who has witnessed these things view a suffering animal with any other feeling but calm indifference, or a brutal desire to inflict upon it additional pain? In his estimation every dog is subject to rabies, and every cat infested with fleas.

Paternal apathy in this direction may, to some extent, be remedied by the child's instructors, especially in the kindergarten, where the foundation of character is supposed to be laid. But even there the teacher will fail in arousing a feeling of compassion in a naturally cruel child's mind, unless her own sympathies are genuine, and not assumed for the time or place. Here more than anywhere else, it seems to me, intelligence, if not love, should prompt the teacher to familiarize herself with the treatment necessary not only to the well-being but to the happiness of the little captives held for the purpose of nature-study in her class.

As spring opens, thousands of would-be naturalists, stimulated by nature-study in schools, will, no doubt, begin their universal search for birds' eggs, not from any particular interest in science, but as they collect stamps or marbles, simply to see how many they can get. In this way millions of birds are destroyed with no thought beyond the transitory triumph and pleasure of getting them. This egg-collecting should not be encouraged by the teachers. On the contrary every boy should be told that a true naturalist does not slaughter animals, or rob birds' nests promiscuously; that he is the first to remonstrate against wanton waste of life; that he does not take eggs of common birds at all, and never empties a nest unless of a rare bird, and sometimes not always then. These arguments will prevail among a few who have the real naturalist's instinct, but to the many who either do not know, or do not care, about the cruelty they inflict upon the parent birds in thus robbing them of their treasures, another appeal must be made. Picture the family life of the innocent little creatures – a lesson indeed to people of larger growth; how they guard their nests with almost human care and wisdom, and how they cherish their young with as faithful and self-sacrificing love as parents of human families. Impress upon their young minds how many days of toil the mother-bird, aided by her mate, spent in building the nest which they purpose to rifle, of her joy and pride when the first egg was deposited, and all the patiently borne days of brooding which followed. Surely a boy not wholly depraved would be moved by such a recital, and thus thousands of birds be saved, and through their influence, protected. In this way, too, might not the whole question of slaughtering birds for millinery purposes be solved, for what mother or sister could turn a deaf ear to the reproaches of a child, or to pleadings from young lips for more humane treatment of their feathered friends?

That the small boy is not without wit, and quick to perceive the difference between precept and practice, the following anecdote, I think, will aptly prove:

She was smartly dressed, and when she met one of her scholars bearing off a nest in which were five pretty little speckled eggs, she did not hesitate to stop him.

"You are a wicked boy," she exclaimed indignantly. "How could you rob the birds of their nest? No doubt, at this very minute, the poor mother is hovering about the tree grieving for the loss of the eggs which you carry."

"Oh, she don't care," replied the urchin, edging off with a derisive smile, "she's on your hat."

FEBRUARY

The old, old wonder of the lengthening days
Is with us once again; the winter's sun,
Slow sinking to the west when day is done,
Each eve a little longer with us stays,
And cheers the snowy landscape with his rays;
Nor do we notice what he has begun
Until a month or more of days have run,
When we exclaim: "How long the light delays!"
So let some kindly deed, however slight,
Be daily done by us, that to the waste
Of selfishness some light it may impart —
Mayhap not noticed till we feel the night
Is less within our souls, and broader-spaced
Has grown the cheerful sunshine of the heart.

    – Samuel Francis Batchelder.