Birds and all Nature, Vol. VII, No. 4, April 1900

She crept along slowly and hid in a fold of rain-worn paper near the home of her much criticized relative. He was sitting in his doorway singing his evening song as loud as he could, for he was singing with a purpose. The source of his music lay within his wing covers. Nearly one hundred and thirty fine ridges were on the under side of one wing cover (which is hard and horny), and these are hastily scraped over a smooth nervure which projects from the under side of the other wing cover. And that is how he sings. His song is bound to be a love-song and Mrs. House Cricket finding a few crumbs within the paper and deciding to stay all night suddenly heard the loud, harsh tones softened and, looking out, she saw her big cousin standing close to another dark form like his own. He was crooning softly as he caressed her with his slender, delicate antennæ – his mate, whom he had won to himself with his song. Mrs. House Cricket looked on for a moment and changed her mind about staying all night. "I'll creep under a leaf," she said, "and leave the lovers to themselves." So she slipped away and saw them no more until, some weeks later, she passed and, seeing her cousin in his door, stopped:

"I have all my eggs laid," she said, "and I'm going up toward the big house to stay until the weather gets cold."

"Mrs. Field Cricket has two hundred eggs right here under this long grass," he answered with great pride. "She is welcome," returned his cousin; "for my part I prefer quality to quantity." And she turned away to take a peep at the nursery which was warmed and nourished only by the sun.

"They will soon hatch out and dig homes each for himself like my own little ones," she said as she left them and began her long journey toward the farmhouse. "But mine will be wise enough to get near to a barn or house when they are grown up," she mused, "so that they need not sleep all winter, and they can be busy and useful to the world – busy, useful, cheerful, hopeful." She stopped to say one or the other of these good words often as she traveled on and sometimes she said them all at one time, as she pruned her wings which when folded, extended beyond her body into long, slender filaments like the antennæ.

At length, just as the maple leaves, all brown and dry, were blowing into heaps against the rosebushes and the lilacs, Mrs. Acre Tidae reached the farmhouse and slipped unobserved into the warm, clean kitchen.

She found a wide crack in the floor near the big chimney and squeezed in, digging it out to suit her body.

"The babies are all safe in their little holes by this time," she said, "safe for the winter. Perhaps by next fall they will be with me and we will all go out at night to eat crumbs," and she began singing, "Useful, cheerful – busy, hopeful." "Do hear the cricket," said Linsey, "It sounds like the one in the old log house."

"They are all alike, I guess," returned Harry, who was eating apples. "They are always jolly sad, I reckon." "Use-ful, cheer-ful, hope-ful," sang Mrs. Cricket.

ANIMALS AS PATIENTS

M. LEPINAY, the presiding genius of the bird hospital in Paris, has found by experience that his feathered patients chiefly exhibit a tendency toward apoplexy – the dove is particularly addicted to this complaint; consumption follows in order of unpopularity, with internal complaints occupying the third place. In the case of apoplexy, blood-letting – so popular a remedy in the days of our great-grandparents – is resorted to by means of a diminutive lancet inserted in a fleshy portion of the bird, and this is followed by small doses of such drugs as quinine, bromide of camphor, etc.

Apropos of dog's teeth, about a year ago there was exhibited at a certain show a very interesting and aged schipperke, who was at that time the only dog in the world boasting a complete set of false teeth. His owner, Mr. Moseley, is a dentist as well as a lover of animals, and it is entirely due to his skill that the little dog is able to eat with perfect comfort by the aid of the artificial molars provided for him by his master, who, on another occasion, provided a dog who had lost a limb in an accident with an artificial leg. The only horse possessing a full set of false teeth was the property of Mr. Henry Lloyd of Louisville, Ky., who had its diseased teeth extracted and replaced by a set of false ones.

A swan that had had a leg run over by a cart-wheel, causing a compound fracture, was recently successfully treated at Otley, England, while yet another swan had an operation performed at Darlington some little time ago that was very much out of the ordinary. In this instance, the unlucky bird had the principal bone in its right wing fractured in several places, the fracture presumably being caused by a brutal blow dealt by some unknown ruffian. A veterinary surgeon was asked to give his advice, and on his recommendation an amputation was decided upon, and this he successfully performed. The bird, sans a wing, was, when last heard of, well on the road to recovery.

THE TRIPLET TREE

CHARLES COKE WOODS, PH.D

MATTER per se is an evidence of mind. Every material thing enshrines a thought. Essential nature has no superfluities. To the thinker everything means something. In nature nothing happens. Everything is ordered. There can be no portrait of a landscape without a painter. There can be no landscape without a maker.

The visible forms that nature takes may be changed. Her invisible forms are changeless. The search for the changeless is the great and delightful task of art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. The ultimate in nature and in art is divine. The permanent principle survives the fleeting form. Nature's principles are relatively few. Her forms are multifarious. Tree life is true life. It is natural. It is therefore true. Nature's garb may be odd. It may even be deformed. But her inner self is never false. Sap, fiber, leaf, blossom, fruit; this is nature's apocalypse. It is Queen Beauty's progressive revelation.

Trees usually grow singly. Under certain conditions they may as naturally grow otherwise. The unusual is not necessarily the unnatural. Nature's resources are vast. She may at any time manifest herself in an unfamiliar form.

A triplet tree grows on what is known as "Green's Ranch" in Cowley County, Kansas. The ranch is located five miles northeast of Arkansas City. The trees are about three hundred yards from the west bank of the Walnut River. They range in a line running north and south. They are between forty-five and fifty feet high. The first two on the north are eighteen inches apart. The third tree standing at the south end of the row is fifteen feet from the middle one. They are water elms, and average about three and one-half feet in girth. The tree standing at the north end of the row is hollow at the base and, leaning over southward intersects the central tree two feet from the ground; thence it extends to the one at the south end of the row, and intersects it with a limb from either side twelve feet above the ground. The segment of the circle described by the leaning tree is about twenty feet. At the points where the cross tree intersects the other two, it is not merely a case of contiguity, but of actual identification.

Another feature of the leaning tree is that half way between its base and the trunk of the second, and on the lower side is an unsightly knot about as large as a half bushel measure. Half way between the center tree and the one on the south, and on the under side of the leaning tree is another lump similar to the first, about half the size. These unsightly warts appear to have been produced by a congestion of sap in the tissue of the intersecting tree. This triplet tree is a curiosity. It presents a strange phenomenon in tree formation. But nature is everywhere full of mystery and surprises.

COUNTRIES DEVOID OF TREES

ANYONE who has traveled through the comparatively treeless countries around the Mediterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, Greece, northern Africa, and large portions of Italy, must fervently pray that our own country may be preserved from so dismal a fate, says President Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss of the forests only that is to be dreaded, but the loss of agricultural regions now fertile and populous, which may be desolated by the floods that rush down from the bare hills and mountains, bringing with them vast quantities of sand and gravel to be spread over the lowlands.

Traveling a few years ago through Tunisie, I came suddenly upon a fine Roman bridge of stone over a wide, bare, dry river bed. It stood some thirty feet above the bed of the river and had once served the needs of a prosperous population. Marveling at the height of the bridge above the ground, I asked the French station master if the river ever rose to the arches which carried the roadway of the bridge. His answer testified to the flooding capacity of the river and to the strength of the bridge. He said: "I have been here four years, and three times I have seen the river running over the parapets of that bridge. That country was once one of the richest granaries of the Roman empire. It now yields a scanty support for a sparse and semi-barbarous population." The whole region round-about is treeless. The care of the national forests is a provision for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country of the great industries of agriculture and mining upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends. A good forest administration would soon support itself. —From January Atlantic.

SNOW PRISONS OF GAME BIRDS

A LATE season snowstorm, with the heavy precipitation that marked the storm of Feb. 28, gives the heart of the sportsman as well as that of the bird protector a touch of anxiety on the score of the ruffed grouse and quail. A downfall of that kind, followed by a thaw and then by a freeze at night, means the death of hundreds of game birds. The quail simply get starved and cold killed, while the ruffed grouse, or partridges, get locked up by Jack Frost and die of hunger in their prisons.

There is a patch of woods not far from Delavan, Wis., where there was until recently an abundance of these game birds. There was a local snowstorm there late in February last year, which was followed by a day of sunshine and then by a frost which covered the snow with a heavy crust. Grouse have a habit of escaping from the cold and blustering winds by burying themselves in the big snow drifts at the edges of the woods. There they lie snug and warm and are perhaps loath to leave their comfortable quarters. They sometimes stay in the drift until the delay costs them their lives, the crust forming and walling them in. It so happened to sixteen partridges in the woodland patch near Delavan. With the melting of the season's snows the bodies of the birds were found. They were separated from one another by only a few feet. It was a veritable grouse graveyard. —Tribune.

Warm grows the wind, and the rain hammers daily,
Making small doorways to let in the sun;
Flowers spring up, and new leaves flutter gaily;
Back fly the birdlings for winter is done.

    – Justine Sterns.

THE RING-BILLED DUCK

(Aythya collaris.)

THIS duck has many popular synonyms, among others ring-necked, ring-billed shuffler, ring-necked scaup duck, or blue-bill fall duck (Minnesota), black jack (Illinois), moon-bill (South Carolina). It is found throughout the whole of North America, south to Guatemala and the West Indies; breeding from Iowa, southern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maine northward. It is accidental in Europe.

The chief variation in the plumage of this species consists in the distinctness of the chestnut collar in the male, which is usually well defined, particularly in front. There is very little in its habits to distinguish it from the other "black-heads." Like them, it usually associates in small flocks. Its flesh is excellent, being fat, tender and juicy.

A STRANGE BIRD HOUSE

ADDIE L. BOOKER

WRENS are famous for choosing queer places for nesting-sites. They will nest in almost any situation about the house or yard that can be entered through any semblance of a hole. I place all kinds of odd receptacles about the yard for them every spring, which they seldom fail to occupy. These friendly and interesting little creatures appreciate such thoughtfulness, and repay it by fairly bubbling over with grateful song.

But the pair that afforded me the most amusement pre-empted a homestead that was not intended for them.

Our acquaintance began when preparing to remove the cook stove to the summer kitchen in May. In winter this kitchen is used as a sort of lumber room, and when clearing it of various odd and ends it was found that a pair of wrens had taken possession of an overshoe and laid the foundation of a home. The pair of overshoes had been tied together and hung on a nail in the wall, about five feet from the floor.

Needless to say they were left undisturbed, though not without many doubts of the feasibility of the enterprise, on account of the proximity of the stove. The shoes were the ordinary kind, fleece-lined rubber, and were only a few feet from where the stove would be set. These conditions warranted the expectation of disastrous results from extreme heat – at least so it seemed to me, but my little neighbors thought otherwise, and nest-building progressed rapidly. Being remarkably industrious midgets, the nest of sticks was soon finished and lined with soft feathers from the poultry yard.

Wrens are noted for their industry; unless in a very restricted situation the outside dimensions of the nest are enormous when compared with the interior, or cavity. And the twigs that compose the structure are out of all proportion to the size of the architects. I have seen twigs a foot long and half the size of a lead pencil, used in the construction of their nests. That birds so diminutive could carry such burdens in their tiny bills is indeed wonderful. It is said that a single pair have been known to fill a barrel, but no nest quite so mammoth as this has ever come under my observation.

To return to the home in the shoes. After the completion of the nest five wee eggs were deposited therein, and incubation began. And in spite of the heat everything went on happily in this unique domicile.

We soon became the most sociable friends. Their quaint and charming ways made them very amusing pets. They became so tame that they would approach me fearlessly, even alighting on my head, and would let me examine their nest without being frightened.

The wren is a very lively and active bird, and sings incessantly throughout the breeding-season, and these were not an exception, but were forever darting in and out, their actions accompanied by a sweet warble. Mr. Wren would positively quiver all over with delight, while regaling Mrs. Wren and me with his exuberant melody. They were the cheeriest little companions imaginable. Every morning as I entered the kitchen I was greeted heartily by my small neighbors, who bustled about in the preparation of the morning meal as busily as I. Meanwhile Mr. Wren merrily sang his innocent matin song, and spontaneously I would find myself singing too, as I went about my work.

One day there was great excitement in the shoe and, when I looked in, five featherless mites with huge mouths were to be seen. Mrs. Wren was now a veritable "old woman who lived in a shoe." But she did not treat her children as did the old woman of nursery fame, though she was kept very busy in supplying their wants, even with the assistance of Mr. Wren.

These birds subsist on small insects and consume a considerable quantity. With much satisfaction I watched them slay a host of ants that were invading the kitchen; running up and down the wall with much agility, they picked the ants off.

Real warm weather had set in by the time the nestlings were ready to try their wings, and I thought, of course, my friends would desert me for a cooler resort out of doors, in which to pass the heated term. But O, no, they were too loyal for that, so to make their house more commodious, another room was added by building a nest in the other shoe. And the family raised in the second shoe was not a whit less interesting than the first.

THE CHICKADEE

SIDNEY DAYRE

"Were it not for me,"
Said a chickadee,
"Not a single flower on earth would be;
For under the ground they soundly sleep