Under the Maples Part 8

In view of the s.e.x of the extraordinary spider I have been considering, it is interesting to remember that one difference between the insect world and the world of animal life to which we belong, which Maeterlinck has forgotten to point out, is this:

In the vertebrate world, the male rules; the female plays a secondary part. In the insect world the reverse is true. Here the female is supreme and often eats up the male after she has been fertilized by him.

Motherhood is the primary fact, fatherhood the secondary. It is the female mosquito that torments the world. It is the female spider that spins the web and traps the flies. Size, craft, and power go with the female. The female spider eats up the male after he has served her purpose; her caresses mean death. The female scorpion devours the male in the same way. Among our wild bees it is the queen alone that survives the winter and carries on the race. The big noisy blow-flies on the window-pane are females. With the honey bees the males are big and loud, but are without any authority, and are almost as literally destroyed by the female as is the male spider. The queen bee does not eat her mate, but she disembowels him. The work of the hive is done by the neuters. In the vertebrate world it is chiefly among birds of prey that the female is the larger and bolder; the care of the young devolves largely upon her. Yes, there is another exception: Among the fishes, the females are, as a rule, larger than the males; the immense number of eggs which they carry brings this about.

There are always exceptions to this dominance of the female in the insect world. We cannot corner Nature and keep her cornered. She would not be Nature if we could. With the fireflies, it is the male that dominates; the female is a little soft, wingless worm on the ground, always in the larval state.

In the plant world, also, the male as a rule is dominant. Behold the showy catkins of the chestnuts, the b.u.t.ternuts, the hazelnuts, the willows, and other trees. The stamens of most flowers are numerous and conspicuous. Our Indian corn carries its panicle of pollen high above the silken tresses which mother the future ear.

One day I dug up a nest which was occupied by a spider with her brood of young ones. I took up a large block of earth weighing ten pounds or more, and sank it in a box of earth of its own kind. I kept it in the house under observation for a week, hoping that at some hour of day or night the spider would come out. But she made no sign. My ingenious friend arranged the same mechanical contrivance over the door which he had used successfully before. But the latch was never lifted. Madam Spider sulked or bemoaned her fate at the bottom of her den. At the end of a week I broke open the nest and found her alone. She had evidently devoured all her little ones.

I kept two nests with a spider in each in the house for a week, and in neither case did the occupant ever leave its nest.

Apparently the young spiders begin to dig nests of their own when they are about half-grown. As to where they stay, or how they live up to that time, I have no clue. The young we found in several nests were very small, not more than an eighth of an inch long. Of the size and appearance of the male spider, and where he keeps himself, I could get no clue.

One morning I went with my guide down to the spider territory, and saw him try to entice or force a spider out of her den. The morning previous he had beguiled several of them to come up to the opening by thrusting a straw down the burrow and teasing them with it till in self-defense they seized it with their fangs and hung on to it till he drew them to the surface. But this morning the trick would not work. Not one spider would keep her hold. But with a piece of wire bent at the end in the shape of a hook, he finally lifted one out upon the ground. How bright and clean and untouched she looked! Her limbs and a part of the thorax were as black as jet and shone as if they had just been polished. No lady in her parlor could have been freer from any touch of soil or earth-stain than was she. On the ground, in the strong sunlight, she seemed to be lost.

We turned her around and tried to induce her to enter the nest again; but over and over she ran across the open door without heeding it. In the novel situation in which she suddenly found herself, all her wits deserted her, and not till I took her between my thumb and finger and thrust her abdomen into the hole, did she come to herself. The touch of that silk-lined tube caused the proper reaction, and she backed quickly into it and disappeared.

Just what natural enemy the trap-door spider has I do not know. I never saw a nest that had been broken into or in any way disturbed, except those which we had disturbed in our observations.

IV. THE DESERT NOTE

I often wonder what mood of Nature this world of cacti which we run against in the great Southwest expresses. Certainly something savage and merciless. To stab and stab again suits her humor. How well she tempers her daggers and bayonets! How hard and smooth and sharp they are! How they contrast with the thick, succulent stalks and leaves which bear them! It is a desert mood; heat and drought appear to be the exciting causes. The scarcity of water seems to stimulate Nature to store up water in vegetable tissues, just as it stimulates men to build great dams and reservoirs. These giant cacti are reservoirs of water. But why spines and p.r.i.c.kles and cruel bayonets? They certainly cannot be for protection or defense; the gra.s.s and other vegetation upon which the grazing animals feed are not armed with spines.

If the cacti were created that grazing animals in the desert might have something to feed upon, as our fathers' way of looking at things might lead us to believe, why was that benevolent plan frustrated by the armor of needles and spines?

Nature reaches her hungry and thirsty creatures this broad, mittened hand like a cruel joke. It smites like a serpent and stings like a scorpion. The strange, many-colored, fascinating desert! Beware! Agonies are one of her garments.

All we can say about it is that Nature has her p.r.i.c.kly side which drought and heat aggravate. In the North our thistles and thorns and spines are a milder expression of this mood. The spines on the blackberry-bush tend against its propagation for the same reason. Among our wild gooseberries, there are smooth and p.r.i.c.kly varieties, and one succeeds about as well as the other. Apple-and pear-trees in rough or barren places that have a severe struggle for life, often develop sharp, th.o.r.n.y branches. It is a struggle of some kind which begets something like ill-temper in vegetation--heat and drought in the desert, and browsing animals and poor soil in the temperate zones. The devil's club in Alaska is one ma.s.s of spines; why, I know not. It must just be original sin. Our raspberries have p.r.i.c.kles on their stalks, but the large, purple-flowering variety is smooth-stemmed.

Mr. John C. Van d.y.k.e in his work on the desert expresses the belief that thorns and spines are given to the desert plants for protection; and that if no animal were there that would eat them, they would not have these defenses. But I believe if there had never been a browsing animal in the desert the cacti would have had their thorns just the same.

Nature certainly arms her animal forms against one another. We know the quills of the porcupine are for defense, and that the skunk carries a weapon that its enemies dread, but I do not believe that any plant form is armed against any creature whose proper food it might become. Cacti carry formidable weapons in the shape of spines and thorns, but the desert conditions where they are found, heat and aridity, are no doubt their primary cause. The conditions are fierce and the living forms are fierce.

We cannot be dogmatic about Nature. From our point of view she often seems partial and inconsistent. But I would just as soon think that Nature made the adobe soil in the arid regions that the human dwellers there might have material at hand with which to construct a shelter, as that she gives spines and daggers to any of the vegetable forms to secure their safety. One may confute Mr. Van d.y.k.e out of his own mouth.

He says:

Remove the danger which threatened the extinction of a family, and immediately Nature removes the defensive armor. On the desert, for instance, the yucca has a thorn like a point of steel. Follow it from the desert to the high tropical table-lands of Mexico where there is plenty of soil and moisture, plenty of chance for yuccas to thrive, and you will find it turned into a tree and the thorn merely a dull blade-ending. Follow the sahuaro and the pitahaya into the tropics again, and with their cousin, the organ cactus, you will find them growing a soft thorn that would hardly penetrate clothing.

But are they not just as much exposed to browsing animals in the high table-lands as in the desert, if not more so?

Mr. Van d.y.k.e a.s.serts that Nature is more solicitous about the species than about the individual. She is no more solicitous about the one than the other. The same conditions apply to all. But the species are numerous; a dozen units may be devoured while a thousand remain. A general will sacrifice many soldiers to save his army, he will sacrifice one man to save ten, but Nature's ways are entirely different. Both contending armies are hers, and she is equally solicitous about both.

She wants the cacti to survive, and she wants the desert animals to survive, and she favors both equally. All she asks of them is that they breed and multiply endlessly. Notwithstanding, according to Van d.y.k.e, Nature has taken such pains to protect her desert plants, he yet confesses that, although it seems almost incredible, it is nevertheless true that "deer and desert cattle will eat the cholla--fruit, stem, and trunk--though it bristle with spines that will draw blood from the human hand at the slightest touch."

This question of spines and thorns in vegetation is a baffling one because Nature's ways are so unlike our ways. Darwin failed utterly in his theory of the origin of species, because he proceeded upon the idea that Nature selects as man selects. You cannot put Nature into a formula.

Behold how every branch and twig of our red thorn bristles with cruel daggers! But if they are designed to keep away bird or beast from eating its fruit, see how that would defeat the tree's own ends! If no creature ate its little red apples and thus scattered its seeds, the fruit would rot on the ground beneath the branches, and the tribe of red thorns would not increase. And increase alone is Nature's end.

It is safe to say, as a general statement, that the animal kingdom is full of design. Every part and organ of our bodies has its purpose which serves the well-being of the whole. I do not recall any character of bird or beast, fish or insect, that does not show purpose, but in the plant world Nature seems to allow herself more freedom, or does not work on so economical a plan. What purpose do the spines on the p.r.i.c.kly ash serve? or on the thistles? or on the blackberry, raspberry, gooseberry bushes? or the rose? Our purple-flowering raspberry has no p.r.i.c.kles, and thrives as well as any. The spines on the blackberry and raspberry do not save them from browsing cattle, nor their fruit from the birds. In fact, as I have said, the service of the birds is needed to sow their seeds. The devil's club of Alaska is untouchable, it is so encased in a spiny armor; but what purpose the armor serves is a mystery. We know that hard conditions of soil and climate will bring thorns on seedling pear-trees and plum-trees, but we cannot know why.

The yucca or Spanish bayonet and the century-plant, or American aloe (_Agave americana_), are th.o.r.n.y and spiny; they are also very woody and fibrous; yet nothing eats them or could eat them. They are no more edible than cordwood or hemp ropes. This fact alone settles the defense question about spines.

V. SEA-DOGS

There is a bit of live natural history out here in the sea in front of me that is new and interesting. A bunch of about a dozen hair seals have their rendezvous in the unstable waves just beyond the breakers, and keep together there week after week. To the naked eye they seem like a group of children sitting there on a hidden bench of rock, undisturbed by the waves that sweep over them. Their heads and shoulders seem to show above the water, and they appear to be having a happy time.

Now and then one may be seen swimming about or lifted up in a wall of green-blue transparent water, or leaping above the wrinkled surface in the exuberance of its animal spirits. I call them children of the sea, until I hear their loud barking, and then I think of them as dogs or hounds of the sea. Occasionally I hear their barking by night when it has a half-m.u.f.fled, smothered sound.

They are warm-blooded, air-breathing animals, and there seems something incongruous in their being at home there in the cold briny deep--badgers or marmots that burrow in the waves, wolves or coyotes that hunt their prey in the sea.

Their progenitors were once land animals, but Darwinism does not tell us what they were. The whale also was once a land animal, but the testimony of the rocks throws no light upon its antecedents. The origin of any new species is shrouded in the obscurity of whole geological periods, and the short span of human life, or of the whole human history, gives us no adequate vantage-ground from which to solve the problem.

I can easily believe that these hair seals are close akin to the dog.

They have five digits; they bolt their food like dogs; their sense of smell is said to be very acute, though how it could serve them in the sea does not appear. The young are born upon the land and enter the water very reluctantly.

This seal is easily tamed. It has the intelligence of the dog and attaches itself to its master as does the dog. Its sense of direction and locality is very acute. This group of seals in front of me, day after day, and week after week, returns to the same spot in the ever-changing waters, without the variation of a single yard, so far as I can see. The locality is purely imaginary. It is a love tryst, and it seems as if some sixth sense must guide them to it. Locality is as unreal in the sea as in the sky, but these few square yards of shifting waters seem as real to these seals as if they were a granite ledge. They keep ma.s.sed there on the water at that particular point, with their flippers protruding above the surface, as if they were as free from danger as so many picnickers. Yet something attracts them to this particular place. I know of no other spot along the coast for a hundred miles or more where the seals congregate as they do here. What is the secret of it? Evidently it is a question of security from their enemies.

At this point the waves break much farther out than usual, which indicates a hidden reef or bench of rocks, and comparatively shallow water. This would prevent their enemies, sharks and killer whales, from stealing up beneath them and pulling them down. I do not hear their barking in the early part of the night, but long before morning their half-m.u.f.fled baying begins. Old fishermen tell me that they retire for the night to the broad belts of kelp that lie a hundred yards or more out to sea. Doubtless the beds of kelp also afford them some protection from their enemies. The fishermen feel very bitter toward them on account of the fish they devour, and kill them whenever opportunity offers. Often when I lie half asleep in the small hours of the morning, I seem to see these amphibian hounds pursuing their quarry on the unstable hills and mountains of the sea, and giving tongue at short intervals, as did the foxhounds I heard on the Catskills in my youth.

X

A SHEAF OF NATURE NOTES

I. NATURE'S WIRELESS

The Spirit of the Hive, which Maeterlinck makes so much of, seems to give us the key to the psychic life of all the lower orders. What one knows, all of that kind seem to know at the same instant. It seems as if they drew it in with the air they breathed. It is something like community of mind, or unity of mind. Of course it is not an intellectual process, but an emotional process; not a thought, as with us, but an impulse.

So far as we know there is nothing like a council or advisory board in the hive. There are no decrees or orders. The swarm is a unit. The members act in concert without direction or rule. If anything happens to the queen, if she is lost or killed, every bee in the hive seems to know it at the same instant, and the whole swarm becomes greatly agitated.

The division of labor in the hive is spontaneous: the bees function and cooperate as do the organs in our own bodies, each playing its part without scheme or direction.

This community of mind is seen in such an instance as that of the migrating lemmings from the Scandinavian peninsula. Vast hordes of these little creatures are at times seized with an impulse to migrate or to commit suicide, for it amounts to that. They leave their habitat in Norway and, without being deflected by any obstacle, march straight toward the sea, swimming lakes and rivers that lie in their way. When the coast is reached, they enter the water and continue on their course.

Ship captains report sailing for hours through waters literally alive with them. This suicidal act of the lemmings strikes one as a kind of insanity. It is one of the most puzzling phenomena I know of in animal life. But the migration of all animals on a large scale shows the same unity of purpose. The whole tribe shares in a single impulse. The annual migration of the caribou in the North is an ill.u.s.tration. In the flocking birds this unity of mind is especially noticeable. The vast armies of pa.s.senger pigeons which we of an older generation saw in our youth moved like human armies under orders. They formed a unit. They came in countless hordes like an army of invasion, and they departed in the same way. Their orders were written upon the air; their leaders were as intangible as the shadows of their wings. The same is true of all our flocking birds; a flock of snow buntings, or of starlings, or of blackbirds, will act as one body, performing their evolutions in the air with astonishing precision.

In Florida, in the spring when the mating-instinct is strong, I have seen a flock of white ibises waltzing about the sky, going through various intricate movements, with the precision of dancers in a ballroom quadrille. No sign, no signal, no guidance whatever. Let a body of men try it under the same conditions, and behold the confusion, and the tumbling over one another! At one moment the birds would wheel so as to bring their backs in shadow, and then would flash out the white of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and under parts. It was like the opening and shutting of a giant hand, or the alternate rapid darkening and brightening of the sail of a tacking ice-boat. This is the spirit of the flock. When a hawk pursues a bird, the birds tack and turn as if linked together. When one robin dashes off in hot pursuit of another, behold how their movements exactly coincide! The hawk-hunted bird often escapes by reaching the cover of a tree or a bush, but not by dodging its pursuer, as a rabbit or a squirrel will dodge a dog. Schools of fish act with the same machine-like unity.

In the South, I have seen a large area of water, acres in extent, uniformly agitated by a school of mullets apparently feeding upon some infusoria on the surface, and then instantly, as if upon a given signal, the fish would dive and the rippling cease. It showed a unity of action as of ten thousand spindles controlled by electricity.

How quickly the emotion of fear is communicated among the wild animals!

How wild and alarmed the deer become after the opening of the first day of the shooting season. Those who have not seen or heard a hunter seem to feel the impending danger.

The great flocks of migrating b.u.t.terflies (the monarch) ill.u.s.trate the same law. In the fall they are all seized with this impulse to go South and thousands of them march in one body. At night they roost in the trees. I have seen photographs of them in which they appeared like a new kind of colored foliage covering the trees. In the return flight in the spring, the same ma.s.sing again occurs. Recently the Imperial Valley in California was invaded by a vast army of worms moving from east to west.

In countries that have been cursed with a plague of gra.s.shoppers witnesses of the spectacle describe them as moving in the same way. They stopped or delayed railway trains and automobiles, their crushed bodies making the rails and highways as slippery as grease would have made them. Ten million or ten billion behaving as one.

This community of mind stands the lower orders in great stead. It makes up to them in a measure for the want of reason and judgment. In what we call telepathy we get hints of the same thing among ourselves. Telepathy is probably a survival from our earlier animal state.