Birds and Nature Vol. 11 No. 1 [January 1902]

    – Berton Mercer, “Winter.”

THE THISTLE

As plants were among the objects most familiar to primitive man, they naturally came to be considered good or evil, according as their properties were found to be beneficial or injurious. The imaginative and pure reverence, however, which originally linked plant life with the personifications of natural phenomena, soon degenerated into a superstitious worship and became associated with the mummery of various kinds of impostors. The plants, through the manipulations of the quacks and witches, who largely composed the fraternity of the early herbalists, became endowed with powers to kill or heal, to control the weather, to gain or hold friends, and many other associations that have clung to them ever since. The Thistle appears to have been especially favored in this regard. It appears that an eagle had stolen the sacred Soma from the Hindu tree of life. Barely had he departed with the immortalizing draught before he was overtaken by a lightning bolt and stretched lifeless upon the earth. From the eagle’s feathers sprang up the bramble, while the Thistle grew from his claws. About this time Loki, the evil spirit of the Norse Asgard, passed that way, bent upon mischief. The unpleasant qualities of the two plants at once appealed to him. Loki immediately gathered the seed and proceeded to sow them in the fields of his enemies, the result being that all the good seed was killed. This Aryan myth has given rise to the expression, “Sowing wild oats,” and is believed to be the origin of the biblical story of the tares and the wheat, coming into Hebrew literature by means of the Indo-Iranians at the time of the Israelitish exile.

Now, Thor observed what Loki had done; so he hurled his hammer at the brambles and a bolt of lightning at the Thistles. For this reason the thistle blossoms are colored red and the plants became lightning plants. But the end was not yet. The beautiful goddess Freya, seeing the Thistles drooping under the chastisement of the god, took compassion and gave them to drink of the mead from the sacred goat of Valhalla, by virtue of which the plants became invested with immortality. Thus it came to pass that the Thistle has a dual life. It is a lightning plant, in which, in common with similar forms, like the vervain, the hazel, and the ash is never injured by lightning or approached by serpents. On the other hand, it being a protege of Freya, the goddess of Love, it straightway became a powerful love charm, and doubtless has done much execution in Cupid’s lists.

The Thistle group is the most primitive of the Composite family, and it bears evidence of a vast evolutionary history. There are one hundred and seventy-five living species which are distributed over Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. The plants seem able to adapt themselves to almost any conditions, and their unpleasant spines are found bidding defiance to the reindeer near the Arctic circle, as well as successfully measuring strength with the prickly cactus and acacias of the tropics. On our own prairies only plants thus armed stand much show to survive the herds of cattle that wander over them, and this protection, together with their great productiveness, have rendered Thistles such a nuisance and menace to agricultural interests as to necessitate legislative action looking to their extermination. The Russian and Canada thistles are the worst offenders, and where they once obtain a foothold they, as a rule, remain. The unpleasant qualities of the Thistle, however, served to bring about its adoption as the national emblem of Scotland. The story relates that during the eighth century the invading Danes, while stealing up to the Scotch camp under cover of darkness, passed over a patch of cotton thistle, and the sudden cries of the injured men warned the guards, and thus the army was saved. Achaius, King of Scotland, adopted the plant as his emblem in recognition of this service, but it was not made a part of the national arms until the middle of the fifteenth century.

The origin of the Scottish order of the Thistle, or St. Andrew, is somewhat uncertain. In 1687 it was restored to favor by James II of England and was given much prominence during the reign of Queen Anne. The membership was limited to from twelve to sixteen peers of the realm, the insignia being a golden collar composed of sixteen thistles, from which hung a St. Andrew’s cross.

What is known as the purple star thistle was named for Chiron the Centaur. The great spines on the calyx suggested the military caltrop, an iron star of four points, which was used in battle to annoy horses.

Among other incidents in which Thistles have been in evidence may be mentioned the confusion into which the army of Charles the Bold was thrown, in 1465, because of the deceptive appearance of the plants. The Burgundians were beseiging Paris, and while the army slept scouts brought word that great numbers of spears were assembled outside the city walls. A panic was narrowly averted, and later it was discovered that the stems and spines of some very tall Thistles had produced the deception. The leaves of the Thistles were commonly employed by the Roman soldiers to shade their helmets, and it is stated that when Hugh Spencer, favorite of Edward II, was hanged, the mob, in derision, placed a crown of thistle spines upon his head.

Thistles seem to have figured in peace as well as war. In England the teasel is indispensable in the cloth mills, in which it is employed to dress the nap of the fabrics, and Virgil tells of the vest of Helen, which was embroidered to represent the plants, while the handles of the Cup of Eurymedon were entwined with them. Probably the crowning glory of the Thistle, if the story be true, lies in its contribution to architecture, in which capacity it deserves no less consideration than the Egyptian lotus. It appears from the narrative that a young girl of Corinth dying, her nurse placed on her grave a basket containing her toys, covering them with a large tile in order to shield the childish treasures from the weather. The basket was set by chance on the root of a Thistle. When the springtime came the plant grew until, meeting the tile, it was forced to turn downwards in graceful folds, which, catching the eye of Callimachus, he conceived the capital of the Corinthian columns.

    Charles S. Raddin.

The smallest effort is not lost;
Each wavelet on the ocean toss’d
Aids in the ebb-tide of the flow;
Each rain drop makes some flow’ret blow
Each struggle lessens human woe.

    – Charles MacKay in the Chicago Record-Herald.

WITH SILVER CHAINS AND GAY ATTIRE

After the cold, repeated rains,
The crusted branches rub the panes,
And ere the dawn the pelting hail
Adds fury to the roaring gale.
So wears the night – the morrow’s sun
Proclaims the winter tempest done.
And what a morn! A crystal dome
Each rounded hill about our home!
More radiant is the sight, I ween,
Than e’er before has mortal seen.

Betwixt their glassy walls on high
The mountain corridors we spy,
And lo! all chandeliered are they,
Like costly palace of a day!
From limb to limb with whitest wreaths
The trees are festooned. All the heaths
With sun-tipped, icy spikes are bright;
And frost-stars glitter in the light.
With untold wealth the earth is strewn,
Each bush bears jewels, dimmed too soon.

Each stalk is cased in crystal mail,
Gem rivals gem in every vale;
No gaudier crown has sunflower’s head,
With dew and fragrance round it shed.
Rich vitreous tubes each breeze shakes down,
What shafts and columns gird our town!
Fretwork and tinsel fairy fair,
Wondrous stalactites everywhere.
And so the emulation grows
Till Sol dissolves the wafted snows.

    – George Bancroft Griffith.

THE BIRDS IN THEIR WINTER HOME

(In the Woods.)

From the region of the Great Lakes to the Gulf there is no section that contains more to interest the naturalist than the hills and forests of central Mississippi. Here no winter’s rigors chill the blood and drive the forest folk to remote or inaccessible retreats. Into this land of warmth and sunshine, this land of the ’possum, persimmon and the pickaninny, Jack Frost does not come till November is well advanced. Even then he comes only to clear the air, bring down the leaves, and announce the coming of the short, make-believe winter.

Go out doors in December after the leaves have fallen and take note of the varied life in wood, field and brake; think that now in the far away North the wind howls through the leafless trees, finding few creatures hardy enough to resist his blasts save the snowbird and the hare. The blasts of chill November and chillier December have sent myriads of birds down here where food is plenty in savannah, forest and thicket. On the wooded knolls under the beeches and hollies congregate the hungry hordes, feasting on seeds and berries of the rattan, holly and smilax. Flying in and out of the briar-thickets are innumerable white-throated sparrows fleeing from frozen Canada and the lake country. A clear long-drawn whistle strikes the ear. We seek the source. A little brown bird much the size and shape of an English sparrow seated on a shrub projecting from the briars raises his head and whistles a sound as pure and free from flaw as the little spot of white upon his throat. Cheewinks as fussy as old hens toss the dead leaves about; grackles in shining black stalk dignifiedly about; while cardinals in low boughs and underbrush give a touch of vivid color to the scene just as the pink and white dresses of the girls form a pleasing contrast to the somber blacks and grays of the gentlemen’s attire at a Fourth of July celebration.

Second to none in delicate beauty of coloring, king of his tribe, is the fox-sparrow. Russet and rufous on the back, beneath the white marked with brilliant stripings of the same color as the back, on the feathers of his head and upper neck a clear pearly luster which is iridescent in the sunshine but invisible in the shadow, he is a marked bird, the peer of any in the woods. Happy the bird-lover who has the opportunity to study this magnificent bird in his winter home; one so favored can well afford a feeling of pity for the less fortunate dwellers in the central states who seldom make his acquaintance except through the medium of the museum or the manual.

Florida blue jays in black, white and blue hop about among the rustling leaves or seated on a limb, hammer away at an acorn. Possessing a more extensive vocabulary than our familiar Northern jays, more loquacious, more sociable, they are certainly the artists of the tribe. No one who has ever heard their clear musical notes as they play in the tree-tops or hop about on the lawns as friendly and cheerful as robins, can ever entertain quite such a low opinion of their musical ability as he did before. Resonant, ringing tinkling, this call is the forest chime that summons the little children of the wood to vespers, heard at evening with white throats calling to one another from brush-heaps and briar thicket, it is the expression of this strong pure life away from the haunts of men. Under such surroundings it is easy to forget the cruelty practiced by our gifted blue-coat when spring has filled these woods and fields with nests and nestlings.

But here comes one for whom no cloak of charity is needed, the musician pre-eminent among all this gifted throng, the Carolina wren. A slender curved beak, a trim bunch of cinnamon-brown feathers barred with darker brown on wings and tail, a buff breast, a little throat pulsating with vigorous buoyant life are the most conspicuous characteristics of this chorister of winter woods. He has been called the mocking wren. Let no one be deluded by such a term into the belief that he has no individuality, for, although his song has in it the whistle of the cardinal, the dignified song of the brown thrasher and the effervescence of the mockingbird, through it all there runs a peculiar quality all his own. Swinging on a rattan vine, singing with all the abandon of a bright May morning he seems the most vigorous exponent of “the strenuous life” in this land where languorous breezes blow soft and warm, bringing with them a suggestion of the sun-kissed waters of the Gulf and odors of resin and turpentine from the interminable forests that intervene between us and the coast.

Down by the branches on cold frosty mornings you will find a little brown ball of a bird, that with tail tilted up over his back dives under every bridge, slides into every brush-heap, or hides tantalizingly behind every log that comes in his path. Not shy, yet not bold, he disappears from view at the most exasperating moments. Coming with the frosts, going away when they cease, he certainly deserves the name of winter wren. Shorter than the Carolina, darker on the back and tail, his nervous, fidgety manner makes it an easy matter to distinguish him from his more talented cousin. In these winter woods he never sings. Beyond an occasional metallic “chip” now and then I have never heard him give utterance to the emotions that fill his plump little breast. He is the silent observer of the busy life about him, a sitter in his own chimney corner, where he smokes his pipe and studies life subjectively, a modest little philosopher in cinnamon brown and black.

Darting in and out among the lower branches of a giant beech, now flitting to a new position with movements as sudden and unexpected as those of a hummingbird, now running along a limb like the brown creeper, comes another tiny friend the ruby crowned kinglet. A plain little Quaker he seems in his suit of olive green without a patch of yellow or black to relieve the severe simplicity of his garb. Even the tufts of brilliant red feathers on his head is concealed from vulgar gaze. If you have sharp eyes and a moderate degree of patience your efforts to get a glimpse of the red tuft will by and by be crowned with success, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t see the ruby the first time you see the bird. I had observed the cheerful little chap time after time in my morning rambles in the woods, and had come to know every twist and motion of the tiny body before I caught a glimpse of the longed-for tuft. Finally one morning as he bent his head to pick up some sweet tid-bit the olive-green feathers parted and I saw his tiny crown. A modest genial little anarchist he is, never parading his opinions before an admiring public, but suddenly springing down in front of us on some low bush he flaunts his red flag and is gone before we realize it. Having once learned how and when to look for his crown it is an easy matter to find it again whenever his little majesty feels inclined to give you the opportunity.

    James Stephen Compton.

IRISH MOSS

(Chondrus crispus lyngb.)

A weary weed toss’d to and fro,
Drearily drench’t in the ocean brine.

    – Cornelius G. Fenner, “Gulf-Weed.”
Those who have spent any time along the sea shore will recall the familiar seaweeds washed upon the bank by the tide and have watched them idly waving to and fro in the water near the shore where the depth does not exceed several meters. There are perhaps no plants more beautiful from the purely artistic point of view. Many a visitor to a distant sea coast has collected and mounted the more beautiful and delicate ones as souvenirs to delight the eye of friends. The delicate coloring and manifold branchings are the characteristic of the more attractive species. Some are quite small, while others grow to enormous size. The so-called “sea lettuce” is of a bright grass green color, forming a large leaf like expansion. The Gulf weed, a species of Sargassum, is very plentiful in the gulf regions of the southern United States, Mexico and Central America. During heavy storms great quantities of this are torn loose from their fastenings and carried far out into the Atlantic where they form the Sargassa sea and impede ocean traffic. The sailors on the ships of Columbus encountered such a sea and revived their hopes of soon seeing land, as they rightfully conjectured that the sea weeds were washed from the shore.

Sea weeds in general are variously employed. They are the sources of iodine and bromine. They are collected in large quantities and used as fertilizers. The Chinese and Japanese use some species very extensively as food. The stipes or stalks of Laminaria cloustoni are used in surgery.

Sea weeds and other aquatic plants serve as a protection and food for a host of animals of the seas; especially fish, cray-fish, lobsters, etc. The smaller fish in trying to escape from his larger, ravenous enemy hides among these plants. Bryant, in Sella says: