Chapter II: Part 2

Why is the hermit moved to be thus didactic, while in the fields beyond the field-sparrow lightly trills and the merry bobolink continually bubbles over with song? Such merry jingles, such uncontrollable outbursts of melody, such a rippling, bubbling medley as comes up from the meadows, while the thrush solemnly intones within the twilight shades of the woods! Surely in view of this we may speak of the temperament and the personality of birds. If the bobolink's medley is not evidence of a light heart, then are appearances deceptive indeed. Care rests easily--if at all--upon his hopeful nature, but the burden of his song is quite as well worth heeding as is that of the thrush. One is lyric, the other didactic. The bobolink communicates his joyous and irrepressible spirits, as the thrush his serene exaltation. It is certain the wood birds are of a different temperament from the field birds. Either they are influenced to their prevailing moods by their environments, or they are attracted thereto by their own peculiarities, as men are drawn to solitude or society.

The hidden, the subtle, find voice in the veery. His is perhaps the most spiritual strain of all, himself the high priest of the mystic lore of the forest. Of the thrush family he is the consecrated member, as the robin is the worldling among them. I believe there is no other bird voice so mysterious; so impersonal is it, so spiritlike, it appears to emanate from a world of higher motive than ours. In the devotional strain of the hermit, the forest prayer is breathed on the mountains. No hymn could be less impassioned, less material, more truly _spiritual_ than the song of this thrush; it is nearest the speech of angels. Of all instruments the organ and the harp are alone capable of producing any such effect. On rare occasions I have heard the veery indulge in a reverie never to be forgotten. It appeared to be wholly inspired and original as though the bird were improvising like some Abt Vogler at his organ, rearing a palace of music. The motive was complex and involved, and sung so _pianissimo_ as to be just audible, like the love-song of the catbird, a rapt utterance which admitted one to the sacred arcana of Nature.

It is not unprecedented for a bird to depart thus from its usual song and to improvise. You may detect even the jay in this mood, though it is wholly imitative with him. The love-song of the catbird and the autumn reverie of the song-sparrow are perhaps the best instances. I am not yet wholly familiar with the songs of the robin. It appears he is still studying music, and adds a phrase or varies a theme occasionally. He is the most romantic of the thrushes; his song is more personal and less spiritual than the others. When, in early spring, the robins sing together at sundown, there is an exquisite tenderness in their notes which accords with the sweet youthfulness of the year. It is later in the season, when his mate sits upon the nest, that the robin rises to the heights of lyric beauty and pours out his soul from the top of the tallest maple in the swamp,--a brave sweet love-song, sung with dignity and without hesitation, that all his world may hear.

At dawn he is moved a little more to the rapt and religious expression of the thrushes. Something there is in the solemnity of that hour which touches the hearts of all little birds. What it is we shall perhaps never know; shall never know enough of bird life to understand what emotions they may have which so powerfully sway them and become evident in their voices. The evidence is there; the cause is to be inferred. While the birds are everywhere more or less affected by the approaching day and give voice to their feelings, there appear to be musical centers in the bird world in which the expression is more concerted than in other localities,--favored sections where this hymn to Apollo is memorable indeed and hardly to be described. It is a great chant with all its solemnity, all its impressiveness.

Beginning with the desultory calls of wood-pewees, it is taken up by song-sparrows, robins and catbirds, dominated by the devotional song of the woodthrush who appears to act as chorister. Birds seem to congregate from near and far and to inspire one another to unusual efforts. The volume and stateliness of this chant, so measured and rhythmical, carries with it vibrations of power and cannot fail to communicate its influence to the listener, be he bird or man. Here is a multitude of birds actuated by a unity of purpose, impelled by a single motive, and though every one sings his own song, the myriad voices blend in one concordant whole. To arouse suddenly from a sound sleep in the woods at dawn while this chant is in progress, is like awakening in another sphere, where sings the choir celestial. We slip from sleep into the heaven of song, and it requires another awakening to bring us to consciousness of this actual world about us.

They are the troubadours these birds, the wanderers whose souls are in their voices. What bold romantic singers are the cardinal and the rose-breasted grosbeak--the lords of song! When the cardinal comes North he appears to feel out of his element and modestly withdraws. But in the South he dominates the swamp and adjoining cotton-fields with his rollicking, melodious voice. A gay minstrel, he compels attention. These voices of the cypress swamp are clear and bright in contrast with their dismal surroundings. The bell-like note of the tufted titmouse in the treetops, and the brave, cheery song of the Carolina wren lighten those fearsome shades. The wren carries his sunshine with him. There is no minor in his song; he is never discouraged, any more than the chickadee. Day after day that voice rings true--all's well with the world. Brave voices singing in the wilderness, they lighten vaster shades than any they know of, sound their note of courage and well-being for other ears than theirs. What blessed transformation from the songless ages--from that slimy reptilian world where was no music, no song--to this unpaid minstrelsy of the woods and fields! They have served us these many years--the sweet singers, the true birds of paradise, with power to lift us from our dull, unmelodious thoughts into their harmonious world.

As I was following the course of a mountain stream through the leafless woods early in April, the silence was broken by a strange musical alarm. It was the Louisiana water-thrush, but might have been the pipes of Pan, so wild and woodland was it. The first notes were high and startlingly loud and clear, while the song descended the scale and became softer and softer till it died away. This is one of the bird voices that are untamed, that seem to belong to impersonal Nature. It is wholly savage--a piece of the wilderness, untouched by the presence of man. These voices do not strike the human and sympathetic chords, but ally one with the wilderness. Such are the cry of the loon, the melody of the ruby kinglet and the song of the winter wren. The kinglet's song has a cadence unlike any other, reminding one of water murmuring underground, and for some reason a classic suggestion, as of faun and satyr. It is more truly _sylvan_ than any other--sylvan in the old Greek sense, so elusive and shy it is, so mysterious.

Such voices give no evidence of self-consciousness; they are as impersonal as the winds or as the murmuring stream. But with the catbird, the thrasher and the mocking-bird, pre-eminently vocalists, there is a set and declamatory method which has the appearance of affectation. Their songs are brilliant and elaborately phrased, but they lack spontaneity, and in listening to them one wishes they had put their powers to a different use. The thrasher is particularly self-conscious and stagey, and yet he has a glorious voice. No bird has a finer _quality_ of tone than he shows in some of his notes--clear, mellow, vibratory as in the voices of really great tenors. It is that quality which Nature alone supplies and no cultivation nor perfection of method can give. When he speaks to his mate in an undertone his voice would melt a heart of stone. There is a time, however, when the catbird rises above any suspicion of self-consciousness and is transported, and the listener with him, in a reverie of exceeding beauty. It is a wondrous love-song, an incomparable madrigal, blending with the morning sunshine and the first green leaves of the alders, soft and low as faint murmurings of a stream, a fluid melody uttered for chosen ears.

All too soon the only bird notes are those of the redeye and the pewee. For music we have the tree-toads and cicada. The sounds of this season are rhythmic and vibratory--virile songs of the year's manhood--the mature year, lusty and vigorous. But how soon they dwindle and wane, despite this sonorous protestation, grow silent and slip into the sear and yellow, and thence into the leafless, the glittering, the sublime aspects of winter! The last of September brings with it just a reminder of the sweet and winsome sounds of spring. At this season the song-sparrow indulges in a wonderfully ecstatic reverie, a bit of wild melody charged with feeling as of some larger consciousness, some tribal memories of that musical race, now finding voice in the waning year. So continuous and varied is the theme, and withal so complex and involved as compared with his usual simple and positive lay, that one must look at him twice to make sure it is he, and not some unknown minstrel from a distant shore.

Insects are the autumn singers and take the place of birds and frogs. The crickets are as musical in their way as the thrush family, though provided with but indifferent instruments. When you consider that these crickets and locusts _will_ express themselves--will fill the day with song--though they are without vocal organs and must perforce do with legs and wings instead, you must respect them as musicians. It is a distinctly aboriginal music as compared with that of the birds, as tom-toms and pipes are to violins and cellos. And yet it is rhythmic withal and not wanting in sweetness. Contrast these merry crickets with the silent spider. There is no song in the annals of her race. She is unsocial and unmusical like the savage birds of prey. Yet before bees and birds had appeared on the earth there were crickets chirping. Theirs is the most ancient chant of the world--the Song of Sex.

Autumn nights are melodious with a voice, which in the distance is so like that of the hyla of early spring, though softer and more throbbing, that it is often mistaken for a kind of tree-toad. Heard near at hand it is singularly clear and almost bell-like, though ventriloquial in its elusiveness and difficult to locate, for as you approach, it ceases and is taken up by another a short distance away. Even when standing directly in front of it, it appears to come from several directions. It was only after prowling the woods with a lantern that I discovered the identity of the sweet singer, a small insect of a pale green hue, not over an inch in length, looking like a sort of locust, though classed with the crickets. The translucent wings are of a delicate ivory-white and the antennæ very long.

This cricket was hanging to the edge of a grape leaf when the rays of the lantern fell upon him. He perhaps took it for moonlight, for on a sudden the wings were erected until at right angles to the body, and then, as it were automatically, and with the precision of a pendulum, they moved to and fro, partly crossing their bases and thus scraping the veins of the middle portion--and the mysterious singer of the night stood revealed.

The quality of the tone--the timbre--suggests the sound made by rubbing the rim of a glass bowl, the horny plate of the wing giving it great resonance. It appears to be pitched to A below middle C, though some may be A sharp or even B. The overtones make it difficult to determine the pitch. The chirping keeps up a good part of the night, and in the wee small hours takes on an uncertain quaver, as if the little singer had fallen asleep and were droning drowsily in its slumbers.

An insect which may be the same one--certainly an allied species--has a day-song somewhat different from this song of the night, a shrilling in place of a chirp. This is made by elevating the wings in the same manner as at night, but instead of rubbing them one across the other in regular time, they are rapidly and continuously vibrated like an electric bell. The rapidity of the vibration raises the pitch, though the quality of the tone is but little different.

There is in this day-song no suggestion of the blistering, feverish shrill of the dog-day cicada, but a far-off dreamy sound. A little before sunset it gradually gives way to that of the night. Day inevitably inspires one song and night another, as if these reacted to bring out two sets of emotions. And yet there is but one theme: the minstrels sing always of that, but serenade the fair one after one fashion by day and more serenely by the light of the stars. She, having apparently no ears, hears none the less, and perhaps detects variations in this monotonous ditty and even distinguishes the fine quality of some particular voice--some clearness of tone, some pathetic _tremulo_ indicative of a cricket's feelings. For is not this a song-festival of all the grasshoppers? I noticed a common short-horned grasshopper stridulating in the sunshine, which he did by taking short flights and rapidly opening and shutting his wings like an accordion. This produced a series of dry, crackling sounds as the wing was scraped against the wing-cover. After thus exhibiting his powers, a female at length came from some little distance and lit beside him, as much as to say, "If you can sing like that I am yours forevermore."

One feels some sympathy with these sweet singers of the fields in knowing what a little life is theirs, how short is the span. For the most part they have but a few months to sport in the sunshine. This epithalamium is at the same time a requiem. In October it rises, a universal threnody, the death-song of the insects. Over all the land, wasps and bees and butterflies fall like leaves. Death overtakes them on the wing. They lie down to sleep, like travelers lost in the snow.

WILD GARDENS

Improvement easily becomes an affectation, from which all healthy natures suffer periodic reactions that take them to the mountains and the forest, to those primeval estates loved of wild bees, of the phoebe and the wren. One feels a sympathy with those renegade plants known as garden escapes--star of Bethlehem, bouncing-bet, and the rest--which have run away from the garden for the freedom of the woods and highways. The conventionalities of spade and hoe are odious to them. They wander far from the assemblage of the elect; they will live wild and free, these Philistines, following the open road wherever it may lead, with a sort of tramp instinct. Even the staid and domestic apple will break away from the fold to seek the unregenerate society of the pastures.

The hemlock woods, the meadow and the bog are wild gardens which require no cultivating themselves, but only a certain cultivation and appreciation in us, which they repay with gentle and unfailing interest year after year. What we get from them will depend on what we take to them.

Flowers are nothing away from their haunts. We must have the field in which the clover blossomed--bees and all, the cranberry-bog, the mossy bank of the violet, the white birch on which the polyporus grew. Take, for example, the clintonia, solitary amidst fallen spruce logs on the mountain slope. Imagine it transferred to a trim garden! If you have really seen that flower of the solitudes, you have seen the mossy rock overhanging it, the spruce cones lying thick about; sniffed the balsam and heard the veery on the mountain. Or consider this mountain sheep pasture with its clumps of stunted spruce and balsam, its scattered boulders and patches of sensitive fern, its reddening sorrel and running cinquefoil; bluets lie over the ground like a light fall of snow; pasture stones are incrusted with parmelias and set in a frame of hair-cap moss and reindeer lichens, incomparable mosaics; wild strawberries nestle among dainty speedwells, half hidden under the bent grass. It is a whole, an homogeneous piece of work, like a tapestry. There is not a bog-rush nor a buttercup to be spared.

From the first fragrant spicebush to the last witch-hazel, no cultivated shrub is to be compared with them, for the virtue of the wild is not to be transplanted and is never imprisoned in flower-beds. These shrubs of the pasture have a personality derived from immemorial contact with the virgin and uncultivated soil. They have been nourished by the very juices of earth and by the bone and sinew of the mountains. If you would have the barberry, you must move the pasture itself. It is of wild gardens solely, an untamed and untamable beauty. And so it is with the dogwood, for what is this but sunshine in the May woods--rifts of light breaking here and there through the overarching green of oak and tulip trees? It were as easy to catch sunbeams as to carry this away.

The mountain is the mother of these wild gardens; a vigorous dame to bring forth so gentle a brood--as the slopes of Vesuvius produce a mellow wine which has taken only a kindly warmth from the raging heart of the volcano. All her fairest virtues have blossomed in her children; her graces would remain unsuspected but for them. Let the gods but fling down a bit of rock anywhere and presently, after a few ages, it shall dissolve into violets and anemones. Grind it to powder by the wayside and you have only made it into thistles and burdock; scatter it over the fields and it becomes daisies and sunflowers.

Imperceptibly, granite melts at its outer edge into a fringe of dicksonia and wild rose. Limestone will bring forth a richer garden than sandstone, as though, like the rock-maple, it had more sweetness in its veins than another. Some of the most delightful gardens arise from disintegrating basalt. Perchance this rock retains a little of its old volcanic heat and has more of the finer graces in its make-up than that which was coldly laid down under water. Fiery lava, tempered and mollified by Time, has become kindly and amenable. Where was only desolation, after countless days the dicentra hangs out its white flags in truce to the warring elements. The sand hillocks of the terminal moraine are the chosen land of mountain laurel, and there are untold acres where this constitutes almost the sole undergrowth. What a hanging garden, when, on a level with the eye, one continuous bloom spreads through the twilight of the woods--the single buds like miniature urns of rose quartz so delicately are they sculptured,--here a warm rosy tint and there a ghostly pallid blossom. This soil, the detritus of glacial torrents, despite its many washings, has not given up all its gold, but is rich in arbutus and in _pedata_ violets. It is, after all, granite, the mother-lode of the earth; granite after endless transmutations but still retaining some of its virtues.

To the first flowers belongs a charm, the most exquisite of any, something tender and appealing, as though they enshrined the fairest virtues of the year--its modesty, its purity, its sweetness--in violets, anemones and bloodroot. This charm, so elusive, has never been described, nor shall be indeed. It is like music which is a language in itself and will bear no translation. The bee must approach these with some humility and more gentleness than is shown to the sturdy blossoms of summer. They are eminently the "gentle race" of flowers, born in the enchanted time.

We go with hungry eyes at this season. By midsummer we have been well feasted and no longer see individual blossoms so much as masses of bloom. Bloodroot and hepatica are like the dewdrops of early morning which disappear before the sun. They can be found just once in a year; after that they will not appear the same. It is cheering to come upon such a fair company of spring beauty where but a few days since were none; to enter a stretch of woodland and find it populous with these friends of a lifetime, now returned to their old haunts. We do not commonly reflect that they have been under the snow all the while. Scattered among them, the anemones lie in drifts, like a late flurry of snow and quite as evanescent, lingering in the shadows only. These are the delicate children of April; May is their foster-mother. Contact with them is like the glimpse of a _spirituelle_ face. But the adder's-tongue which nestles by the brook has more fire in its veins than the rest. Its spotted leaves give it an almost feline beauty as it droops with the southern languor of the lily.

Serenity dwells with the woodland flowers. There is about them some subtle refinement and exclusiveness. They appear fit symbols of lowliness and modesty. A strip of woodland beside the turnpike is like an ancient chapel left amid the din and hubbub of city streets. The sturdier plants, both coarse and gay, halt at the edge of the wood. Within, the light is subdued; nothing obtrudes upon the eye or ear. It is obvious that the cathedral had its origin in the forest. What a fair and devout congregation has jack-in-the-pulpit, where the Canada violet stands side by side with the medeola and the painted trillium. The medeola declines its unfertilized flower, so that its maiden life is hid from view beneath the tri-leaved canopy, and only in its mature and matronly days does it begin to ascend and take a position where the seed shall crown the plant and be in evidence. From what insect despoiler is this shy virgin so carefully hid?

It seems as if the light that penetrates these woods has undergone a change, or been deprived of some of its rays, so that the wood flowers are nourished by a finer food than the rest, as with ambrosia. It is perhaps the subdued light which inspires a certain solemn and hymn-like quality in the notes of wood birds, as in the thrushes and the altogether didactic tone of the redeye. There is here none of that self-assertiveness among the flowers that is to be observed among certain groups of plants; the competitive spirit is lacking. Solomon's-seal, bellworts and twisted-stalk, like medeola, are rather at pains to conceal themselves. There is no self-advertising among them. What could be more unassuming than goldthread and wood-sorrel? They live close to the soil of which they are the offspring--a rich, odorous soil, black with the accumulated nutriment of centuries. He must be in hot haste indeed who treads on a patch of mountain wood-sorrel, such is its mute, appealing beauty. It holds the eye and stays the foot of every saunterer in the woods.

But follow the by-roads in early summer and you shall have very different company. It is here you will find the sturdy travelers, who will go the length of any road in all weathers; and there are none more cheerful and uncomplaining. They have no fault to find; the world suits them very well. You must be prepared to greet mullein and burdock as equals. Here on the road they are as good as any; they hobnob with the rose. Wild carrot borders the dusty lanes with a fringe of lacework--a real lace from the deft hand of Nature. There is no brighter gold than the St.-John's-wort, albeit it will not pass current in the town.

The winds sow the fairest hedge by the roadside--the winds and the birds; it seems that they take kindly to these wayfarers. They are the good fairies who plant elder and blackberry and scatter the wild rose. Timothy and redtop and witch-grass are the very children of Æolus. The pollen-bearing wind mothers the grass and plantain; the seed-carrying wind distributes the thistle and willow. Birds are very willing to carry cherry-pits provided they may have the cherry for their trouble.

The breeze comes laden with thistle-down, such fragile craft embark on these untried seas with all sails set. The story of such a seed would read like a fairy tale. Has not the wind whispered daily to it as its silken sail was spread? And the seed has tugged at its moorings like any boat till these were loosed and she was off, beating in and out among the high blueberries and shadbushes of the pastures, at last sailing clear of all such reefs and ascending in air to drift out into the open. How it rises and falls on the currents, like a ship riding the long swells of the sea; again it drives free before the wind to settle down at last in some pasture. If, perchance, such a seed fall on stony ground it is no great matter. The marvelous silken sail will now fall away, for the craft has reached port, no more forever to sail these seas. On occasion one is caught in a spider's web, whereupon the spider comes out to see what luck. Evidently all is not fish that comes to her net. But the self-reliant crane's bill looks neither to bird nor beast nor again to the winds of heaven, for it does its own planting, flinging the seeds away with almost an intelligent and conscious action.

This relation between the wind and the plants of the field is an agreeable stimulus to the imagination, in a matter-of-fact day when fairies are not so common as of old. Consider how the breezes have blown the pollen of the pine and later are to help carry the seed. They thus serve the trees of the forest and the grass of the prairie. These same winds urge the fruit that it should leave the parent tree. "Come, follow us!" say they, and first gently draw, then roughly compel, till the apple falls. They whisper all through the summer to the leaves so green, and at length, on October days, draw them irresistibly.

Verily of wild gardens there is no end; our estates are without number. But among them all the mountain is unique, for to ascend is like going northward, and at the same time to reverse the season. One, which I climbed the middle of June, is little more than four thousand feet, and yet, whereas in the valley there were daisies and wild carrot, on the summit the wild red cherry was just in bloom. In that short distance one walked upward--or rather backward--from the middle of June to late April. Another four thousand feet would have carried one back into the depths of winter. The seasons are thus with us throughout the summer; we have only to go up in the air after them.

Warblers were nesting on the mountain slopes which would otherwise hardly have been found at that season this side of Canada, such as the black-throated blue, the magnolia and myrtle. The winter wren was fairly abundant, and on the very summit a snowbird had her nest. About half way up, the butternuts of the ravine gave way to spruce and balsam. As the ascent continued, mountain-maple and mountain-ash suggested higher latitudes. But what impressed one most was the subtle recession to the early year. The seasons having fairly begun to revolve, it was as though some power were slowly turning them back again.

Some hundred feet or more up the face of an overhanging cliff, a bower of columbines hung out into the grim ravine. They were clustered just under the brink, gems of the first water in a rude setting. The red blossoms glowed faintly against the bald cliff like rubies set in the walls of a rock temple. From under the roots of the clinging spruce a small stream slid like molten glass over the escarpment above and burst into spray, gently undulating like a fine veil, as it descended to the pool below with the dominant and strenuous song of the waterfall.

Probably honey bees do not leave their mountain meadows for this dim twilight region, though they may possibly become acquainted with these hanging gardens on their way to some bee-tree in the woods. It is left to the wandering bumblebee to fertilize most woodland flowers, and in the case of the columbine, perhaps to the humming-bird. On the same cliff were tufts of the alpine woodsia and dense patches of rock-brake--but these stand in no need of the bee.

When, at some three thousand feet, wood-anemones were blooming, summer slipped gently away and April took its place. It seemed quite natural then to find adder's-tongue and to see wake-robins and bunchberry everywhere. The last part of the ascent might have been through a swamp, so strong was the suggestion of swamp life. Spagnum grew in places along the trail, and the fern moss was in evidence on the rocks. False hellebore was abundant, and on the very top stood a poison sumac--a typical bog plant. Yet the summit was rocky and covered for the most part with stunted balsam as thickly matted together as a hedge. The mountain pokes its cold head up into the clouds, and is continually refreshed by the dews of heaven. In some unaccountable manner the swamp plants, as if guided by instinct, ascend and find their natural environment at the top.

When I descended, it was to leave spring behind with every step, not again to meet her in that year.

WEEDS

A strange analogy exists between plant life and some aspects of human life. The same stern necessity of the survival of the fittest--physical in one, and in the other mental and spiritual--seems to inhere in both. Among the weeds, competition is the dominant note, as it is in our world. In some higher circles it is sounded faintly, while untold legions of the more delicate plants--like sensitive natures--are driven to the wall, unequal to the struggle.

There are weeds whose ways suggest the arrogant monopoly, and others which recall the parasites of society. The dodder fastens upon its victim and the bindweed throttles the innocent. To withstand the severe competition of pigweed and ragweed, the garden patch requires your energy, plus its own; and the more war is waged upon these, the more does it seem to encourage the purslane, which thrives like a freebooter in this sort of warfare.

One can imagine no more irrepressible rabble than these weeds of the garden. They seem possessed almost of a conscious life, and to push and shove and scramble for place like a hard-headed, thick-skinned, piratical crew. Many of them are immigrants, the riffraff of Europe, who have found their way to our shores, some to become good citizens, and others to remain pestilent anarchists, opposed to the law and order of the kitchen-garden and rebelling against all government by the hoe. Yet how happy are the bob-whites and the tree-sparrows for the poor seeds of the ragweed when the snow lies deep. They repair to these as to an unfailing larder, which may lie between them and starvation at such times. Through some kind providence, the seeds remain into the winter to be shaken down upon the snow. The obnoxious weed of summer rises to the dignity of usefulness and becomes a food plant--grain and corn to the hungry birds.

There are weeds and there are weeds. So much depends upon the point of view; is it a weed on the lawn, or is the lawn but a background for the dandelions which star the grass? What bright day-stars are these which beam upon us from the orchards and by-roads with cheerful golden radiance! And when these shining stars have grown dim and faded from their firmament of green, there appear in their place such white wraiths of their former selves as resemble the moon seen by the light of day. They are now so many extinct suns, so many ghosts of the dandelions, soon dissolving into still less substantial state, to be spirited away on the winds.

During the summer the common dandelions gradually disappear, and at length the fall dandelions suddenly spring into prominence, poking their flower-heads up on long scapes. With commendable thrift these are closed every night, that a little pollen may not be wet by the dew. These fall flowers appear to be more numerous even than the early species. They can sustain themselves in tall grass where the latter could not, keeping their flower-heads always floating on the rising tide of green. You may see fields of red clover mixed with dandelions, while the Virginia creeper lies in scarlet splendor along stone walls, and goldenrod and asters are massed on the borders--Elysian fields surely. The play of light and color is a kind of music, and stimulates one to some inner hearing. The deaf could hear this. And were the blind to listen to the crickets' reverie, they might see these fields.

Is there anywhere a more audacious beauty than the pokeweed in autumn? It flaunts itself in your face--one of the respectable _bourgeoisie_ of weeds, now suddenly arrayed in this regal fashion and mocking you with its splendid beauty. A weed! Why are not roses weeds as they stand all forlorn before this voluptuous child of the people? Out of the plebeian rabble there comes here and there such a superb creature as this.

Consider the milkweeds,--a family of beauties. Something luxuriant and sensuous there is in their ample proportions. They have an excessive health, an exuberance of vitality; a full-blooded race, if you so much as break a leaf from one it bleeds like a wounded creature. From the mud, the swamp-milkweed has derived some rich hue, while the butterfly-weed in the pasture has caught the very sunshine itself and become a living flame. The great pod of the milkweed is the luxuriant fruit of this fine plant, as tropical in appearance as any mango or cocoa bean. When it is ripe, in place of a luscious flavor, it discloses a mass of finest silk, a fluffy ball. Who would guess the treasure within these grotesque pods with their long beaks, their spines and wrinkles? They are like curious old junks with a cargo of rich stuffs of the East, which children--young pirates that they are--overhaul on the high seas of the pasture and despoil of their treasure.

It is the sturdy character, if nothing more, of some weeds which constitutes their charm, for health is beautiful everywhere. Ironweed and joepye-weed are such lusty, vigorous plants, and burdock and jimson-weed. The earth _shall_ nourish them; they push themselves to the front; they do not live by any one's favor. How can the impoverished dust of the roadside sustain these burdocks with their incredible leaves? The richest swamp produces no such extravagant foliage. As for the ironweed, it clothes the pastures with a royal purple, so rich a hue it compels the eye, and is a kind of stimulant. One may become mildly intoxicated with such color.

In August the high-roads and by-roads are painted--stripes of gamboge and patches of delicate blue--and all because of some weeds. It would be worth while riding through the country at this season, if for no other reason than this. Vivid streaks of tansy stretch in narrow lines for rods together. Where the road skirts a pond, the eye is refreshed by the pickerel-weed, resting like aureoles above the surface of the water. In the fields beyond is the celestial blue of the chicory--so common a weed, so divine a hue; while everywhere a fringe of wild carrot trails in the dust, the lace border of that gorgeous mantle. Such laces and jewels nature provides if you are but rich enough in thought to possess them.

In the pastures mullein and thistle grow side by side, two pronounced personalities, as different as it is possible to be, yet nourished by the same soil and under the same conditions. The mullein seems to invite you to take hold of its leaves, while the thistle as plainly says, Hands off! They suggest similar types of people, one bristling and repellent, the other suave and genial. These great flannel leaves of the mullein are caressing and soft to the touch. Contact with them is agreeable, well nigh soothing. If, perchance, your feelings have been ruffled by a bellicose thistle, address yourself to the tender young leaves of the mullein and you shall feel their soothing effect.

The perfume of the Canada thistle is equal to that of most wild flowers and superior to many. It is wholly refined, with no taint of coarseness. With what vulgar effrontery a cheap perfume assails the nose. But here is a despised thistle which brings itself to notice by an influence not plebeian but patrician. You might pass this thistle day in and day out and never suspect it had any such virtue, till you had gone out of your way to cultivate a closer acquaintance. Call it a weed if you will, it has an individuality that separates it from other common plants, and by reason of which it commands attention.

Floating in nebulous masses about the blackberry thicket, the delicately conspicuous hue of the fireweed catches the eye. If you will but watch the slender pods you may now and again see one suddenly open and its four walls silently withdraw, while there emerges from the interior a phantom shape, the filmy mass of pappus-down with rows of golden seeds attached. This white cloud of silk gradually takes shape, as the mist might rise from a mountain lake, lingers a moment, and then sails away on a passing breeze--ethereal still as the mist--growing less and less, and vanishing at length, as if resolved again into the invisible.

Old gravelly roads, which meander across the pasture and seem destitute of any special beauty, are often adorned from end to end with the round-leaved spurge, of richest hue, varying from maroon to plum color. This little weed is so unpretentious, so sincerely humble and unassuming, that probably very few ever see it or are aware of its existence. It lies prone upon the earth, where, once it attracts the attention, it is seen to be a beautiful embroidery on the bare ground. Here grows the poverty-grass which on misty days is covered with dewdrops--incrusted with jewels--while more pretentious plants are not decked in any such beautiful array. The mist descends upon the poorest of them all, and makes that resplendent.

In the society of weeds there is this tendency to segregate, quite as in human society. Even the beach has its clique, a curious throng quite distinct from any of the fields, which defy the encroachment of the waves. About these coarse weeds of the beach is something peculiarly in keeping with their environment. The strange spiny fruit of the orache suggest sculpins, or some sea-shells, while the innumerable erect stems of the spreading house-leek resemble the backbone of fish. Carrying with it its air-sacs and paraphernalia of the sea, the rockweed, which is a "weed" of another world, grows as far up on the land as it can go, while the weeds of the beach approach the water as near as they dare. Here is the frontier, the edge of their world, and one and all would scramble over the border could they sustain life on the other side.

INSECT LORE

Apis the bee, Vespa the wasp, and Arachne the spider--these might properly figure in many a saga. Mighty are the works of the tribes of Apis, while Bombus the bumblebee befriends the pale flowers of the forest as do the winds the pine. Arachne beguiles the fly, for she is a very Medusa; the solitary wasp slays the Gorgon and lays her in the tomb she has prepared, rolling a stone over the entrance; lastly, from the body of the spider springs the race of wasps, like warriors from dragons' teeth in the days of Jason.

From the first flowering shrubs to the last goldenrod there is the hum of industry. The willows, on mild April days, resound with the roar of insect traffic. The bees push in rudely among the bunches of stamens, and the red anthers so neatly and compactly arranged are soon disheveled, the filaments bent by the myriad insect legs which scramble and kick through them. It is everywhere bustle and hurry; all are wrought to a tense degree. Life is here at a white heat--purposeful, Anglo-Saxon; yet it appears to move without friction. Occasionally a bee visits the meek-looking pistillate shrub near by, which patiently waits while the buzz and din continue uninterrupted across the path.

It is always a mystery just how the honey-bee transfers the pollen to the pollen-basket--even in view of the explanation. It appears to be scraped from one leg to the other, and gradually shifted from fore to aft by a dexterous process until lodged in the proper place, the bee remaining all the time on the wing so that the legs are moved with perfect freedom. Finally it is stowed more neatly and compactly than any pack-mule's load, and the panniers are good to see, rich and yellow as pumpkins glistening in the corn field. Doubtless the bee is careful to keep the balance and not put more in one basket than in the other. Since pollen-grains are of distinct and definite shapes in different plants, is it not possible that the insect, from its near point of view, detects these differences, and in place of so much indistinguishable dust, finds itself handling minute cubes, spheres and variously shaped blocks?

How readily bees are apprised of the blossoming of any flower. On the very instant the dwarf-sumacs open, the place hums with them. Solitary bumblebees continually scout through the woods and discover when the Indian-pipe, the shinleaf, the pipsissewa are in bloom. Only the queen bumblebee can have any memory of these flowers, as the life of the workers is but a season long. Probably they do not communicate the news, but each hunts for itself. With the honey-bees, however, this is the gossip of the hive as much as the state of the crops with farmers: "Meadow sweet is open today!" "Clethra is in bloom!" "The first goldenrod!" Imagine the news circulating like wildfire through the hives. Honey-bees have little time or patience to hunt up solitary and retiring flowers. They want masses of bloom, fields of blossom, having a large work to do--a city to build, a host to feed.

The bumblebee is the good angel of the woodland flowers, the visiting priest--or shall I say priestess--to all outlying parishes, calling at every ledge and gorge and dell where is any colony of blossoms or a lone settler or two. The bee discovers the pale pendent blossoms of the checkerberry under the leaves and almost prone upon the ground. In order to reach them it sometimes turns on its back upon the hemlock needles as it inserts its tongue in the flower above. In winter when you gather a checkerberry now and then in your walk you shall bestow a thought upon the buzzing priest of Flora who solemnized these nuptials. It visits every flower in the transparent groups of Indian-pipes which push their way up through the leaf mould to stand like an assembly of the pale-sheeted dead, and looks singularly rich and velvety against these stems of alabaster. Here is a botanist who knows the flora well, and takes a tithe from every blossom to which is brought a grain of pollen--the marriage fee. It is hard to believe so willing an agent is unaware of the service; that it fills an office which it does not recognize, while we, the biographers, alone perceive the relation.

Tell me, is there not something heroic in the life of the queen bumblebee? She awakens after her winter sleep, the sole survivor of her race, and bravely goes forth to collect pollen, lay her eggs and become the founder of a new race of workers. There is rude and virile romance in the life of this bee with its flavor of the forest. She is the queen-mother indeed, no mere figurehead, but strong, capable, self-reliant. Think of her retiring under the moss and leaves at the approach of winter, the last of her race; or, rather, do they all resign themselves to a sleep from which she alone is to awaken. She remains encircled by Cold--as Brunhilde was engirdled with Fire--till the sun shall cross the magic line and awaken the sleeping Amazon.

Today I split open a dead twig of sumac in which the little upholsterer-bee had laid her eggs. From the summit a well or shaft was sunk some ten inches through the central pith. This I cautiously descended by means of a jack-knife and found it partitioned into a dozen cells, in each of which lay a pupa, the pallid sleepers like mummies in their royal tombs awaiting a resurrection.

The cells were lined--upholstered--in silk and partitioned from each other by walls of chips cemented together. In some cases the pupa was being devoured by the minute larvæ of a chalcid fly, and in one cell only the dried skin remained. For that pupa there was to be no resurrection into the life of the bee, but as the cell was opened, out stepped a tiny chalcid into the light of day, its dapper little person shining blue-black and its minute wings of an iridescent green.

You may see many broken twigs of sumac, elder and blackberry, perforated at the end in evidence that in the cells below are the larvæ of a bee, or perhaps the pupæ wrapped in their transforming slumbers. This sepulcher is sign to the chalcid fly as well. In one such that I opened were several perfect bees, beautiful little green creatures. Immediately they stepped out upon my hand and began dusting and cleaning themselves, but appeared to be troubled by the brightness, and eager to hide. When offered the open end of a tube, such as they had recently come from, they seemed glad to enter. They were not yet fitted for contact with the world of light and preferred to return to the darkness and security of their cells. A spider had concealed herself in a silken room at the mouth of one tube, perhaps seeking this privacy in which to change her skin. When their time had come to emerge, the inmates would naturally have walked into the spider's den, while the light of day appeared beyond, but for a single instant, as a faint glimmer which they were destined never to reach.

However, there is a Theseus for every monster. A spider was one day spinning her web in an outer angle of the veranda, laying the first strands, the scaffolding. Attaching one point she swung out on her line and fixed a second, aided by the breeze. Without the wind she perhaps could not have erected her scaffolding in that place. The morning sunlight caught these first threads, stretched from post to beam, and they gleamed like silver or spun glass. At length a wide space was to be bridged and she swung free at the end of a long strand. The breeze carried her to and fro, far out from under the roof, so that she remained suspended in mid-air.

But other eyes were watching her at her work. As she swung thus, self-possessed and at ease, suddenly a mud-dauber pounced upon her. The silver strand parted in the sunlight, and the spider was carried to the beam above, where the wasp apparently stung her several times. A moment after she rose in air holding the large globular spider, now paralyzed and inert, and sailed away over the treetops in the direction of her nest. The victim was to be immured in a sarcophagus of mud together with the egg of the wasp. When the egg hatched, the larva in this tomb with the body of the spider would find such gruesome state congenial enough--being of the wasps. In this case a spider the less means a wasp the more.

Late one afternoon a spider was constructing her web. She already had her first line stretched between two small shrubs. On this she crossed and recrossed several times, each trip reeling out a new strand from her spinnerets, until she had a stout cable from which the gossamer structure was to depend. From an end of this she dropped to the ground and fastened a thread, then ascended, traversed the cable and dropped lines from the other end to the twigs beneath. All were remarkably taut and firm. By crossing two she now established the center of the web--not the geometric center--and from the overhead cable spun some radii to this point and from this to the lower strand. In an incredibly short time she had lines radiating in all directions from the center like the spokes of a wheel.

She now fairly ran over these spokes paying out the strand as she laid the spiral web upon the gleaming radii. Starting at the center she traveled from left to right, passing the thread through the claw of one of the last pair of legs. By this means it was held from her as far as possible and quickly attached to each of the radii. A very short time sufficed for her to complete this spiral of perhaps a foot in diameter, and she had only to return over the ground with the final thread, on which are strung the viscid drops.

She paused as if resting, and in that moment a Social wasp descended like a fury and bore her to the ground. The wasp quickly rose holding the spider in her embrace, and returning to the bush suspended herself by one hind claw. Here she held the body of the spider with two pair of legs, and turning it about, as though it were on a spit, bit off some of the head parts with her strong jaws which worked like a pair of shears. So near was I that I could see these jaws meet and sever the thorax, which fell and glanced from a leaf a few inches below with the faintest imaginable sound. The wasp then proceeded to tear open the abdomen. The builder of gossamer bridges, who overcame space and flung her nets to the breeze, was no more. I looked again at the unfinished web and in it struggled a small fly.

In stretching the first strand the spider avails herself of the wind to some extent. When crossing from one point to another it is by no means necessary she should drop from a height equal to the distance to be crossed; for if the wind is strong enough she has but to descend a little way, and then, as it holds her out at right angles, she pays out the line and so continues moving in mid-air. As soon as she comes in contact with some object she at once attaches her thread. I have more than once observed a spider drop a short distance when there was no breeze to carry her, but by the movement of her body she imparted a slight motion to the line and thus set herself to gyrating until she finally swung across the intervening space.

The spinners of flat webs in the grass are associated with dog-days and with foggy weather, as if they spread their tents only at such times to fold them again and steal away with the appearance of the sun. As a matter of fact these spiders work in clear weather and at different hours of the day, but the web is so fine as to be next to invisible unless covered with moisture, when it at once attracts the eye, like a writing in invisible ink which becomes manifest only under the right conditions.