Chapter III: Part 3

There are other spiders which become evident only at the approach of winter. It is something to the credit of these small spiders that, being without wings, they should still aspire to fly; whereas the ants, born with wings, are in haste to tear them off. The past year they were so in evidence on the 11th of November that I shall henceforth associate that day with the flight of the Erigone. The weather was cool, but with a suggestion of Indian summer in the air. I first noticed the spiders on top of a hill, for the bare twigs of sumacs were streaming with gossamer threads which shone like silver. From time to time little spiders descended from the upper regions and ran about over my coat. One, which was spinning threads on my sleeve, finally ran out upon my hand and, elevating its spinnerets, began paying out a line, which I could see as I held it against the sun. When this had reached a length of several feet the little spider was whisked off by the breeze and carried away.

Toward sunset a delicate network of gossamer threads covered the open pastures like a silver mesh in which the earth lay captive. These minute spiders have a way at this time of allowing the strands to be drawn from their spinnerets by the wind, until they carry sail enough to be lifted off their feet. They fly away thus on the wings of the winds, perhaps carried high above the earth by ascending currents. Lo, the hegira of the spiders!

It would appear that the Solitary wasps are more ingenious and self-reliant, and less governed by tradition, than the Social bees and wasps; for I have seen a small black one which was unable to rise on the wing with the large spider it was carrying, finally drag it up the trunk of an oak to the height of seven feet and from that vantage fly away. Such an one pulled a spider much larger than herself up on my knee and left it there, paralyzed but alive, while she made explorations, after which she returned and took it away. As I was making some notes at the time with reference to wasps, the incident made a pleasant impression, quite as though she had taken me into her confidence and had gone out of her way to reveal some facts of her life.

One day I encountered a sand-wasp which had just stung a wireworm and was dragging it over the ground. The worm, which resembled a brown twig, was three inches long and as large around as a slate-pencil, while the wasp was not over an inch and a quarter in length and very slender. Seizing the victim in her jaws and straddling it, the wasp walked along in this uncomfortable fashion, over ground strewn with pebbles and partly covered with brush. Difficulties were many, and she was kept constantly pulling, tugging and boosting to get the worm along.

At length she penetrated the brush and came out bearing the worm into an open gravelly space. Here she turned off sharply for a distance of two yards, and, after running nervously to and fro, stopped in front of a small hole. She had been over an hour dragging the worm. During that time one main direction had been followed, though never had she to my knowledge left her burden and risen above the brush and trees to get her bearings; yet she found her way unerringly, and only turned aside because of the boulders and clumps of white birch stumps. The whole distance was about forty feet in a straight line, but further as the wasp had gone.

Backing into the hole, she seized the worm and attempted to drag it in after her, but the entrance proved too small. She therefore came out and began rapidly enlarging it by seizing bits of gravel with her jaws and fore legs, rising in the air and carrying them off six or eight inches. Again she entered, and this time was able to pull the worm in after her. She remained three or four minutes in the hole, during which time she was depositing her eggs, then her head reappeared at the opening.

She now began filling in. Dropping two or more bits of gravel, she would then turn her back and rapidly scratch in dirt with her fore legs, evidently to fill up the interstices. Twice she took out a bit of gravel and carried it away, precisely as a mason might throw aside a stone that was not the right shape or size. As her head was thus inserted in the hole a black ant approached and peered into the depths. Suddenly the wasp turned and gave one look, whereupon the ant fled in haste.

When the hole was filled to the brim she tamped it down with her head. This occupied her some minutes and she appeared to take the utmost care. Gravel was then brought and piled upon the spot until it exactly resembled its surroundings. The stones carried varied in size from those as large as a buckshot to some the size of a marrowfat pea. They were lifted and carried seemingly without effort, and dropped almost before one could see what she was about. Twenty minutes were consumed in filling up the hole and restoring the surface.

On a sudden she vanished, and with her vanished the place itself where she had been at work. It was as if a trap-door had closed, and no sign was left. So carefully had she done her work and so closely imitated the surroundings, like a miser burying his gold, it was only after careful search I could again locate the spot.

Thus in the economy of Nature every insect appears to be food for some other. On the leaves of the Virginia creeper you may usually find, in early autumn, some caterpillars which have received the eggs of a small chalcid fly. These caterpillars, otherwise so large and green and awesome to the beholder, have become limp and lean and have an aged and decrepit look. They hold feebly to the vine but no longer eat anything. I brought home one of them and in a short time there emerged from its body a great number of small white grubs, fifty or more by actual count. Upon the back of their emaciated host they proceeded to spin for themselves marvelous little cocoons of white silk which they did in a very brief time. Moving their heads this way and that they spun the fine threads about themselves until they were completely enveloped. Here were a great number of little spinners, making for themselves garments of silk, and at last spinning themselves out of sight. The caterpillar now bristled with the small white cocoons which stood upon end on its back, where they were attached, and almost hid it from view.

The wary caterpillar has many foes. If it escapes the hungry warblers and vireos, there is still the army of goggle-eyed wasps and nervous ichneumons to circumvent. Yet a prodigious number survive. Were it not for their enemies they would overrun the earth. The butterflies sporting in the sunshine, and the small moths flitting about the lamp, have come through many perils, and may almost be said to have lived by their wits, so astonishing are the ruses they have devised to deceive their pursuers.

THE WAYS OF THE ANT

If you would see the ants to advantage--to your own, that is--you must turn over a pasture stone under which one of the species of small yellow ants has its nest. By thus gently removing the roof, if it is a good-sized stone, the whole colony will be in view at once. The red-ant hill presents difficulties. To dig into it or to pull it apart is quite useless, as the earth falls in and nothing is to be seen but a struggling heap of dusty and indignant ants. It rarely happens that such a hill may be built around a small boulder. If this boulder is suddenly and deftly removed, not dragged or rolled aside, but lifted clear of the hill so that the sides of the nest may not be broken in, a remarkable scene is disclosed.

I have found such an ant hill, and by removing the stone the household was placed on exhibition--but not all its secrets revealed by any means. From several large chambers, now roofless, galleries and corridors radiated in all directions. The instant the stone was lifted the ants swarmed from the galleries into these chambers, which were packed with the large cocoons. There were thousands of pupæ, of a delicate brown tint, looking wonderfully clean and fresh, but with such celerity did the ants work that inside of ten minutes all were carried from view.

Among the rest were perhaps a dozen young ants, the head and thorax being white and the abdomen a pale mauve. These creatures moved feebly about, taking no interest in the proceedings, and were for the most part seized by the workers and conveyed into the galleries. Apparently they were individuals that had just emerged from their pupa-cases.

Under another large stone were two very numerous colonies living side by side, of different species. The nests were, of course, entirely separate and under opposite ends of the stone. The smaller of the two appeared to be stinging ants, for they clustered in great numbers over their small pupæ, elevating their abdomens in a threatening manner like so many diminutive scorpions. The other species were large and active ants of a polished bronze hue. Their pupæ were naked, which gave the nest the appearance of being filled with grains of rice.

These large ants set to work with frenzied activity and removed all of their own pupæ. Then, and not until then, they swarmed over into the adjoining nest and began carrying the cocoons of the small ants back into their own nest. Now and then some small ant bolder than the rest would resist, and an individual combat ensued which ended by the large ant carrying off her small antagonist. There was, however, very little resistance of this sort, and the pillage, if such it were, continued until the remaining cocoons had all been carried over into the nest of the large ants. So few of the small ants made any resistance that it gave one the agreeable impression the larger ants were only offering assistance. But I failed to find on subsequent visits that they had returned the pupæ. And although they daily brought their own pupæ out of the galleries, the smaller cocoons never more came to view, and the small ants subsequently abandoned their nest. Thereafter I felt some compunction in thus disturbing a whole community for mere curiosity.

It is noticeable above all how the ants at such times take no thought for their own safety, but for that of their charge solely. Whether their interest is in any sense maternal or merely a property interest does not appear. Another feature evident in disturbing a formicary is the general harmony in which the individuals of any one colony work together. Here is no less than a catastrophe, as if the roof of one's house were suddenly to be removed and everything upset. And yet not one runs away or apparently conflicts with any other. There are no cross purposes; no two get in each other's way; but animated by a common motive, and by one only, the community proceeds with despatch to the work in hand.

Is this socialism among ants something preordained for them as the condition of their life, or is it in part an acquired tendency of the ants themselves? That they _do_ acquire tendencies would seem clear enough. If it should be proven that this social state is in fact the result of an evolution among them, it would be one of the most significant facts of natural history.

It serves the community admirably at any rate. But with them the individual does not count. Ants are ahead of us in one respect in that they have order without coercion. There is such harmony, such co-operation among them, they have evolved no ruling class, the queens being such only in name and more properly the mother ants. The life of the community is all, and every one looks out for it.

On warm afternoons early in September you may look for the swarming of the queens, when myriads of ants sail into the air in their desultory marriage flight. In apparently endless succession they pass, every now and then one alighting, whereupon begins the curious part of the performance, for they run rapidly about, throwing themselves upon their backs to squirm from side to side after the manner of a dog scratching. They then get upon all sixes and continue running to and fro. After these contortions the wings wear a most disheveled appearance, and, as the process continues, become more and more crumpled, until at length one or more are missing.

Sometimes in sheer desperation an ant will lie on her back and revolve rapidly in this position. In some cases the wings seem to resist all attempts to remove them and the ants redouble their efforts. Their frenzy appears to know no bounds; they fairly stand on their heads and repeatedly fall over miniature precipices and into Lilliputian crevices in their blind determination to tear off the wings. Again they seem to use their legs as though trying to twist off a wing. It is the most fanatical performance to be witnessed among insects.

Such dogged persistence must sooner or later attain its end, and presently the ant is seen running about wingless or perhaps with only a torn stub left. The behavior is no longer frantic as before, but she now moves about as if enjoying great relief. During one such flight great numbers came down into a gravelly path through a huckleberry patch. They apparently avoided the bushes on either hand, and chose to alight in the path, for it was alive with ants twisting and turning and wriggling upon their backs in the gravel. Others, having gotten rid of their wings, were attempting to go head foremost into the ground, possibly with a view of laying their eggs, or merely because the soil was their natural element.

Around the formicary itself the workers were grouped _en masse_, endeavoring either to restrain the new brood of queens in the old colony or to coerce them into leaving. They appeared to drive them as a squad of police might force back a crowd. But it is manifestly difficult to interpret their motives with any assurance, and it is more likely they were provoking them to flight. At such times they ascend the branches of a bush and collect in excited little groups on the buds and flowers around the females, as if determined they should go. No doubt it is an exciting day with them, a sort of Labor Day demonstration. In this case it is the womenfolk who are thus bent on asserting their rights and doing as they will. But why, having once ascended into the larger world and the liberty of winged creatures, must they insist on tearing off this means of freedom to become crawling, laborious insects? They appear to hear two calls, one from above and the other of the earth, earthy, and to obey the latter. But it is with them the race and the future--always the future.

To an ant a tree is a forest in itself. Ascending its mammoth trunk to the upper regions, she follows the great highways of the branches, out into the unknown and trackless wilderness of leaves in pursuit of her game--the aphid. She knows well in what wild and solitary uplands to look for this mountain-goat.

The under side of maple leaves affords good pasturage to numerous green aphids which there browse contentedly in the pleasant shade and under the watchful eyes of the small brown ants that herd them. The aphids are all sizes and ages, though as to age the difference is probably but a few days. With a glass, the process of "milking" may be observed, the ants merely stroking the aphids with their antennæ. Two small tubes, like sap quills, protrude from the back of the aphid, and from time to time minute glistening drops are seen to exude from these tubes and are removed by the ants in attendance. Surely, to the ant here is the land of milk and honey. They move constantly to and fro among the aphids, now and then stopping to stroke one. Apparently they detect by some signs which are ready to yield the sweet fluid. Their presence appears to be agreeable to the aphids and is never in the least resented. After long watching with the glass, I have never seen anything akin to insubordination. Pluck the leaf ever so gently and hold it in a proper position, the difference is at once apparent to the aphids, for there begins an exodus, and large and small troop up the stem of the leaf and so on to whatsoever it may be attached; nor does it cease until they have deserted to the last one.

But the life of ants is by no means given over to these bucolic pursuits. While the meadow-ants seem to be in the pastoral stage, the red species and the large black ones are hunters and warriors. The most sanguinary conflict I have witnessed was a battle of the ants. Two armies of the same black species met on the floor of a neighbor's barn. The battle lasted throughout several days, and both sides fought with indescribable ferocity. Where they came from was a mystery, as no such colonies of ants had ever been seen thereabouts.

They appeared to be of the species _Formica pennsylvanica_ which nests in trees, but these do not occur in very large colonies, whereas the contending hosts upon the barn floor were as the Tartar hordes. The floor was strewn with struggling pairs and with the dead and injured, and always fresh forces were arriving.

The persistence with which they fought is only to be compared to that of bulldogs, while they showed the ferocity of weasels. Once let an ant get another by the thorax and she would continue crunching and sawing until she had severed the head, notwithstanding in the meantime one or several of her own legs had been cut off by her antagonist. This was the usual outcome of the various individual combats.

From time to time I placed pairs of combatants on the slide of a dissecting lens, and through the glass observed them as in an arena. It was a miniature combat of gladiators, but with no appeal for mercy on the part of the vanquished. Much evidently depended on the best hold, as in wrestling, for there was no dislodging an ant once she had secured it. Under the lens the comparatively great strength and the skill and relentless ferocity of these miniature warriors became more evident and was astonishing to witness.

A bird's-eye view of the battle-field revealed no plan of action nor any directing genius. It was every one for himself--or rather herself--but there was absolute unity of purpose. Occasionally some could be seen running about with the heads of the vanquished suspended on their antennæ, whereon the jaws had closed in the death-struggle, not again to be relaxed. These ants appeared to seek no relief from such a monstrous encumbrance, nor seemingly was any offered by their comrades. Others were crawling on an uneven number of legs in search of new foes. The cause of such a conflict among ants of the same species remains a mystery--one of the many mysteries.

Every year the red ants raid the common blacks for the purpose of making slaves--a most highhanded proceeding. This season I came upon the invading host marching up the road about ten in the morning of July 28th. The invasion had but lately begun, as the ants were carrying no pupæ; it was the skirmish line. As the column advanced, frequent and rapid communication took place between individuals and stragglers who were coming back. Later, when the raid was well under way, there was little of this. The nest of the red ants was by the side of a path in the woods which led out to the wagon road, while the negroes were domiciled some distance up this lane. Now the column of red ants followed the path and the road the entire way, in place of going directly through the bushes, though it doubled the distance, which thus amounted to some fifty yards.

Red ants were soon pouring out of the various openings in the nest of the blacks, carrying both pupæ and larvæ, and rarely one passed with a bunch of small white eggs. Several black queens came out of the nest, and as they emerged were set upon by red ants, which tried to hold them by their wings. They managed, however, to throw off their assailants, and ran under my feet, where they were followed by a score of black workers, all of whom crowded under the soles of my shoes as I stood on the loose gravel. At noon I timed the ants and found that, on the average, forty pupæ and larvæ were carried past a given point every minute. Two unbroken columns now extended the entire distance between the nests, one advancing and the other returning.

Occasionally one passed carrying a portion of a black ant, a head and thorax, or an abdomen. Again, one would appear with a live black, which, when liberated by me, frantically made her escape. Very young negroes when carried off were never injured. On one occasion several red ants were struggling with a black, and among them was a black who fought against her own friend. This is the only case in which I saw a black ant help the enemy in this way--a traitor, evidently, but presumably one whose pupa had been captured the year before and reared in slavery. Whereas the red ants always came to each other's assistance, the blacks rarely did so.

By five o'clock the raid was practically over for the day. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Early in the struggle a slender, straggling column had diverged from the main line, about half way between the nests. I now found the entire body of ants moving in this new direction. The one raid over, they had undertaken another upon a colony of blacks some twenty-five yards distant, and were transporting the pupæ and larvæ at about the same rate as before. To reach this nest, the column must cross the wagon road, and here a number were crushed from time to time by passing vehicles. But the marching army passed by with the stolen pupæ and paid no heed to their wounded comrades. This second foray ceased before nightfall.

The following morning by ten o'clock the raid had been renewed and a great stream of ants were bearing away pupæ as before. Whenever the column moved over dry leaves its progress was distinctly audible, a rustling sound suggesting the curiously dry _crik crik_ of a serpent. The footfall of the ants was as incessant as the patter of rain; a barefooted insect host, a rabble of _sans culottes_, and the sound of their marching feet reached my listening ears, as it were in the clouds above them.

On the fourth day the slavers began kidnapping the blacks themselves and carrying them unharmed to the nest. Quite often I found them carrying individuals of their own species. These may have been deserters or they may have been ants from some other community, who, learning of the raid, thought to be present at the final sack and perhaps share in the spoils. A still more puzzling thing was the fact that some few red ants bore negroes in the wrong direction,--that is, from the red back to the black colony. I have noticed on former occasions that the raid may become thus complicated toward its close as if the ants, drunk with victory, were beside themselves.

On the 7th of August the raid was directed against a new negro colony some distance further down the road. It was carried on with something like the usual vigor until the 25th of the month, when it apparently ceased. The first nests of blacks, in which some few ants remained, were no longer molested, though the besieging army passed them on its way to the field of operation. Thus the series of raids of this one colony of red ants continued for nearly a month.

I found no less than three other raids in progress at this time, among widely separated communities, so that the marauding spirit was contagious among them and spread like the war fever. The red warriors were everywhere in arms and bent on pillage. One hill, being free from grass, offered a clear view of what was going on at the doorway at least. Here the black workers--the slaves of a former raid--were carrying out bits of gravel, while the train of red ants entered, bearing the stolen pupæ from the pillaged nest. The red ants were at this time bringing some large queen pupæ which they had great difficulty in getting over the ground. As they approached the entrance, the black workers deposited their bits of gravel and ran to their assistance. Several blacks which remained near the entrance seemed to act thus as porters, while others about the top of the hill were engaged as laborers.

Stopping work at about five o'clock, the train of red ants melted away before one's eyes. They dropped their task very much as a gang of men do when the whistle blows. Their day at that sort of labor was therefore only about seven or eight hours, as if some of the principles of Labor Union were in vogue among these brigands. They would kidnap only so many hours a day. The slaves, however, kept at work until dusk. Perhaps the red ants continued inside the nest, disposing of the pupæ captured during the day, but they brought in none after five o'clock.

Three days had elapsed from the close of this raid when, for some reason, the entire colony of red ants deserted the hill, carrying the newly captured slaves and their pupæ with them. They took up their abode under a cement walk, an unusual place for red ants, and a week of incessant labor was consumed in carrying the black ants and pupæ to the new site. This was, then, a _bona fide_ exodus of an entire community.

Under the cement walk to which the colony of red ants had migrated with their slaves were numerous nests of small brown ants. These swarmed one sultry afternoon, and as they came pouring out of the cracks in the walk and clustered on the surface, the fierce red ants fell upon them with fury, slaying hundreds and leaving most of the bodies on the walk, though many were carried away. This I took to be a veritable hunting expedition. Like some other "sportsmen," they appeared to kill more than they wanted, and the little heaps of winged dead were left to be scattered by a gust of wind.

On the following day a new chapter opened in the history of this remarkable colony, for I found them attacking a large negro colony some distance away. Contrary to custom, the blacks defended their nests with spirit, and at first seemed to hold their own. Not divining what was to follow, I was surprised to find the red ants carrying away no pupæ. But the next day it was made plain enough, for the red ants appeared in a compact column bearing pupæ and slaves, which but a week before they had deposited under the walk, and which they were now moving for the third time. Was this a second exodus or had the move to the walk been merely an expedient until they should find a more suitable place? Without further ado they invaded the nest, and four distinct colonies (the red ants held slaves of a previous year), one red and three black, with all larvæ and pupæ and some eggs, were thus housed together. One may imagine the feelings of the unfortunate community on finding not only an invading army of freebooters, but that some thousands of their own cousins, children and all, were come bag and baggage to live with them.

Now the marching column passed close by the nests of the little brown ants which had been their hunting-ground of the few past days. They were too engrossed in carrying pupæ to follow the chase, but I found three of their slaves posted by some small holes in the cement through which the brown ants left their nests. These negroes remained near the opening, and, as the brown ants appeared, would reach over the edge and pull one forth which was soon crushed and tossed aside. During the several hours that I watched them the three slaves remained so engaged. From time to time they would run about among the wounded, and picking up one here or there, apparently give it a nip.

This final move occupied some eight days, and nothing further transpired in the history of this colony,--that is, above ground. The war fever subsided as suddenly as it had arisen, and the erstwhile warriors were perhaps become peaceful educators of the slaves now being born into captivity with only some vague instinct of freedom, some race memory handed down from the halcyon days before the advent of the red Tartar.

If the sluggard is to go to the ant, then let it not be to the red ant, nor again to the slave, but to some Syrian species known to Solomon, which stored up provender for the winter, or to the little brown ant which herds the aphid. Huber relates that he found the slave-making ant of Europe (_P. rufescens_) unable to feed itself, so that, if isolated, it would miserably starve in the midst of plenty. Not to such an ant, then, should the sluggard go, but to that wise yellow species which, declares Lubbock, actually brought in and cared for the eggs of an aphid through the winter, and carried out the young aphids in the spring to their proper food plant. Certainly should we ever attain to the dignity of wings, there will be no occasion to emulate the ant, which, being born into that freedom, tears them from its body, the rest of its days to crawl upon the earth.

AUTUMN STUDIES

Early in August we are surprised each year by the glowing leaves on the tupelo, a little patch of scarlet gleaming in the swamp, while the high blueberry is still in fruit and the silver-rod is making its appearance. By the time the wood-lilies have faded in the huckleberry pasture, the red bunchberries add their bit of color to the carpet on the edge of the swamp. The large berries of the clintonia turn that rare shade of blue which they retain but a short time, growing darker as they ripen. This delicate bloom appears later on the berries of the smilax, the frost-grapes, the savin and the viburnums; but in the clintonia there is an admixture of some tint lacking in these, which gives a finer blue, as though there were reflected here some remoter depths of the heavens, a bit of ethereal and celestial color imprisoned for a moment. Mountain-holly is now in its prime, its berries of a deep cherry, perhaps one of the richest reds to be found in nature, as those of the clintonia present one of the rarest blues, equaled only by gentians and bluebirds. Both berries, of course, wear their true colors only in their prime and lose them on becoming overripe. In the swamps the little yellow and brown cyperus is in flower and the leaves of the small, pale St.-John's-wort have reddened to a brilliant hue, while young bullfrogs and pickerel-frogs sun themselves on the lily-pads and dream away the mellow hours.

While the dog-days are disappointing in respect to bird life, there are compensations. The charm of this season lies in the mushrooms. Though these last through October, they are more in evidence in August, and take on prominence then because of a diminishing flora and the withdrawal from view of a large number of birds. It is a second spring--hot, moist and fungus--a blooming of the mushroom world. Old stumps and dead branches blossom gaily, and bring forth a tropic flora. Decay is seen to be the matrix of beauty. The logs of corduroy roads through the swamp are incrusted with a shelf fungus (_P. versicolor_) of marvelous hues. These, spread like open fans, are fastened to the wood by the pileus itself, as by the handle. Some are banded in seal-brown and amber, the surface having the lustrous, changeful effects of a cat's eye. Others are striped in violet and deep green; still others in green and mauve, and some in ochre and tawny hues, while over all there is a play of light as on watered silk.

It requires somewhat of the heroic spirit to discover whether a mushroom is edible or not. But we may feast our eyes on the amanita, and all other mushrooms, with no fear of consequences. The mycologist seems to overlook the finer and esthetic value of mushrooms. They are beautiful to look upon--surely this is one important qualification. What more attractive these misty days than the deadly amanita--the "destroying angel"? How it gleams in the woods! How it lures with its terrible beauty! But they who are tempted to taste must be wholly given over to the pleasures of the table. It was not made for the stomach, but to be digested and assimilated by mental processes alone and the perception of beauty thereby nourished and sustained.

How clean and wholesome is the pasture mushroom--_the_ mushroom--with its white flesh, pink gills, and cap from which the skin peels as readily as from a fig. The same field is often sprinkled over with puffballs looking as fresh as new-laid eggs, as they poke out of the close-cropped turf. Some species are thus eminently wholesome and inviting, while others have a loathsome fungoid personality and affect one like the sight of reptiles. They express the fact that they are of the _lower orders_--the slimy world. Mushrooms are indeed almost as varied in outline and color as flowers. Red species of russula vie with the rose, with ripe cherries, or the cheeks of Bartlett pears, while the green russula is of richer, more velvety hue than any unripe fruit. The grotesque forms of boleti have a kind of fascination. One comes to distinguish minute differences and to cherish these odd and sometimes graceful shapes, as a connoisseur might his bronzes or antique vases.

Many of the mosses are fruiting at this season, but they, for the most part, belong to that mysterious and unfathomable world of the compound microscope. Yet here are some, be it said with joy, that so proclaim themselves as to be known of all men. Such we can take home to us as friends of our leisure and landmarks in our excursions. These at least we have reclaimed from science. In the shadowy sea of Latin names these few green isles appear--peat-moss, broom-moss, hair-cap and fern-moss. Like miniature smilax are the mniums, marvelous little trailing beauties, while of all vegetable elves the silvery bryum has the greatest witchery, with young drooping pea-green capsules like so many fairy pipes. A miniature jungle is the fern-moss, a forest of tree ferns at our very doors--Ceylon and Java in our wood lot. It is only a difference of dimension. A patch of this is as rich and luxuriant as any jungle of bamboos on the lower slope of the Himalaya, and a spider might as easily lose himself in one as a man in the other.

With what a fine garment of green does Nature clothe the trunks of swamp-maples and some black birches. It is a true woodland costume befitting their sylvan life; a snug garment tightly wrapped about the trunk as though to protect the vital parts of the body while the extremities are bared to the winds. Woven in woodland looms of mosses and lichens, it forever replenishes itself, the holes mended and the bare spots renewed as by deft and invisible weavers.

Where do the birds go in August? Never an oriole's note nor a bluebird's warble. All the more we appreciate the faithful redeye and the wood-pewee. The importunate twittering of young birds with their speckled breasts and half-grown tails is in evidence; they at least do not hesitate to make themselves known. But in September are bright days when there come waves of birds. The returning warblers rove in little bands, and companies of young field-and chipping-sparrows flit in and out among the bayberries and alight in the path.

In their dull, autumn colors the warblers have an unfamiliar look. They come disguised in winter cloaks which, if you do not know their little mannerisms, may be effective enough. With provoking celerity they flit in and out the thick foliage, and you dance attendance; now this way and now that, stumbling over pasture stones or plunging into the midst of blackberry and rose thickets, to be detained at last by the persuasive catbrier. Again you go forth to find the game has stolen away and not a warbler is to be seen. Such are the exigencies of bird study in September; yet in a few days other flocks may arrive. Every faintest clue is valuable to the ornithologist who honestly refrains from the gun. Were it not for the peculiar jerking of the tail, one would hardly recognize the yellowpoll in his dull suit. The fly-catchers frequently declare their identity through mannerisms. Were it not for difference of manner and voice, the phoebe and the pewee might easily be confused; so also the redeye and the warbling vireo. I have known the redeye for years, but can never make out his _red_ eye, unless it be a glass one.

Now comes the winter wren, peeping and prying round about a mossy tussock like a little mouse, but far more self-contained. His wee tail is elevated and his whole demeanor pert. What a picture he makes, prying about in the hair-caps, his head little higher than the capsules,--a ruddy, rich-hued, speckled little fellow. If only he would give us a measure of that fabled song, that Orphean strain of the far North and of the mountain tops, which is denied to dwellers on these lower levels! There are songs to be heard only on Parnassus.

These are the days of journeying seeds. In spring it was blowing pollen; in early autumn, mushroom spores; and now winged seeds flying before the wind. Those of the hop-hornbeam are done up in little papery bags which, though incapable of an extended flight, manage to sail out and away from the parent tree. Even the small seeds of birch and alder, compact as they are, have wings provided,--for no ambitious flight, to be sure, but a gentle excursion only, such as the broad-winged maple seed may take when its hour arrives. Acorns will fall directly below the tree, perhaps roll some little distance on uneven ground and lie in rich confusion--a symbol of plenty. For any further transportation they must depend upon the wings of the jay and the feet of the squirrel. In this respect the sweet acorns of the white oak have the better chance, while at the same time they run the greater risk of being eaten. Jays constantly carry acorns, and may frequently drop them. Gray squirrels bury them, and recover a surprising number later when the snow is on the ground. They know wherein the white are superior and are as well informed about acorns as are we about apples or the varieties of squash. The white oak acorn is to them Hubbard squash or Baldwin apple.

When Nature planned that the nut trees should bear as they do, she doubtless considered the squirrel and the boy that was to be. She had no idea of deriving a thousand seedlings from a hickory, but perhaps one only, and allowing for those that should come to naught, the boys and the squirrels might have the rest--to say nothing of weevils, which get ahead of both when it comes to chestnuts, being on hand to lay their eggs in the flower. When the boy arrives, it is to find them already in possession--surely nine-tenths of the law in this case. The chestnut-bur was seemingly designed as a means of protection rather than of transportation,--unless it be that in remote times the tertiary monkey got them in his coat, or perhaps slyly pelted the mastodon with these monster burs, and they were thus conveyed, as now a dog will carry beggar-ticks. As a protection it does not serve against its most insidious foe, the larva of the weevil, which works not from without but from within. Nature has treated the butternut better by surrounding it with a husk, as food for the grubs, which are content to go no deeper. One is a case of armed resistance, the other of diplomacy, and diplomacy wins.

How evidently all Nature is flowing. It is as though we stood on the banks of a river and saw pass--today arbutus, tomorrow, columbines, and later, goldenrod. The last is hardly gone before the advance guard of skunk-cabbage appears again. Autumn nourishes a vigorous brood--whole acres of wild sunflowers, acres again of joepye-weed, and salt marshes aglow with the great rose-mallow. Presently there will be only asters and goldenrod--everywhere purple and gold; royal robes worn not for long, to give way to the sober dress of early winter--a monk's garb.

Early in September the common brakes turn, imparting a faint glow to the woods. Dicksonia has a brighter hue, and patches surrounding a pasture boulder fairly seem to emit light. But this is as nothing to the splendor of cinnamon-ferns in the open bogs, now dry, and the spagnum withered and sear. It is as if the smouldering earth-fires leapt at the touch of autumn and glowed in these stately fronds. In the woods is always a predominance of yellow at this season; so lately somber and damp, heavy with the mustiness and humidity of the dog-days, they are now full of imprisoned sunshine. As by a touch of enchantment, the falling of the lower leaves on all shrubbery and in brier thickets has suddenly given us distances, larger perspective and new vistas, where before we were hedged in between dense green walls. Aspen, shadbush, blackberry, birch and hickory all incline to yellow, mottled and speckled more or less with brown. Ochre, umber, sienna, gamboge are on Nature's palette; soon she will replace these with crimson and scarlet. Already there is a touch of vermilion in the brilliant poison-ivy; and she has spilled drops of scarlet everywhere on the outskirts of the woods, along a wall, over a fence, up in a pine, in the very midst of a radiant gleaming hickory--wherever the Virginia creeper grows.

Nature works deftly, at first with delicate brush touching a shadbush, a clump of osmunda, or again only a leaf, a spot of color, a patch here and a streak there; but the day of transfiguration approaches. Early October sees the stag-horn sumacs fairly scintillate with color. At last the whole color-box is upset and runs red down a hillside huckleberry patch, meeting a yellow streak in a ravine and spreading out over the swamps, a sea of scarlet and gold. Every year Nature starts out in this modest fashion and ends in an upset and riot of color. We should know her ways by this time, but though her plan is the same she varies the details infinitely and there are always surprises. These same earth-fires which blazed in the osmunda now glow deep red in the dwarf sumacs--a dull, fierce flame, as if for the nonce Pluto's fires shone through the thin shell of earth. The poison-ivy is in its glory, and no tupelo, no sugar-maple, can rival its scarlet and vermilion. Earth indeed wears a jewel now. But there is nowhere a warmer, mellower tint than the shadbush has caught and held,--not brilliant nor showy, not a shining mark in the woods, but a cheery sight that warms the cockles of your heart. Little clumps of the maple-leaved viburnum are now of a delicate smoky pink, while the ash turns an indescribable hue--a greenish maroon or purplish green if such there be.

Already the hickory leaves are falling, detaching themselves one by one and floating leisurely to earth. It will now be our gentle pleasure to walk through crisp and rustling leaves. Barberries are ripe, and old-fashioned folk gather them for jelly or preserve them in molasses, wherein they are as so many shoe-pegs drowned in sweetness. The solitary sandpiper comes again to preside briefly over the ponds--a lone, wild spirit. Little flocks of coots scud low over the water, and in the dark, spongy humus of the hemlock swamp, red squirrels are digging caches and concealing the small cones, a dozen or more in a place. Such are the signs of the times.

Yet another sign--the last effort of the dying year--is the witch-hazel, which sheds its leaves and stands arrayed in yellow blossoms. A brave suggestion is this flower of the late autumn, blossoming when all else is in the sear and yellow, that it may bear seed in another year. When all others have given up and are retreating, this one comes forth as much as to say it is never too late. There is a very witchery in the crinkled yellow flower born of the old year in a frosty world; a borean child brought hither on the wings of the North wind; a sturdy blossom that will not show itself till it hears the music of rustling leaves.

Late in autumn the white pines shed their needles and lay down a new carpet. No turning of the old here, but every year another--fresh, wholesome, fragrant; a plain, well-wearing groundwork that never offends the eye and on which is traced from time to time a rare and original design. It is now a scarlet tupelo or a maple leaf dropped here and there, and again a creeping mitchella with a red berry or two, or a clump of ground-pine and a drift of beech and scarlet oak leaves. On occasion appears a solitary gleaming amanita. Over the rich seal-brown of ancient hemlock stumps is a tracery of the gray-green cladonia with its scarlet fruiting cups. What are Tabriz, Daghestan, Bokhara and the rest to this? These odorous pine-needles are the magic carpet which gently conveys one into the sylvan world of faun and nymph. Now it is a sunbath we want rather than a cold dip,--to bask in the warmth like any cottontail. To lie in some sheltered spot while the frost is taking off the last leaves, and become saturated with sunlight, is a mellowing process, and ripens one,--as tomatoes are ripened on the window-sill or grapes on the trellis.

As the vivid hues of the red maple fade in the swamp and are replaced by the soft silvery gray and purplish sheen of the bark, the oaks on the hillside become ruddy. The coloring is rich and subdued, rather than brilliant and glowing as at first--mahogany and maroon set off by the purple mists of Indian summer. And now at last branches are bare and leaves rustle underfoot.

PASTURE STONES

In New England pastures, the boulders are as much in harmony with their environment as any tree or shrub. They have the appearance of having grown here, quite as naturally as the bayberry and the sweet fern, and are kindred of the savin, and the low-spreading juniper which circles round them and hugs the stone like the lichen itself. The migrant boulders from the North are congenial to these hardy northern plants which reflect the somber character of the rock.

A field that has been entirely cleared of its pasture stones and left to stand thus, somehow looks barren and deserted. You feel you would like to restore a boulder here and there and invite the juniper and the bayberry to return. There is character in these ancient pasture stones, and they cannot be removed without depriving the landscape of that which they imparted; it is no longer virile and forceful, but tame and meek as though shorn of its strength.

If you would build your house on truly historic ground, lay it on foundation of pasture stones, and incorporate, as it were, Time itself into the structure. This is to let the very elements work for you. On many a farm the boulders are as good a crop as any; when they are gathered into the walls to give room for one more lucrative, this value at least of the farm is still represented. The fields have produced but one crop of boulders, and only the ages could mature this. If the pastures must lose this ancient beauty, let the house gain by it. Build it into your chimney. Take it to your hearth that it may not be lost. Let the boulder tell its story by the light of the hickory logs.

There is a rustic notion that boulders somehow _grow_, in some inexplicable manner enlarging like puff balls and drawing sustenance from the earth--and what could be more puzzling to the uninitiated than the presence of these pasture stones? His was an ingenious mind who conjured up that remote ice age from this fragmentary evidence and derived a history from these scattered letters and elliptical sentences. It was like tracing the stars to their origin.

It takes a bold imagination, indeed, to see these familiar fields and woods overlaid with a mile's thickness of ice; to recognize here in this present landscape a very Greenland, redeemed and made hospitable. There was need of a solid foundation of fact, patiently garnered, before such an arch of fancy could be sprung. What chaos and desolation once reigned here, only these boulders can tell. Here was a frozen waste as barren as the face of the moon. But beneath lay the soil that was to nurture the violet and the hepatica. There was a fine satisfaction in riding a miracle like this to earth, to corner it and see it resolve itself into the working of natural laws.

Nature appears as intent on breaking up the old rocks as in forming new ones. The ledge is, after all, but a mass of masonry in which huge blocks are set without mortar and as closely and evenly as jewels. What a lathe was that ancient glacier in which to turn and smooth these rough gems; or rather a great file which rasped their edges and corners. In rectangular blocks that have weathered, the decay is deeper at the corners, so that a cubical block tends to become a sphere as it diminishes. Frost is the stone-cutter, who scatters his chips over the world; Rain, the giant who is bent on turning these into soil. Consider what power lay in this tongue of ice which licked up the crumbs of the earth; carried Canada into New England and New England into New York, depositing its burden as gently as the petal falls from a rose.

Boulders are to be considered veterans of glacial times, which carry still the scars of that strenuous day. What tales they have to tell of that mammoth conflict, that prehistoric incursion of the Arctic hosts, but only to very good listeners are they unfolded. You must needs have a sympathetic ear to become their confidant. The unconscious rock assumes dignity in view of its past, as though here were an imprisoned earth-spirit, proceeding thus through the strenuous life to some ultimate freedom. Sermons in stones indeed! A terminal moraine is the most ancient battle-ground of the world. Here are the very heroes themselves, stretched upon the field in imperturbable granite, as certain others were fixed in the heavens as constellations. To walk among them is to see in fancy the advent of the wall of ice, mile-high, which buried the primitive jungle forever. Here the great glacier began its retreat, and over the spot there broods a silence, as over historic ground once the theater of great actions. After untold centuries, the wild rose and the hay-scented fern cluster round the boulder, and dandelions star the grass.