Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 3 [March 1901]

In Central Africa there is a lake, Tanganyika, having a length of four hundred miles and a width of from ten to fifty miles, and at an elevation of twenty-seven hundred feet above sea level, which has one of the most interesting and peculiar fresh-water molluscan faunas known. It is thought that at some remote period in geological history this lake formed a part of the ocean and that in the course of time it was cut off from the sea, gradually became fresh and was finally raised to its present elevation. The reason for such a theory is the presence in the lake of certain molluscan organisms whose shells closely resemble those of the salt water family, Littorinidae (Periwinkles). The fact that certain species of the family inhabit brackish water and are even subject to the influence of fresh water, adds additional weight to this theory. The shell of this species (Limnotrochus thomasi) also resembles certain of the top-shells (Trochus), which are marine in habitat. Most of the other species inhabiting this lake are like the fresh water Viviparas in form.

The animal of Ampullaria depressa is very curious and interesting when studied alive. The foot is very wide, almost square in some positions; the head is narrow, separated from the body by a neck and the region of the mouth is produced into two long, cylindrical, tapering, tentacular processes, which are probably tactile organs like the elongated lips of Glandina, described in the last article. On the top of the head are placed the two whip-like tentacles, which are longer than the length of the whole animal and are always waving about when the animal is in motion. Just back of the tentacles the eyes are placed at the end of two short, rounded prominences or peduncles. From the left edge of the aperture extends the long, hollow, cylindrical siphon formed by two extensions of the mantle. On the upper side of the posterior end of the foot is placed the horny, concentric operculum or door. When the animal withdraws into its shell the head first disappears with its appendages and the siphon, and the foot is doubled up in the middle, the operculum shutting in last and closing the interior against all enemies.

All of the different groups of the mollusca have their giants and their pigmies and the fresh-water mollusks are no exception to the rule. We have thus far studied the animals of normal size and the giants. Let us now turn our attention to some of the pigmies among the fresh-water snails. One of the commonest of these small mollusks is the Bythinia tentaculata, the shell of which does not exceed half an inch in length, and is formed in a graceful, tapering turret. This species, like many other European animals, has been introduced into this country and bids fair to eclipse many of the native species in the number of individuals. It probably first came over with some merchandise, which was shipped west by the way of the Erie canal. The snail, once established in the canal, has had every opportunity to spread over the entire United States. The canal is emptied every year and cleaned and the water, with its organisms, is allowed to flow into the little streams and the larger rivers and thence into Lake Ontario. From this lake this species has spread so that it is also found in Lakes Erie and Michigan, and will eventually spread over the entire northern portion of the United States. This is but one of the many examples of different species being carried by human agencies from one part of the world to another.

But there are many species of these smaller fresh-water snails that are pigmies, indeed, whose tiny shells do not exceed an eight of an inch in length and which require the aid of a microscope to adequately study their delicate organisms. These minute animals live on water plants and on any submerged object. They vary from long, pointed, steeple-like shells to those which are perfectly rounded like a miniature apple. In our own country these little creatures may be found in any of our ponds or streams, and the lively little animals are well worth a closer acquaintance. They are known scientifically under the difficult names of Paludinella, Amnicola, Somatogyrus, Fluminicola, with many others, and do not bear any specific English titles.

Much more might be written concerning the habits and variations of the freshwater snails. The best way to become acquainted with these interesting animals is to collect them alive and study their various modes of life in an aquarium. This receptacle need not be an elaborate or expensive affair. A fish globe six or eight inches in diameter makes an admirable aquarium and even a quart Mason fruit jar has been successfully used by the writer. The bottom should be covered to a depth of an inch or more with clean, fine sand and several stones should be introduced for the snails to “roost” upon. If the aquarium is large enough a few water plants like water cress might be introduced to assist in purifying the water.

The best Mollusks for this purpose are the Limnaea, the Planorbis, the Physa, the Vivipara and some of the “pigmies” just mentioned. Much can be learned concerning the habits of our common snails if a record is kept of everything the animal does, such as its mode of eating, what it will eat and the increase in size from day to day of the little snails after they are hatched from the egg. If these creatures could be considered by the majority of people as living, breathing animals, performing many of the functions carried on by our own bodies they would be regarded with more favor and hence aquaria would become more numerous and they would also be studied more intelligently. The writer has been frequently amused (and sometimes pained) by the careless question of some otherwise intelligent person, when he has been exhibiting the shell of some interesting mollusk, “Well, really, now, was that thing ever alive?” It is to be earnestly hoped that this series of articles will reach many of this class of people and lead them to a better understanding of these lowly creatures.

    Frank Collins Baker.

THE ORANGE

(Citrus aurantium.)

The tree which produces the well-known Orange of commerce is closely related to the lemon, the citron and the lime, and with them belongs to the genus Citrus.

By some it is supposed that Linnaeus selected this name, deriving it from a corruption of the Greek word meaning cedar-tree, because, like the cedar, it is an evergreen. By others it is held that the name was chosen in honor of the city of Citron in Judea. In ordinary language the name citron is applied to another species of the genus, the fruit of which is oblong, about six inches in length and with a thick rind.

Many consider that the name Orange is a direct corruption of the Latin word aureum, meaning golden; but our best authorities on the derivation of words believe that the name, though a corruption, reached its present form in the following manner: “The Sanskrit designation nagrungo, becoming narungle in Hindustani, and corrupted by the Arabs into naranj (Spanish naranja), passed by easy transitions into the Italian arancia (Latinized aurantium), the Roman arangi, and the later Provincial Orange.”

In regard to the original home of the Orange there is a great diversity of opinion, yet there is little doubt that it was in some portion of southern Asia. Both the Orange and the lemon were unknown to the Romans, hence they must have been indigenous in a country not visited by this people. The region traversed by them was great and they even penetrated India. They were a people who were inclined to please the palate and would surely have used the Orange and taken it home with them if discovered and would doubtless have recorded the finding of so important a fruit. These facts tend to prove that the Orange was not then cultivated in India unless in the remoter parts. Other portions of Asia were unknown to the Romans but, with the exception of the southeastern portion, climatic conditions would not have permitted the growth of the Orange.

De Candolle, an eminent botanist and one the truthfulness of whose investigations cannot be questioned, held that the original home of the Orange was the Burmese peninsula and southern China. Throughout both China and Japan this fruit has been cultivated from very ancient times.

Though not found by the Romans in India it was later cultivated there and without doubt it was carried from there by the Arabs to southwestern Asia previous to the ninth century and from there into Africa and to some of the European islands. The Arabian physicians were familiar with the medicinal virtues of the Orange and have spoken of it in their writings. It was probably afterwards introduced into Spain and possibly to other portions of southern Europe by the same agency as it seemed to follow the spread of Mohammedan conquest and civilization. Thus in the twelfth century we find that the bitter Orange was a commonly cultivated tree in all the Levant countries. There is no reference to the sweet Orange in the literature of this time and it must have been introduced at a later period. It was certainly cultivated in Italy as early as the sixteenth century.

In more recent years the cultivation of the various varieties has spread throughout the world wherever the climate and the conditions of the soil will permit the ripening of the fruit.

Risso, in his valuable history of the Orange family, enumerates one hundred and sixty-nine varieties with distinct characteristics. Of these he classes forty-three under the Citrus aurantium.

Besides the sweet and bitter varieties the more common ones are the Mandarin Orange of China, a flat and spheroidal fruit the rind of which easily separates from the pulp; the Tangerine, which is very fragrant and originally derived from the Mandarin, and the Maltese or Blood Orange, commonly grown in southern Italy and notable for its deep red pulp. There are many other varieties that bear geographical or local names.

Few forms of plant life present to the beholder more beautiful characteristics than an Orange tree in full bearing. Such a tree, in addition to the unripe and ripe yellow fruit has also numerous white flowers, which give off their wonderful perfume, and its symmetrically arranged branches are covered with rich dark green leaves. It is a tree that appeals not alone to the sense of taste but to the esthetic nature as well.

THE MUSICAL SWAN

(Cygnus musicus.)

“What moonlit glades, what seas,
Foam-edged, have I not known!
Through ages hath not flown
Mine ancient song with gathered music sweet —
By fanes o’erthrown,
By cities known of old, and classic woods,
And, strangely sad, in deep-leaved northern solitudes?”

If those living Avian gems aglow amid the trees that form Earth’s emerald diadem, are the jewels of Nature’s crown, then is the great white swan afloat upon the ripples of her glistening lakes and seas, a shimmering pearl amid the chasing of her silver breastplate.

Yet it was not the beautiful Mute Swan, most beautiful, most stately, and most silent of all created beings, that typified to the men of old the reincarnation of the poet’s soul; neither the Trumpeter, with its loud clarion, but the more slender Singing Swan of song and story, that “thro’ its deathless music sent a dying moan.” It was to this swan alone that the ancients could attribute the power of melody – the singular faculty of tuning its dying dirge from among the reedy marshes of its final retreat, where “in a low, plaintive and stridulous voice, in the moment of death, it murmured forth its last prophetic sigh;” and it was this swan, too, that inspired the philosopher Pythagoras to teach that the souls of poets passed at death into swans and retained the powers of harmony they had possessed in their human forms.

M. Antoine thinks that it is not improbable that the popular and poetical notion of the singing of the swan was derived from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; yet the traveler Pausanius, who spake as one having authority, affirmed the swan to be “the glory of music,” at the same time preserving the following testimony to the repute of the swan as a bird of prophecy: “In the night before Plato was to become the pupil of Sokrates, the latter in a dream saw a swan take refuge in his bosom. Now the swan has a reputation for music, because a man who loved music very much, Kuknos, the king of the Ligyes beyond the Eridanus, is said to have ruled the land of the Kelts. People relate concerning him that, through the will of Apollo, he was changed after his death into a swan.” From this evidence Pausanius thus subtracts the weight of his private opinion: “I am willing to believe that a man who loved music may have ruled over the Ligyes, but that a human being was turned into a bird is a thing impossible for me to believe.”

Mr. Rennie cites, also: “In his Phaedro, Plato makes Socrates thus express himself: ‘When swans perceive approaching death, they sing more merrily than before because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve; but men, through fear of death, reproach the swans, saying that they lament their death and sing their grief in sorrowful tones.’ After digressing to assert that no bird sings when either hungry or sorrowful, he resumes, ‘Far less do the swans sing out of grief, which, by reason of their belonging to Apollo, are diviners, and sing more joyfully on the day of their death than ever before, as foreseeing the good that awaits them in the other world.’”

Charles de Kay wrote: “Not the magnificence merely, but the element of superstitious reverence accounts for the frequency of the swan as a crest and charge of coats of arms,” stating that in heraldry the swan runs back through heraldic devices to totemism, and that among the “oath-birds” which wizards of Lapland called upon in their incantations, the swan often figured.

It is also asserted that German local legends retain the idea of the swan as an uncanny bird, prophetic of death or the under world, and that the Klagesee, or Lake of Complaining, near Liban, was so named from the numbers of musical swans that congregated there.

Pliny says, “Some affirm that swans sing lamentably a little before death, but untruly, I suppose, for experience of many has shown the contrary.” But Aristotle says, “Swans are wont to sing, particularly when about to die, and mariners in African seas have observed many of them singing with a mournful voice, and expiring with the notes of their dying hymn.”

Cicero affirmed that Lucius Crassus spoke with the divine voice of a swan about to die; while Homer makes no allusion to their singing, but mentions their “flying round the springs of Cayster, clanging on sounding pinions.” Oppian asserts, “They sing at dawn before the rising of the day as if to be heard more clearly through the still air. They also sing on the sea-beach, unless prevented by the sounds of storms and boisterous weather, which would not permit them to enjoy the music of their own songs. Even in old age, when about to die, they do not forget their songs, though they are more feeble than in youth, because they cannot so well erect their necks and expand their wings. * * *

“They are invited to sing by Favonius, and as their limbs become sluggish and their members deficient in strength when death approaches, they withdraw to some place where no bird can hear them sing, and no other swans, impelled by the same cause, may interrupt their requiem.”

While on the one hand Julius Scaliger vituperates Cardan for “lauding the nonsense of the poets, and the mendacity of the Greeks about the singing of the swan,” Aldrovand cites on their behalf the testimony of one Frederico Pendasio, a celebrated professor of philosophy and a person worthy of credit, who told him that he had frequently heard swans singing melodiously while he was sailing on the Mantuan Lake; also that one George Braun had heard the swans near London “sing festal songs.”

Besides this, Mr. Rennie says, Olius Wormius professed that many of his friends and scholars had heard them singing, and proceeded to give the experience of one John Rostorph, a student in divinity, and a Norwegian by nation. “This man did, upon his credit, and with the interposition of an oath, solemnly affirm, that once in the territory of Dronten, as he was standing on the seashore early in the morning, he heard an unusual and sweet murmur, composed of the most pleasant whistlings and sounds; he knew not at first whence they came, or how they were made, for he saw no man near to produce them; but looking round about him, and climbing to the top of a certain promontory, he there espied an infinite number of swans gathered together in a bay, and making the most delightful harmony – a sweeter in all his life-time he had never heard.”

To this testimony Goldsmith appends his personal opinion in the following words: “Thus it appears that our modern authorities in favour of the singing of swans are rather suspicious, since they are reduced to this Mr. George Braun and John Rostorph, the native of a country remarkable for ignorance and credulity.” Goldsmith’s own belief was that the ancients had some mythological meaning in ascribing melody to the swan, “and as for the moderns, they scarcely deserve our regard. The swan must, therefore, be content with that share of fame that it possesses on the score of its beauty, since the melody of its voice, without better testimony, will scarcely be admitted by even the credulous.”

This better testimony is furnished by Charles de Kay, who says that modern bird-lovers have heard the swans of Russia singing their own dirge in the North, when, having lingered too long before migration, reduced in strength by lack of food, and frozen fast to the ice where they have rested over night, they clang their lives out, even as the ancients said.

Inasmuch as we have record of the Singing, or Whistling Swan from Egypt to Alaska and the Aleutian Isles, with testimony of modern scientists as well as ancient poets in proof of the vocality of this, the largest of singing birds, the question becomes one of quality of song rather than of the actuality of the song itself. M. Montbeillard’s opinion of the whistler’s vocal exertions is thus expressed: “The bursts of its voice form a sort of modulated song, yet the shrill and scarcely diversified notes of its loud clarion sounds differ widely from the tender melody, the sweet, brilliant variety of our birds of song.” And M. Morin even composed a memoir, entitled “Why swans that sang so well in ancient times now sing so badly.” It is probable that the ancients, with due consideration for the difference in size between the swan and all other songsters, may have also given consideration in the same ratio to the theory of the enchantment that distance lends; and it is more than probable that all of this confusion of testimony resulted from confusion of species; for, as Charles de Kay explains, observations of the Mute Swan caused people to assign the song of the dying swan to the most fabulous of fables; while Hearne, who observed the Trumpeter, makes the following vigorous statement: “I have heard them in serene evenings, after sunset, make a noise not very unlike that of a French horn, but entirely divested of every note that constituted melody, and have often been sorry that it did not forebode their death.”

Aldrovand, referring to the structure of the organs of voice as countenancing the poetical creed of the singing swan, says, “For when we observe the great variety of modulations which can be produced from a military trumpet, and, going upon the axiom that Nature does nothing in vain, compare the form of such a trumpet with the more ingenious mechanism of a swan’s windpipe, we cannot but conclude that this instrument is at least capable of producing the sounds which have been described by the ancient authors.”

In distinguishing between the Whistling and Tame or Mute Swans, Bingley describes this strange form of windpipe, “Which falls into the chest, then turns back like a trumpet, and afterwards makes a second bend to join the lungs. The curve being inside the neck of the Whistler or Hooper, instead of being an external adornment, as in the case of the graceful Mute, in whom while with the Musical Swan the gift of voice is balanced by a corresponding detraction from personal appearance; for the straight neck and smaller stature impart, we are told (alas!), a certain goose-like suggestion.”

‘Behold! The mantling spirit of reserve
Fashions his neck into a goodly curve,
An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings
Of whitest garniture, like fir-tree boughs,
To which, on some unruffled morning, clings
A dusky weight of winter’s purest snows – ’

This aesthetic obstacle is, however, successfully surmounted by the fact that their songs are uttered mostly at night, when flying far overhead in the darkness; but there is no help for the statement of Albertus Magnus, which must needs be taken for better or for worse, that “When swans fight, they hiss and emit a sort of bombilation, not unlike the braying of an ass, but not so much prolonged.”

The Abbe Arnaud, whose observations were said to be very minute, completes the list of odious comparisons as follows: “One can hardly say that the swans of Chantilly sing; they cry, but their cries are truly and constantly modulated; their voice is not sweet; on the contrary, it is shrill, piercing, and rather disagreeable. I could compare it to nothing better than the sound of a clarionet winded by a person unacquainted with the instrument.”

Proceeding then to depict the manner of their dual concerts, he continues: “The swan, with his wings expanded, his neck stretched and his head erect, comes to place himself opposite to his mate, and utters a cry to which she replies by another which is lower by half a tone. The voice of the male passes from A to B flat; that of the female from G sharp to A. The first note is short and transient, and has the effect which our musicians call sensible, so that it is not detached from the second, but seems to slip into it. This dialogue is subjected to a constant and regular rhythm, with the measure of two times. Observe that, fortunately for the ear, they do not both sing at once!”

Nuttall is likewise arrayed with the witnesses for quantity rather than quality of sound. Of the dying song, he says, “These doleful strains were heard at the dawn of day or when the winds and waves were still, and, like the syrinx of Pan, were in all probability nothing more than the murmurs and sighs of the wind through the marshes and forests graced and frequented by these elegant aquatic birds.” Speaking of the natives of Iceland comparing their notes, “very flatteringly,” to those of a violin, he suggests that “allowance be made for this predilection, when it is remembered that they hear this cheerful clarion at the close of a long and gloomy winter, and when, at the return of the swan, they listen to the harbinger of approaching summer; every note must be, therefore, melodious, which presages the speedy thaw and return of life and verdure to that gelid coast.” He adds that “it emits its notes only when flying or calling on its companions – the sound being very loud and shrill, but by no means disagreeable when heard high in the air and modulated by the winds.”

Of the “Peaceful Monarch of the Lake,” Thomas Bewick wrote: “Much has been said, in ancient times, of the singing of the Swan, and many beautiful and poetical descriptions have been given of its dying song. ‘No fiction of natural history, no fable of antiquity, was ever more celebrated, oftener repeated, or better received; it occupied the soft and lively imagination of the Greeks; poets, orators, and even philosophers, adopted it as a truth too pleasing to be doubted.’ ‘The dull, insipid truth,’ however, is very different from such amiable and affecting fables, for the voice of the swan, singly, is shrill, piercing and harsh, not unlike the sound of a clarionet when blown by a novice in music. It is, however, asserted by those who have heard the united and varied voices of a numerous assemblage of them, that they produce a more harmonious effect, particularly when softened by the murmur of the waters.”