Birds and Nature, Vol. 12 No. 1 [June 1902]

The earth is nature’s great filter, cleansing and purifying the water from the impurities of the soil. As it passes through strata of gravel or clay, it becomes pure and wholesome to drink. Sometimes water passes through a stratum containing sulphur, iron or magnesia, and so we have mineral wells and springs. There is in Brown County, Illinois, an iron, a sulphur, and a magnesia spring within a few feet of each other.

Having considered underground streams and lakes, artesian wells, and geysers in a general way, we will now proceed to notice some of the most remarkable of each. Of underground lakes we know but little. We cannot enter them as we do a cave, and if we could now and then find an entrance to them, we should find little room between their surface and the strata above it for navigation. We infer their existence, because they are necessary to supply many underground rivers and smaller streams that come to the surface and discharge their waters into the ocean. Another proof of their existence is found in the large areas of country where deep water is struck at a uniform depth measuring from the ocean level. The bogs of Ireland are floating upon underground lakes.

Springs are gems of the first water, as the dealer in precious stones would say of a perfect diamond. They do not impress us with their size so much as the way they minister to our comfort. But few wells equal them in the variety and purity of their waters. I remember a spring back in New England, which burst forth from a bed of gravel at the side of a hill with such force that it seemed to fairly boil, though icy cold and clear as crystal. So violent was the ebullition that the gravel and pebbles were continually thrown to the surface. Then it ran leaping, gurgling and sparkling down a steep declivity, and was joined on the way by rivulets from three smaller springs, so that when it reached the level of the valley it became a quiet, well-behaved brook, the home of the speckled trout. In places where it spread out over a gravelly bed the birds would light upon the stones and sip the water, and fly away singing joyous notes for so exquisite a luxury. A half mile from its source this brook became quite broad and deep. It ran through a pasture, and cattle came and slaked their thirst.

Hot springs are numerous in all parts of the world. The water of most hot springs has decided mineral properties, for the reason that hot water passing through mineral strata will dissolve more of the mineral substance than cold water. Many hot springs are great resorts for invalids because of their curative properties. The famous Silver Spring in Florida has the dimensions of a small lake, and boats sail over it, and a small river continually flows from it. The inhabitants of Chaudes Aigues, France, use the water of the hot springs to cook their food, to wash their clothes, and warm their houses. The heat from these springs is worth about $30 per day, as it is equal to the heat produced by five tons of coal.

Few things in nature are more beautiful and impressive than a river bursting from the hillside, its clear water sparkling in the sunlight, seeming joyous at being free from its captivity. Among the most celebrated and beautiful of subterranean rivers is the Sorgues of Dauclûse, in France. It flows for miles through a cave, and discharges thirty cubic yards per second. Soon after it issues from the cave it divides into numerous irrigating channels, and spreads fertility over an area of more than eighty square miles. Echo River in Mammoth Cave is navigated by boats for nearly a mile, and in some places is two hundred feet wide. The Poik River in Austria flows through the famous cave of Planina. The cave can only be explored by a boat. Professor Schmidt, with three companions, navigated the river for more than a mile. Along the continental shores many outlets of subterranean rivers may be seen. In 1857 all that part of the sea adjacent to the southern point of Florida received an immense eruption of fresh water. Intelligent observers estimated that for more than a month this remarkable inundation of a subterranean river discharged as much water as the Mississippi, and spread all over the strait, thirty-one miles wide, that separates Key West from the mainland of Florida.

Among the wonders of Yellowstone Park the geysers are the most noted. One of them is called Old Faithful, because he always spouts on time. He gives a grand exhibition every hour, whether he has an audience or not. He spouts, and sputters, and hisses and throws a huge column of hot water into the air, and then quiets down and gets ready for another performance. Another geyser in Yellowstone Park is called the Beehive, being cone-shaped like the old-fashioned beehive. It throws up a column of water more than two hundred feet. Castle Geyser is another that throws up a larger column of hot water than either of the above. The falling water has built up a huge crater that resembles a castle, hence its name. But the largest geyser in Yellowstone Park is called the Giantess. The well or orifice through which it sends up its column of water is more than twenty feet in diameter. The steam arises after the water has been ejected. A body of water more than twenty feet in diameter ascends in one gigantic column to the height of ninety feet. Then from the apex of this column five jets shoot up, radiating slightly from each other to the height of two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. The earth trembles under the descending deluge of this vast column of water, a thousand hissing sounds are heard in the air, rainbows encircle the summits of the jets with a halo of celestial glory. The falling water plows up and bears away the shelly strata, and a seething flood pours down the slope into the river. It is the grandest and most terrible fountain in the world. Visitors have to wait hours and sometimes days before the geyser will entertain them with an exhibition of its power and beauty.

Commander Ford, of the British Navy, says that one of the geysers of Iceland, called the Stroker, can be excited to action by throwing stones and turf down into the pit, and that the geyser resents the insult by throwing them up. He found that it usually took about forty minutes after throwing in the stones before they were thrown up. It occurred to him that he might send his dinner down and have it sent back to him well cooked. So he wrapped a leg of mutton and a fowl in a cloth and threw them into the boiling caldron, where he would never see them again unless they were thrown up. After waiting the usual forty minutes he began to regret his venture, but the geyser was only seven minutes behind time, and up came his leg of mutton and fowl done to a turn. Aside from the beauty of the columns of water, vapor and steam geysers send up, the waters are all the time depositing carbonate of lime and silica, and building up craters of many interesting forms.

The principle on which artesian wells act is very simple and can be understood by any schoolboy. Though this principle is very simple, there are so many varying conditions that many expensive failures result. Millions of dollars have been spent to get pure wells of flowing water, with nothing to show but holes in the ground or a flow of useless mineral water, but sometimes a good quality of mineral water is obtained. At Henry, Illinois, a flowing well of sulphur water is highly valued by the people, who come many miles to obtain it, while a few miles north of Henry, at Bureau Junction, there is a well of soda water which is very palatable.

Some of the best authorities say that only flowing wells should be called artesian. I will refer to a few of the many flowing wells. The hot springs in many parts of the world are natural artesian wells, the water being forced up from great depths. It is estimated that there are more than fifty thousand wells east of the Mississippi River from one to two thousand feet in depth, drilled to obtain petroleum oil or the inflammable gas which accompanies it. These are as strictly artesian wells as those that send up water.

Among the most noted artesian wells is the one at Grenelle, in Paris. In boring this well, after going down one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven feet and passing through a stratum of rock over a subterranean fountain, the drill suddenly fell fourteen feet and the water soon rose above the surface. The temperature of the water coming from this well is eighty-two degrees, Fahrenheit. It is conducted by pipes to the hospital in the town, for heating purposes. The bore in most artesian wells is from three to six inches in diameter, but the one at Passy, near Paris, is twenty-eight inches in diameter and one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five feet deep.

In town and country a pure water supply is of the utmost importance to the health of the people and in many countries it can only be obtained by deep and expensive boring. Various uses are made of water flowing from artesian wells. In many places it is used to propel machinery. In the desert of Sahara artesian wells have become of great value in making the country near them habitable, as the flow is sufficient to irrigate large areas of land. Two new villages have been built in the desert and two hundred thousand palm trees have been planted about these wells. In the Western part of the United States, where the rainfall is limited, many artesian wells have been bored, the water being largely used for irrigation. In California more than forty thousand acres are irrigated from flowing wells. The average depth of these wells is about two hundred and fifty feet and the average discharge eighty thousand gallons per day.

    M. S. Hall.

WHERE WE FOUND THE LADY-BIRDS

(A TRUE INCIDENT.)

One spring we were cleaning away the leaves and ice from about the roots of a little thicket of white Scotch roses, as we have always called the low-growing, small-blossomed white rose so popular in many country places.

The sunshine had not warmed the air enough to melt the snow and ice which had been formed in early winter about the roots and which held together a mass of oak leaves driven by the wind to this hiding-place or else put there by the farmer in the fall. One lump of ice about the size of a man’s fist had been very hard to dislodge from the rose bushes and as it was brought out by the teeth of our iron rake we picked it up to show to some interested bystanders and to our surprise, and theirs also, we found a number of the small orange-colored beetles usually called lady-birds closely imbedded in this icy prison.

Breaking off a part of the lump which held a half dozen or more of the tiny beetles, we carried it into the house and allowing it to melt in our hands we were surprised to find the lady-birds slowly begin to come back to life and its pleasures. They seemed at first as stupid and drowsy as any other mortals when just aroused from a heavy sleep, but in an hour’s time they were flying about the room and finally all gathered on the window where the sunshine was streaming in with greatest light and warmth.

The children who had at first mourned over the supposed death of these special insect pets of children were never tired of telling the story afterward of how “the lady-birds could freeze to death all winter and then wake up and fly in the springtime.”

    Mary Catherine Judd.

CHERRY AND I

No one knows where the alder boughs lean,
And the willow dips its head,
And the whitest pebbles sleep and dream
In their sandy, wave-washed bed.
Where the mosses creep o’er fallen trees,
As softly asleep they lie,
Lulled by the drowsy hum of bees —
No one but Cherry and I.

No one knows how the cardinal flower,
Velvety, gorgeous and tall,
Was ’prisoned fast in a virgin bower
Of golden thread for a thrall,
That the dodder spun one summer day,
When only we two were nigh;
No one else saw – so no one can say —
No one but Cherry and I.

No one knows where the blue-berries hide,
In the fern beds, thick and green,
Where the mossy floor is soft and wide,
And the sunlight sifts between
Layers of leaves, in the roof o’erhead,
With never a glimpse of sky;
Where the trillium’s cup is the wild bee’s bed —
No one but Cherry and I.

No one knows where the oriole’s nest
Swings by a silvery thread,
Backward and forth by the wild grape pressed,
That drops from the boughs o’erhead.
Where we find the first wild strawberry,
No one could tell, should they try:
For a chestnut heifer is Cherry,
And a country milkmaid, I.

    – Elizabeth Walling.

STARFISHES

One of the most unique and interesting branches of the animal kingdom is that division called by scientists Echinodermata, comprising animals familiarly known as starfishes, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers. So far as is known no member of this group of animals has ever ventured on land or into fresh water. All are inhabitants of the ocean and are found from the tide-washed shore to the abysses of the sea.

The present article deals with the true starfishes (Asteroidea) and a good idea of the general structure may be gained by a careful examination of a specimen of the common five-finger (Asterias vulgaris) so common on the New England coast. It is made up of a central disk or body, from which extend five rays or arms, whence the name starfish. The animal is protected by a hard framework or skeleton, composed of many limestone plates, attached by a tough membrane and covered with a skin. Between these plates there are many small openings through which the water enters the body cavity. The plates are armed with numerous spines, attached by a ball and socket joint. Some of these spines bear little pincer-like organs called pedicellariæ, which are capable of considerable movement. Many of these little organs are arranged in groups about the spines, which swell at the point of attachment to the surface of the starfish, thus forming a shelf or base, around which these organs arrange themselves in the form of a wreath, the spine projecting high above the center. The exact function of these little organs is not known, although they have been seen to catch small animals, such as crustacea, and this is probably one of their duties.

The lower or actinal surface of each arm is deeply channeled and perforated by many holes or pores, through which the little ambulacra or water-feet are thrust. These serve as organs of locomotion, of respiration and of perception. These water-feet form a part of the wonderful water-vascular system, which consists of a madreporic body, or sieve-like organ, opening on the dorsal or actinal surface and situated between two rays. It opens into a tube called the stone canal, which enters a circular vessel called the circum oral water tube, surrounding the mouth, and a long radial canal, to which the water-feet are attached, opens from this tube and extends along the inner surface of each ray. The water enters the madreporic body, circulates through the stone canal, the circular and radial tubes, and finds its exit through the ambulacra. The water system is directed and controlled by a set of nerves, extending from a ring of nerve matter surrounding the mouth.

The true vascular or blood system consists of a heart or hæmal canal, which runs parallel with the stone canal from the madreporic body to the oral water tube. A set of circular and radial vessels supplies every part of the animal with the vital fluid.

The digestive system is simple and consists of a mouth, a stomach, which is large and sends a lobe into the base of each arm, and an intestine of greater or lesser length, ending in a small anal opening on the dorsal surface. The cœca or liver consists of two long, tree-like masses, nearly filling each ray and connecting with the stomach by a short duct.

Starfishes are very destructive to the oyster beds along the Atlantic coast of the United States, thousands of bushels of oysters being destroyed in a few days by them. The little starfishes attack the young oysters and as the former increase in size they move about in vast numbers, resembling in this respect the grasshoppers and locusts of the west and being fully as destructive. In a paper in a Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, by Henry C. Rowe, it is stated that in 1882 $90,000 worth of oysters were destroyed in six months and $9,000 were spent in the same period in catching the starfishes. The method of catching these animals is interesting. Devices called “tangles” and “mops” are used. These consist of a heavy iron frame, to which about twenty small ropes, ending in a large bunch of cotton waste, are fastened. These “mops” are drawn over the oyster beds and the starfishes become entangled in the waste and are then drawn on board the vessel. As many as 1,500 starfish have been taken from a single “mop.”

The following account, published in the Evening Register, of New Haven, Conn., April 3, 1884, will serve as an example of the destructive habits of these animals: “It was reported yesterday that between November 1, 1883, and the close of navigation in December, there were caught on oyster beds adjoining the Bridgeport public beds about 15,000 bushels of starfish. Since October 1 they have destroyed over 900 acres. From six to ten steamers have been catching starfish during the past six months, at an expense of $5,000.”

When oystermen first knew of the destruction caused by the starfishes, they spent much time and labor in collecting the injurious animals, cutting off an arm or two and then throwing the mutilated body and dismembered arms back into the water, not knowing that the arms would grow out again. The animals are now collected and used as a fertilizer. The interesting power of reproducing lost arms is well illustrated on the plate, the individual figured having one perfect arm and four new ones just starting to grow.

The method of eating among some of the common starfishes is curious. When the shell of an oyster is too large to be swallowed, the starfish actually projects its stomach from its mouth, surrounds the shell with this everted organ, and digests its prey in this position. The sight presented in an aquarium by a number of these animals in this attitude is truly wonderful and odd. Another interesting performance of a member of this group is that of righting itself when placed on its back. This is performed in the following manner: One or more of the rays is twisted about until the sucking feet get a firm hold on the ground or the object upon which it is resting; this is followed by a succession of similar movements farther back in the row of ambulacra, so that the whole ray is finally twisted around and lies flat on the ground. The other arms then turn in a similar manner and the starfish is soon “right side up.”

Though hidden away in dark corners of the sea, the starfish is able to see, being quite well supplied with visual organs. The end of each ray is slightly turned up and at its summit is situated a little red eye. A long nerve extends from this eye-spot to the ring of nerve matter which surrounds the mouth.