Eye Spy Part 8

The summer which is allowed to pa.s.s without a visit to the twilight haunt of the evening primrose, perhaps at your very door, is an opportunity missed. Night after night for weeks it breathes its fragrant invitation as its luminous blooms flash out one by one from the cl.u.s.ters of buds in the gloom, as though in eager response to the touch of some wandering sprite, until the darkness is lit up with their luminous galaxy--that beautiful episode of blossom-consciousness and hope so picturesquely described by Keats:

"A tuft of evening primroses O'er which the wind may hover till it dozes, O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, But that 'tis ever startled by the leap Of buds into ripe flowers."

Nor is it necessary to brave the night air to witness this sudden transformation. A cl.u.s.ter of the flowers placed in a vase beneath an evening lamp will reveal the episode, though robbed of the poetic attribute of their natural sombre environment and the murmuring response of the twilight moth, a companion to which its form, its color, and its breath of perfume and impulsive greeting are but the expression of a beautiful divine affinity.

Then there is that pretty daylight mystery of the faded, drooping bells of last night's impulsive blossoms, each perhaps tenanted by the tiny, faithful moth which first welcomed its open twilight chalice, and which now has crept close within its wilted cup, the yellow tips of its protruding wings simulating the fading petals. And again, a few weeks later, with what surprise do we discover that these long columns of green seed-pods are not always what they seem, but are intermingled with or supplanted by smooth, green caterpillars which exactly resemble them in size and general shape, the progeny of our tiny pink and yellow moth now feeding on the young seed-pods! Verily even a vireo or worm-eating warbler, who is supposed to know a green caterpillar when he sees one, might perch among these without a suspicion, except perhaps at the tickling of its feet by the rudely touched victim.

But these are not all the interesting features of the evening primrose. It has still another curious secret, which has doubtless puzzled many a country stroller, and which is suggested in the following inquiry from a rural correspondent:

"I read in 'Harper's Young People' your piece about the evening primrose, and found the little moth and the catterpilers, what I never seen before; but they is one thing what you never tole us about yit. Why is it that the buds on so meny evening primroses swell up so big and never open? Some of them has holes into them, but I never seen nothing c.u.m out."

This same question must have been mentally propounded by many observers who have noted this singular peculiarity of the buds--two sorts of buds, one of them long and slender, and with a longer tube; the other short and stout, with no tube at all--both of which are shown in proper proportion in my ill.u.s.tration. It is well to contrast their outward form, and to note wherein they differ. In the normal or longer bud the tube is slender, and extended to a length of an inch or more, while in the shorter specimen this portion is reduced to about a fifth or sixth of that length, while the corolla enclosed within its sepals is much shortened and swollen.

The difference in the shape and development of these two buds is a most interesting study, as bearing upon the conscious intention of the flower as an embodiment of a divine companion to an insect. What is the intention involved in the construction and habit of this flower? Why this long tube? Why does it await the twilight to burst into bloom?

In the new botany of Darwin flowers must be considered as embodiments of welcome to insects. Long ago it was discovered that the powdery pollen of a flower must reach the stigma of the flower in order to produce seed. It was formerly supposed that this was naturally accomplished by the stamens shedding this pollen directly upon the stigma, but this was later shown to be impossible in most flowers, the anthers containing the pollen being so placed that they could not thus convey the pollen. This fact was first noted by Sprengel in 1787, who was the first to discover that the flower, with its color, perfume, and honey, was really designed to attract insects, and that only by their unconscious aid could the pollen be thus carried to the stigma.

But Sprengel had supposed that the intention of the blossom was the reception of its _own_ pollen, a fact which was again soon seen to be impossible, as the stigmas of many flowers are closed when their own pollen is being shed. It remained for Darwin seventy years later to interpret the problem. Insects were intentionally attracted to the flower; but the pollen with which their bodies thus became dusted was designed to be carried to the stigmas of another flower, showing cross-fertilization to be the intention in nearly all blossoms.

The endless shapes of flowers were shown by Darwin to have reference to certain insects upon whom the flower depended for the transfer of its pollen. What are we to infer from the shape of our evening primrose? Its tube is long and slender, and the nectar is secreted at its farthest extremity. Only a tongue an inch or so in length could reach it. What insects have tongues of this length? Moths and b.u.t.terflies. The primrose blooms at night, when b.u.t.terflies are asleep, and is thus clearly adapted to moths. The flower opens; its stigma is closed; the projecting stamens scatter the loose pollen upon the moth as it sips close at the blossom's throat, and as it flies from flower to flower it conveys it to other blossoms whose stigmas are matured. The expression of the normal bud is thus one of affinity and hope.

Our friend just quoted mentions having seen "holes" on the other swollen buds, and there is certain to be a hole in every one of them at its maturity. But let us select one which is as yet entire. If with a sharp knife-point we cut gently through its walls, we disclose the curious secret of its abnormal shape--"the worm i' the bud," as shown in my accompanying sketch--and what an eloquent story of blighted hopes its interior condition reveals! This tiny whitish caterpillar which we disclose in the petal dungeon has been a prisoner since its birth, during the early growth of the bud. One by one the stamens and also the stigma have been devoured for food, until the mere vestiges of them now remain. With no stamens to bequeath pollen, and no stigma to welcome other pollen, what need to open? What need to elongate a corolla tube for the tongue of a moth whose visit could render no functional service? So thus our blighted buds refuse to open, where blooming would be but a mockery. This tiny caterpillar has a host of evening primrose blossoms laid to his door. When full grown he is nearly a third of an inch in length, at which time he concludes to leave his life-long abode, which explains the "hole" through the base of the bud. If we gather a few of these buds and place them in a small box, we may observe the remaining life history of the insect. After creeping from its petal home it immediately spins a delicate white silken coc.o.o.n, and within a day or so changes to a chrysalis. At the expiration of about a fortnight, as we open the box, we are apt to liberate one or more tiny gray moths, which upon examination we are bound to confess are a poor recompense for the blossom for which they are the subst.i.tute.

This little moth is shown very much enlarged in the accompanying ill.u.s.tration. Its upper wings are variously mottled with gray and light brown, and thickly fringed at their tips, while the two lower wings are like individual feathers, fringed on both sides of a narrow central.

These and other characters ally the insect with the great group known as the _Tineidae_, of which the common clothes moth is a notorious example.

The Dandelion Burglar

Young people readers will perhaps recall my previous reference to the whims and preferences of the birds in their selection of building material. The unravelling of deserted nests will often prove an instructive as well as humorously entertaining pastime, revealing in the same fabric evidences of great sagacity and what would appear perfectly nonsensical prejudices, with an occasional piece of positive frivolity. Thus we can readily see the wisdom in the selection of these strong strips of milkweed bark with which this vireo's or yellow-warbler's nest is moored to the forked branch, or the strands of twine with which the Baltimore oriole suspends its deep swinging hammock, as well as the plentiful meshing of horse-hair woven through the body of the nest. The nest of the orchard oriole is even more remarkable as a piece of woven texture. Wilson, the ornithologist, by careful unravelling of a gra.s.s strand from one of these nests, found it to have been pa.s.sed through the fabric and returned thirty-four times, the strand itself being only thirteen inches long, a fact which prompted an old lady friend of his to ask "whether it would be possible to teach the birds to darn stockings." The horse-hair in the nest of the hang-bird gives it a wonderful compact strength, capable of sustaining a hundred times the weight of the bird. Upon unravelling one, I found it intermeshed fourteen times in the length of ten inches, which would probably have given a total number of forty pa.s.ses in the full length of the hair. No one will question the sagacity which such materials imply; but what is to be said of a bird that selects caterpillar-skins as a conspicuous adornment for her domicile?

And here is a vireo's nest with a part of a toad-skin prominently displayed on its exterior, or perhaps a specimen such as I have previously described abundantly covered with snake-skins. These, of course, are whims pure and simple.

In the linings of many nests we find an equal variety, but the materials are selected with a definite purpose, a soft, warm bed for the young fledglings being the object sought by the parent birds. To this end we find many nests lined with what the ornithologists call "soft downy substances." Examination with a magnifying gla.s.s will sometimes show us precisely the nature of this down; whether it consists of wool from a sheep or hair from the deer, 'c.o.o.n, goat, or horse; whether it is composed of fuzz from downy leaves or spider-webs, caterpillar hairs, or cottony seeds of plants. These last form a favorite nest lining with a number of birds.

I remember once finding a beautiful nest of a warbler whose outer wall was strongly woven with strands of milk-weed bark, but the whole interior filled with a felt composed of dandelion seeds, and barely anything else. The nest was old and weather-beaten, and the ma.s.s had been reduced to a consistency resembling thick brown paper, with an occasional seed protruding. Originally this soft ma.s.s must have been at least a quarter of an inch in thickness. The dandelion seed is an occasional ingredient in many nests. We can readily understand how a bird with an eye to a downy snuggery for her young might be tempted to gather an occasional seed, but it takes a host of dandelion seeds to make a thick cushion such as this which I have mentioned, and we might well wonder at the labor involved in the acc.u.mulation of such a ma.s.s.

A cloudy dandelion ball in the gra.s.s doubtless looks inviting to the nest-builder, but how much of this tuft would the bird be able to secure in her bill when a mere touch or breath perhaps is sufficient to scatter the ball to the breeze? No; I cannot believe my bird of the dandelion nest wasted her energies in picking up a single seed here and there from a dandelion ball, or perhaps on the wing. A discovery of a few years ago has shown me how dandelion seeds may be cleverly gathered by a shrewd nest-builder, and how a whole nest may be feathered with them without much labor.

For some years I was puzzled to account for a peculiar mutilation which I often observed on the dandelion. It was always at the same place--the calyx of the blossom--the green portion which incloses the bud, and, after blooming, closes again about the withered flower, and so remains while the seeds are growing. Most of my readers have seen dandelion flowers in all their stages of growth. The flower usually blooms for three mornings. By this time all the tiny yellow flowerets which make up the yellow cushion have bloomed. The green calyx now closes, to remain closed, for a week, while the stem generally bends outward, and thus draws the withered flower towards the ground, often hiding it beneath the leaves.

During this week of retirement the stem continues to wither sideways, and the flower is busy ripening its seeds, each yellow floweret having a seed of its own, from which there grows a slender hair-like stalk with a tiny feathered parachute at its top. Gradually these little feathery ends push upward inside the calyx, and on the seventh day, lo! the withered dandelion has appeared again at the top of the gra.s.s.

It now has a tiny brown cap at its top, or perhaps has just lost it, and gives us a glimpse of a white feathery tuft peeping from its top.

This little brown withered cap is all that is left of the original golden blossom of two weeks before, now a shrivelled ma.s.s, which has gradually been pushed upward and out by the growing seed-tuft. In another hour, perhaps, the calyx will again open, and bend down against the stem, while the bed at the bottom to which the seeds are attached will round upward through the feathers outward in the form of a ball. This rounded seed-bed, or receptacle, as it is called in our botany, shortly withers, and the winged parachutes take flight at the slightest zephyr, whereas at first a smart breeze would have been required.

Now all this is by-the-way, for not every one understands how the dandelion ball is made. I know a little bird, however, who has found it out to her advantage. I have just alluded to a certain mutilation of this calyx which puzzled me. I have shown one of these calyxes in my t.i.tle picture, at the right, one-half of it being torn off, and disclosing a cavity. Where are the seeds? "Ah! some rare caterpillar has done this!" I exclaimed, when I first observed the burglary. In vain I hunted among the leaves to find him. Again and again I found my rifled dandelion, but never a sign of the burglar. But one day I surprised him at his work. It was no caterpillar, but a tiny, black bird with a beautiful rosy band in his tail, and which proved to be that b.u.t.terfly among the birds, the redstart. I hardly knew what he was doing out there among the dandelions, and presumed he was after my mysterious caterpillar, until I chanced to see him alight near by with a white tuft in his bill. Yes, a tuft with feathery parachutes in a bunch on one side of his bill, and a compact cl.u.s.ter of seeds on the other.

In a moment I was among the dandelions from which he had flown, and soon found my empty calyx, from which an entire dandelion ball had been taken at one pinch. I lost no time in tracing out the nest in the foot of an apple-tree close by. A dainty fabric it was, exquisitely adorned with gray lichens and skeletonized leaves, its interior very plentifully lined with the seeds of the dandelion, more so than is usual with the nests of this bird. On two occasions since I have seen other small birds of the warbler kind suspiciously rummaging among the dandelions, and have afterwards discovered the empty calyx. There is probably more than one dandelion burglar.

The Troubles of the House-fly

Quite contrary to my original intention, my specimen of _Musca domestica_, which I had captured at random to serve as my model in the present chapter, has suggested that I begin with a Q, and after some expressive criticism on the matter I have at last consented to humor him, especially as he proved otherwise a most unique and accommodating individual. Being in need of a good, healthy, toe-twisting, neck-twirling specimen to sit for his portrait in an ill.u.s.tration for a forthcoming article on the paper wasp, I cast my eye about my easel.

There, right at my elbow, still plying his never-ending toilet, I beheld him--strange coincidence, was it not? A sweep of my hand, and I have him! And in a moment more, with the tips of his toes besmeared with glue, he is a secure prisoner on the white paper before me.

The victim having served his purpose, I was preparing to drench him with a few drops of water to dissolve his bonds and set him free, when I happened to observe a feature which had before escaped my notice.

The glue had chanced to secure one of its feet well beneath its body, and now that it was released I discovered that I had made considerably more of a catch with that sweep of my hand than I had imagined.

Attached to one of the terminal joints of the front leg there appeared a tiny red object, which I instantly recognized as a curious tag which I had seen before, and which forms an occasional lively episode in the life not only of house-flies but other flies as well. And what a queer-shaped tag it is, to be sure! It is not easy to describe its dimensions on account of its changeable proportions--now spreading out its two long appendages, now contracting into an oblong or rounded outline, or sprawled out in the shape of a curious letter T, and now thrown about in such a helter-skelter fashion by the antics of the fly that nothing but the fact of its red color is discernible. But when we bring our magnifying-gla.s.s to bear upon it, its diminutive size is forgotten, while its shape is now perfectly familiar to us all--a lobster! a veritable live young lobster, and what is even more strange, a live boiled lobster at that! No, it must be a crab lobster, for was ever the liveliest lobster in its greenest stages half so spry as this warlike midge, whose free, upraised, open claws threaten to nip our fingers off as we hold the lens above him. But nag and prod him as we will, no provocation will induce him to loosen his grip on his means of transport.

For how many days, I wonder, has he been on this particular flying trip? How many miles has he travelled, and what varied experiences has he survived! How many are the lumps of sugar, the drops of mola.s.ses, the slices of bread, and pats of b.u.t.ter over which he has been trailed, to say nothing of puddles of fresh ink! And then think of the many hours in which, from his present position, he must have conspicuously figured at that toe-twisting toilet of his host! Fancy brushing your coat and combing your hair with a live boiled lobster!

But pollen grains are not pumpkins and footb.a.l.l.s and tea-boxes, as the microscope would have us believe; nor does the drop of water contain a herd of strange elephants. Can it be possible that this lobster is, after all, only about an eighth of an inch long, with its claws spreading barely three-sixteenths of an inch? Yes, true; but we must remember that the fly is only about one-third of an inch long, and we can imagine how proportionately formidable the little beast must appear as a lurking foe and a handicap to the fly fraternity. I have therefore pictured this little episode of fly-time somewhat from the aspect of the fly. This was one of the "troubles" which I had in mind as I prepared the initial design with its letter O. I had counted on using an old specimen of the lobster which I had safely stowed away in a pill-box somewhere, until my haphazard fly victim supplied me with a fresh specimen, and subsequently helped me out in the completion and modification of my initial.

A correct idea of the anatomy of the little crab may be obtained from my ill.u.s.tration. But what is it all about, this funny ride on a fly's hind-leg? Excepting as an inconvenience and enc.u.mbrance it is doubtful whether the fly is much the worse for his close attachment, and while this mimic crab or lobster cannot be called a frequent pa.s.senger, a careful scrutiny of any considerable a.s.semblage of flies on white paper or window-pane will occasionally show us the animated and persistent red tag.

But let us call him a lobster no more, rather one of the "False Scorpions," one of the group known as _Pedipalpi_, in the books: queer little creatures that live in dusty nooks, among old books and papers, and feed on tiny mites and other minute life which harbor them, but born rovers withal, with a singular fancy for fly-toes and free rides.

But the false scorpion may be considered rather as a bother than a serious trouble to the fly. His real troubles are too numerous to mention. His life, as most of my readers will be glad to learn, is not a bed of roses, as is commonly supposed. Just think for a moment what a fly's existence must be. With the deadly fly-paper on the one hand, the continual danger of being cemented into a pellet of pulp in the maw of a hornet, or impaled on the beak of his murderous relative the "Laphria-fly," or snapped up by birds, toads, snakes, he certainly has abundant use for that head full of eyes of his. All summer long he runs the gantlet of risks like these, but in September and October a new and terrible danger awaits him, and fortunate is he if he escapes in these advanced days of scientific discovery, when so many of our mortal ills are shown to be dependent upon the malignity of hovering germs, of microbes, bacteria, and bacilli.

Let us be thankful we have at least escaped the notice of one of this insidious throng, and are spared the grotesque horror of such a fate as the germ-scourge of flydom. How swift and terrible is its course!

Today a pert and gladsome innocent, sipping on the rim of our dinner-plate; to-morrow a pale, dry relic of his former self, hanging from the window-pane by its tongue, and enveloped in a white shroud of mould, the victim of a germ or spore. Look where we will upon the window on those September and October days and we see the little smoky cloud with the dangling fly in its midst, and many an apparently modest and considerate fly upon the wall will be found similarly fixed to the surface, and surrounded with the white nimbus.

But the real mischief was done perhaps early in the evening, after our fly had retired for the night. He presumably experienced the first attack of acute dyspepsia he had ever known. In his promiscuous feeding he had chanced to imbibe a spore, which once within his vitals began its murderous work, growing so fast as to completely fill his swelling body by morning, when, having completed its growth and penetrated through the insect's skin, it spread its own spores, to be wafted hither and yon to the peril of next year's flies, and the consequent delight of the tidy house-keeper.

Such is the work of the world-renowned fly-fungus, of which a writer says: "It silences more house-flies than all the brushes, traps, poisons, whacks, and swearing devoted to the extermination of the insect."

Tendrils

Careless observation of Nature is responsible for some curious misrepresentations of her most simple facts. Even those of us who stand somewhat in the relation of nature teachers--namely, artists, both draughtsmen and painters, and from whom we have a right to expect absolute fidelity--are not free from our shortcomings as truthful chroniclers. Thus how often we see otherwise beautiful landscapes marred by features which rebel against all laws of natural philosophy--of a storm sky above a sunlit scene, for instance, spanned by the arc of the rainbow, and with all the shadows of trees and other objects thrown sidewise! Then there is that inverted or very "dry"

crescent moon in western twilight skies; and how seldom do we see the beautiful law of the twining tendril appreciated in the most careful design of the botanical draughtsman!

For years the tendril was to me the conventional spiral, twisting like a continuous curl or spring from the parent branch to the support within its clasp; and it is safe to a.s.sert that not one in--well, a good many of us, who should have gone out to our grape-vine or pa.s.sion-vine or melon-patch, without a previous forewarning, would have been able to tell correctly the pretty little story of its tendril methods, or have even noted the curious little kink which is the infallible peculiarity of the climbing tendril.

What _is_ a tendril--botanically speaking? That depends. It is one thing in this plant, quite another in that, so students of vegetable anatomy or morphology soon discover.

It is soon perfectly plain that the stem is a modified root. For instance, plants have been taken up from the sod and replaced in the ground upsidedown, the roots subsequently becoming stems, and bearing leaves, and the buried leafy stems a.s.suming the functions of roots.

Leaves are mere modified branches, and the flowers modified leaves.

Pistils and stamens in flowers are modified petals, or rather petals are modified stamens, the "doubling" of flowers representing the being thus accomplished, while the petals again are mere changed leaves. A neighbor of mine has a bush bearing green roses--all leaves. In the water-lily you will find it difficult to determine just where the stamen ends and the petals begin, so gradual is the blending. In the peony the same is true, and carried still further in the merging of petals and calyx into the approximate leaves.