STRAY LEAVES
FROM
THE BOOK OF NATURE.
BY
M. SCHELE DE VEREI
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
NEW YORK:
A. O. MOORE, AGRICULTURAL BOOK PUBLISHEl;,
(LATE C. M. SAXTON & CO.)
No. 140 FULTON STREET.
1858.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
G. P. PUTNAM AND COMPANY,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK & THOMAS,
trfnters,
113 Fulton Street, N. Y.




" I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,
For with the insight cometh day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before.
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart,
Reveals the clue to spiritual things.
The soul that looks within for truth may guess
The presence of some unknown heavenliness."
J. RUSSELL LOWELL.








CONTENTS.
I. ONLY A PEBBLE.....................................   7
II. NATURE IN MOTION................................... 29
III. THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.............................  87
IV. A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS............................... 118
V. YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.......................... 154
VI. LATER YEARS OF A PLANT........................... 195
VII. PLANT-MUMMIES...................................... 223
VIII. UNKNOWN TONGUES................................... 241
IX. A TRIP TO THE MOON................................ 265








STRAY LEAVES
FROM THE
BOOK OF NATURE.
n1tg a ebbI.
"A1 Nature widens upward. Evermore
The simpler essence lower lies:
More complex is, more perfect, owning more,
Discourses more widely wise." —TTNYSON.
A WAY out in Mesopotamia, the traveller sees vast
plains unroll themselves before his wondering eye,
and scattered over them  many a grassy knoll with its
flock of goats and camels. No one suspected that under
those hills lay buried the ancient glory of Nineveh, "an
exceeding great city of three days' journey, wherein are
more than six score thousand persons." Like the faint
echo of distant thunder, a few half-forgotten names and
vague, dream-like legends, were all that had come down




S         LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
to us from the vast empire, whose merchants were many,
"even as the stars in heaven." But a man came from' a
far off island, he gathered the stones that lay scattered
about, and the silence, that had brooded over them for
countless ages, was broken by his magic touch. Here he
found on a brick strange and yet familiar signs; there
he dug, out of the rubbish of thousands of years, costly
slabs of alabaster, and on them were carved gigantic, aweinspiring figures. The Bible in his hand he read, and
name after name resumed life and meaning, until at last
the whole of its wondrous splendor was unfolded before
him.
And thus there lies many'a stone in our path that
mnight teach us lessons of grave import-for when the traditions of men are silent, stones become eloquent. But
we thrust them aside and we say with contempt: It is
only a pebble!  We call it dead, lifeless nature. Oh, if
it were a noble animal, a beauteous plant! or even a
rusty coin, a worm-eaten parchment, upon which some ancient dreamer wrote his long-forgotten fancies about heaven
and earth-how we would tax our ingenuity, how we would
search through the wide field of human knowledge, and
bring the wisdom of ages to bear upon the great secret!
For are not coins and parchments the work of man? He
deigns not to read the bright letters with which' Earth
herself has written her history on the simple sides of a
pebble.
Only a pebble! Oh man, that stone which you thrust
so contemptuously out of your way, is older than all else
on this earth!  When the waters under heaven were




ONLY A PEBBLE.                    9
gathered together unto one place, that pebble was there.
Who can tell us the story of those first days, when the
earth was in sore travail, when her heaving bosom belched
forth torrents of fire, vast avalanches of hissing, seething
water, and volumes of deadly vapors?  When glowing,
blazing streams of lava threw a bloody red glare on the
silent, lifeless earth, and amidst a trembling and thundering that shook the firmament, a thousand volcanoes at
once lifted up their fiery heads; when out of the foaming waters there rose suddenly the rocky foundations of
firm land and greeted the light that God had created?
That pebble was Life's first offspring on earth.  The
Spirit of God moved on the waters, and life was breathed
into the very gases that were hid in the heart of the
vapory globe. They parted in love, they parted in hate;
they fled and they met. Atom joined atom; loving sisters kissed each other, and this love, the great child of
that Spirit on earth, brought forth its first fruit, the pebble! Other stones also arose; out of the dark chaos new
brothers were seen to appear, and countless friends stood
by the side of the first comer. Warmth spread through
thsir limbs, electric currents shaped and fashioned them
into ever new forms, and they were joined into families
and races each in his kind.
And now the wild struggle subsided. The fierce spirits
of fire were banished far down to the dark caverns of the
earth; but in angry passion they still rage and roar below, rise in powerless fury until the earth trembles and
the heart of man is awed, or pour forth streams of burning
lava through mighty volcanoes. Thus the flames bring us,
l*




10        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
even now, messages from the vasty deep, and the lava
shows us that what is firm and fast on the surface is still
boiling and seething below. Ever yet the unruly spirits
trouble the earth. Here they lift Sweden or Chili high
out of the vast ocean, there they draw Greenland and Italy
down towards their unknown home. Ever yet the stones
live; they lift up and sink islands, they fashion new lakes
and fill up large streams; they pour fiery cataracts from
lofty mountains and bury whole cities under vast volumes
of ashes. They are ever active, and change, day by day,
the very soil on which we live.
Such were the pebble's earliest days: Is he not wellborn?  But philosophers tell us that he was born only
to die; that life was almost instantly followed by death.
To a certain point this is true. As the rock was the first
life that came to light from the chaos of atoms, so it also
died at the moment of birth.  The life-giving electric
spark was even but a spark, and, its mission fulfilled, it
vanished. The life, that was given from without, that was
not inborn, could not continue. Now and then, it is true,
fire breaks out anew, as if unable to bear any longer the
bonds of death; but what, after all, can it do but lift the
coffin's top for a while?  No fire on earth can wake and
warm  the dead giant within to new life. And yet, even
here, where death seems to reign sole and supreme, there
are still mysterious powers at work that human wisdom
has but partly explained. Place finely-powdered sand on
a glass plate and let the clear mass give out a high or
low note, and, beholdt the stone, lifeless, soulless stone,
listens to the harmonious sound, dances and frolics, and




ONLY A PEBBLE.                   11
ranges itself in wondrous stars and circles. What strange
power has the so-called Bononian stone to keep the rays
of the sun or the light of earth-kindled fire captive, and
to let them loose again, long after it has been hidden in
utter darkness? What gives the blood-red Turmalin its
electric power? But electric currents pass even now, unseen and unnoticed, through the heart of the earth, and,
under their influence, crystals arise and assume most
beautiful shapes. Their forms are most simple, it is true,
but so varied in their very simplicity, that man's ingenuity
and most fertile fancy has not yet invented a new one.
Nothing but straight lines are seen there, cubes and pyra
mids, rhomboids and prisms, but they all glitter and glare
in strange brilliancy, when a ray of light illumines them
for an instant in their dark, inaccessible homes.
And if the stone itself does not live, and labor, and
change, friends come from all sides to gladden his silent
house and to deck it with precious colors. In the very
midst of the rocky world live the merrier metals, and
form a thousand delicate veins, bright crystals, and tender
foliage. Imprisoned in the cold, hard rock, dwell iron
and lead, gold and silver, now in safe inaccessible caves,
and now mysteriously mixed with its very substance, as
if they were lost, frozen rays of heavenly light. There
they hide, buried in eternal night, and fancy they have
escaped all foes from beneath; but they dream not of
the much more dangerous enemies who live above them
and know their secret chambers, even if they cannot look
down into the impenetrable darkness of the rocky world.
The bold miner digs and drills, and fearlessly descends




12        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
into the very heart of the earth; there he breaks through
wall and rampart, and forces the rich metal from its ancient home to toil an humble slave in the service of man.
And is there no romance in the poor pebble's life-the
only life on earth that all science of men cannot trace to
its first beginning?  The pebble was born when God made
heaven and earth. The same hills, the same mountains,
have covered the land from the day that man looked with
awe upon the'"everlasting hills."  Nations have passed
away, and races have vanished from among us, but even
the pyramids stand yet in ancient glory and defy the
power of ages. The mighty empires of the Pharaohs and
the Ptolemies have fallen before the enemy; the laws of
the Medes and the Persians, that changed not, are forgotten; the hut of the Arab and the palace of the conqueror have alike crumbled into dust-but the unchanging
rocks rise still high and unbroken from the midst of
ruins.
And yet even mountains are not everlasting, and rocks
not eternal. What would be their life without a change,
and what their existence without a struggle?  Even the
poor pebble has thus a life of his own, rich in adventure,
lofty in its character, and glorious in its end.
We see the pebble only as it lies sullen and silent
near the bank of a brook, perhaps amidst high luxuriant
tufts of grass that grow in his shade, and feed on his life's
marrow. Around him, on the overhanging banks, stand
bright-colored flowers and gaze, with maidens' vanity, upon
their image in the crystal waters below them. All around
him is life and motion. On the wings of the tempest the




ONLY A PEBBLE.                  13
clouds above him race up the heavens and down again.
Thick pearly drops of cooling rain patter from on high,
and rise soon after, in clear, invisible vapors, back to the
sunny height from which they came. Untiring wings carry
the birds of heaven to  their distant homes.  Restless
brooks rush in eager haste from the snow-covered Alps
to the sunny plains; broad streams pour majestically their
huge floods into the great ocean, and hasten with its gigantic waves around our globe.  The beasts of the field
wander from land to land; nations and empires are ever
seen moving with a strange, mysterious impulse, towards
the setting sun-the very trees and grasses of the earth
move slowly, in man's wake, from zone to zone.
The pebble alone lies still and lonely by the wayside,
and shuts his eyes not to see the merry, wandering life
around him. Still, he also had his time when he travelled
far over land and sea. High upon a lofty mountain-peak
was his first home, and there his life, full of strife and
struggle, began in fierce war with the elements. For there
is enmity between them and the poor pebble. Mild but
treacherous rains stole through cleft and crevice into every
pore of the rock, and oozed from vein to vein, filling the
core of the giant with indescribably delicate and wondrously ramified little canals.  Then came hard winters
that froze the swelling veins, and sent sharp daggers of
iciclps into his very marrow; they blasted his limbs, and
rent them  with insidious force into fragments.  Balmy
springs meltea again the thousand sharp wedges; but already the poor rock rejoices no longer in his solid,
massive strength; water and air have drilled and bored




14        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
countless little holes and channels through the vast body;
each year snow and ice press further and further; the
very air, full of destructive power, gnaws at every corner
and every edge, until the high-swollen torrent at last
worries the weary rock out of his ancient resting-place,
and bears him for a moment in wild triumph high on
its roaring, rollicking waves.  Or perhaps cold, dazzling
glaciers, bright, majestic icebergs, lifted him on their broad
shoulders, and carried him high over wide plains or the
ocean's unmeasured width, until at last he fell, with a
fearful crash, that the splinters flew and the waters
foamed. Even now the heavy rocks of the polar circle
are carried, by the hand of colossal icebergs, from the
eternal snows of their home to the sweet climes of the
equator. Even now the glaciers of Alps and Andes bear
down huge blocks of ancient granite to low meadows and
distant waters.  The green waters of the Rhine carry
many a child of the ice-covered Alps to the fertile plains
of the Netherlands, whilst the brother that was born on
the same high throne, is torn from his side to wander
on the dark waves of the Danube to the inhospitable
shores of the Black Sea.
For, a fierce, untiring leveller, the water wages incessant
war against the aristocrats of the earth. It gnaws and
tears and wearies the loftiest mountain top season after
season, age after age, and is never content until it has
brought him low, and dragged him in spiteful contumely
to its own great home, the ocean.  Eaclcbriver has to
be a faithful, restless servant in the work of destruction.
The Nile has created its Delta, the Rhine has formed




ONLY A PEBBLE.                  15
all Holland; before the Ganges and the Mississippi grow
vast islands of mud and sand far into the ocean. The
Po and the Rhine, like greater rivers, have even raised
their own bed, so that they now flow above the surrounding plain, and costly levees only can keep our own
Father of Rivers within his natural bounds. From high
mountains come the unmeasured stores of finely-ground
stone that cover the bed of the ocean.  Every tide and
every current, that approaches the coast, brings on its
broad shoulders immense masses of sand, and heaps them,
layer upon layer, until the downs of some countries rise
to a height of two hundred feet.  It is as if the poor
exiled stone longed to return to its early home. Raging
and roaring, new tides and new waves rush against their
own offspring, but the humble pebble, strong in union,
and hardened by the very pressure of the waters, resists
their fury, checks the huge power of the ocean, and protects proud man in his possessions!
Man hardly dreams of the fierce, incessant warfare that
is waged against the loftiest mountain chains of our earth.
It is true we see Alpine torrents press angrily through
their narrow bed, half filled with ruins, we hear the thunder of mighty rocks that fall with the terrible avalanche,
we know even mountain sides to slide and to bury whole
towns under their colossal weight. The dweller in high
Alpine regions sees, through spring and through summer,
large stones suddenly fly off from the steep, smooth sides
of the highest rocks, often with such loud explosions and
so constantly, as to resemble the regular fire of a platoon.
The mountain shepherd sees, year after year, his pastures




16        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
encroached upon by masses of falling, crumbling rock, and
the amazed traveller is seized with deep awe and vague
fear, when he crosses the vast wastes, covered with thousands of silent stones, with which the elements have written
their Mene Mene in colossal letters on the mountain
slopes.  But we are all accustomed to look upon these
events as the rare occurrences of a year or a season.
The tooth of Time works slowly, and generations pass
away, ere its marks are seen by human eyes. The hand
of Him  in whose hands lies the fate of the earth, loves
not to send plutonic powers to shake the mountains from
their ancient foundations, and has promised that there
"shall not be any more a flood to destroy the earth."
But Alps and Andes, Cordilleras and Himalaya will fall,
and the eternal mountains be levelled to the ground.
Our rock, hurled by his enemy from his ancient throne,
now lies in some deep, dark ravine, where night and dead
silence alone reign supreme. A giant block still, it hangs
threatening in boldly towering masses over the precipice,
and, in its sullen, stolid wrath, stems for a while the wild
raging flood. Wave after wave falls back from his strong,
rocky breast; year after year the rushing waters leap
yelling over his proud head, or steal grumbling and
growling past the invincible foe.  But the victory is here
also not to the strong.  Step by step they push him
down into the valley; limb after limb they tear from
his body and grind them into fine sand; by day and by
night, in winter and summer, they throw their whole power
against him, until at last he resists no longer and becomes "only a pebble."




ONLY A PEBBLE.                    17
But a sadder fate still awaits him. The roaring fury
of a swollen torrent seizes him and carries him off in
wild haste.  After a fierce chase down the steep sides
of a mountain, he finds himself of a sudden in a new
world.  He wonders and marvels.  He lies in a smiling
meadow, glowing in the golden light of the sun and
decked with gorgeous flowers. But alas! he cannot live
in a world of light and air. A thousand new foes, small,
unseen, and unnoticed, but all the more powerful, surround
him. Sweet, prattling rivulets play with the new guest,
and too late he finds that there is poison in their smile
and a dagger in each embrace. The very air, this mere
dream that the eye does not see, and the hand does not
feel, attacks him  with fatal energy.  It pierces into his
veins; it slips into the tiniest cleft; it loosens the sinews
of his structure, and gnaws, with insatiable eagerness, at
the very core of his life. The fiercest of all his enemies,
called oxygen, sows discord among the imprisoned gases
that hold the beautiful structure of the stone together.
Subtle and cunning, it lures, first one and then another,
fromI its ancient alliance; treacherously it draws them to
the surface, and decks the unresisting victim with brilliant
colors which conceal the certain destruction that is going
on beneath  the bright surface.  The  lifeless mass, no
longer strong in union, begins to crumble into its elements.  New  forces are  called  to  aid: electric  fluids
consume his last force, and galvanic currents tear and
rend what has withstood all other influences.  Utterly
helpless and friendless, the poor pebble thus lies but a
little while amidst the grasses that feed upon his very




18        LEAVES FROM THE BOOx OF NATURE.
substance. See, already moist-footed mosses have sealed
up his sides, and, true parasites as they are, cling firmly
to his dying body. Whole families of minute-algoe have
snugly ensconced themselves in every wrinkle of his
weather-beaten face, and diminutive water-pools fill every
scar and every dimple. Soon they will have hid him forever under the green turf of his grave, and slowly, slowly,
he will moulder away under his moist grave-clothes.
And if he does at last succumb, the mighty rock-is
it not a glorious strife, this never-ceasing battle between
soft, elastic water, and cold, rigid stone? How they charge
and charge again, these subtle, tiny drops of rain; these
airy, gentle flakes of snow; these graceful crystals of icy
hail! The great giant cannot resist the diminutive dwarfs.
Truly, the battle is not to the strong, for the victor is the
weak, wee drop of water, and so helpless is the colossal
mountain, that it succumbs to the passing shower and the
soft, elastic wave.  For, in fact, its very massiveness is
its sure ruin. His foes are light, airy beings-he cannot
seize them, he cannot strangle them in his gigantic arms.
The tiny brook wears its little rill with untiring industry
into the rocky sides of the mountain; the torrent tears
its flanks, spring after spring, with ever new and ever
growing fierceness; huge glaciers break its mighty ribs;
the air crumbles the lofty summit to pieces, and the
proud giant sees his sad fate foreshadowed in the ruins
that slowly, but surely, gather at his feet.  There he
stands, stern and stately still, the hero of Nature's great
tragedy; boldly facing certain death, and yet manfully,
nobly struggling against inevitable Fate.  For there is




ONLY A PEBBLE.                  19
something peculiarly tragic in the simple fact, that the
rock succumbs to the powers of that same life which he
first bore, first nourished. He gathered around his lofty
head the waters of the air-and the clouds and thunderstorms which he nursed in his bosom and bore many a
long day on his mighty shoulders, strike, like thankless
children, their sharp fangs into his side.  Mosses and
algae, that found a safe home in his thousand chinks and
clefts, eat their way into his substance, and caused his
rocky surface to decay. Dark forests grew on his ridges,
and he fed them age after age with his life's bloodbut what is his reward?  They sport with the vapors of
the far-off ocean; they call them and keep them in loving
embrace, or pour them in fierce rain and destructive hail
upon his decaying sides. The very grasses with which he
loved to deck his sweet, fragrant meadows, dig with spade
and auger into the crumbling stone, and consume layer
after layer.  And when all these, his graceless children,
cannot conquer the mighty giant, man- comes to their aid,
and with cruel machinery, with brutal powder, he breaks
his iron limbs, and cuts and carves at his granite foundation. As the giants and titans of ancient Greece fell,
one by one, victims of a higher power, in whose service
they had won a noble fame, so the very life that the
rock created and nourished, feeds in turn upon him, and
Fate decrees his death through the results of his own
colossal strength.
But there is Life in Death. Not in man's inspired
writings only, but in every lineament, in every movement
of our great mother Earth all around us, all over this




20        LEAVES FROM TImE BOOK OF NATURE.
globe, Death seems to stalk triumphant.  The summer
passes away, flowers fade and fruits decay; field and
meadow are buried in deep slumber.  Broad lands are
swallowed up by the hungry ocean, and gigantic mountains sink to be seen no more. But Death has found his
conqueror in Nature also.  What perishes, rises again;
what fades away, changes but form  and shape.  Sweet
spring follows winter; new life blossoms out of the grave.
So with stones also. The poor pebble lies unnoticed
by the water's edge; soft rains come and loosen the bands
that held him together; refined, almost spiritualized, he
rises with the gentle water-drops into the delicate roots
of plants.  With the grass he passes into the grazing
cattle, and through vein and artery, until at last he becomes part and portion of the being into which God
himself has breathed the breath of life! And when dust
returns to dust, he also is restored once more to his
first home, after having served his great purpose in the
household of Nature —not to rest or'to perish forever,
but to begin again the eternal course through death and
life.
But even whilst yet "only a pebble," he claims our
attention as the very Proteus of stones, that meets us
in a thousand ever new and ever changing forms, at all
times of our life, from the cradle to the grave, until we
ourselves return dust to dust.
Far below in the vast deep of primeval mountains he
dreams of the gay, light life on the sunny surface of the
earth, of strange forms of plants, and of still stranger,
free motions of animals.  A  new, irresistible impulse




ONLY A PEBBLE.                   21
seizes him, and he grows up-who knows how?-into a
wondrous crystal, decked with bright colors, the very
flowers of the subterranean world of stones. In lonely,
silent caverns they light up the eternal night with a fire
given them  long before man  trod upon earth.  Like
petrified sparks of light, here in diminutive littleness,
there in gigantic size, they lie scattered about.  Mighty
rivers roll tiny fragments' to the distant ocean. In the
crystal caves of St. Gothard, the clear, glorious rockcrystal grows in bright, polished pyramids of one to eight
hundred pounds' weight! Now and then it blends with
the gay colors of metals, and appears as beautiful topaz,
binding, as it were, the very smoke of subterranean fire
in graceful stone, or as precious amethyst, whose violet
crystals Aristotle praised for their beauty, and because,
worn on the breast, they protected the wearer against
the evils of drunkenness.  Long and slender, fit to be
the sceptre of the earth's sovereign, the pebble-crystal
shines and glitters in the mines of Hungary; in Java
his brilliant splendor is humbly hid in loose sand, and
in our own Northern States it adorns the common sandstone with bright, beautiful points. And if you hold the
gay stone-flower to the light-what sparkles in its transparent bosom l The crystal holds in loving embrace a
kindred spirit: a pure drop of water rests clear and bright
in its glassy prison, and dreams of the sister drops that
flit without in eager haste and restless strife through the
wide, wide world.
There is no form  that the pebble does not assume,
no company that he despises. He is constantly changing




22        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
shape and home, to join countless other stones, metals, and
earths, and, with them, to give new life and new beauty
to the unknown mineral world. Invisible, he gushes forth
in the clear waters of hot springs, from the very heart
of the earth. The burning geysers of Iceland are not too
hot for him; the very craters of Kamschatka afford him
a comfortable home, and, with strange pleasure, he forms
a stony armor around the tender stalks of graceful
grasses.
As if he had lost his way and strayed from his path,
he is found in chalk-mountains, far from his kindred, and
oddly shaped in the form of flints, holding in his bosom
the power of calling forth the hidden fire of metals.
Everywhere his works are seen. Here he builds heavenaspiring Alps, with deep abysses and lovely valleys; their
lofty heads are buried in eternal ice, on which the morning and evening sun kindles fires that proclaim the power
of the Almighty far over land and sea; from their sides
thunder death-bearing avalanches and furious torrents,
whilst at their feet lie green meadows and still waters,
where the weary love to  rest.  There he raises huge
domes, crowned with frowning forests, or he sends up, as
if in sport, strange, quaintly-shaped columns of sandstone,
that tower like enchanted castles above the plain. The
pebble is the true architect of mountains; it is he who
built their gigantic pyramids and their mighty cupolas;
if we descend to the first stones of the plutonic world,
there is the pebble; if we rise up to volcanic creation,
even there we meet the despised pebble. Again he
spreads himself out in dreary vastness over the plains




ONLY A PEBBLE.                   23
of Asia and Africa; he creates those terrible deserts,
where the tinkling of the camel's bell alone breaks the
dead silence.  There the soil burns, the air glows, hot
vapors alone seem  to live.  But even here the pebble
tries to create new shapes. He gives himself up to the
wild sports of the winds; like a huge water-spout he
rushes up and down the fearful waste, or he paints, with
enchanted colors, wondrous images of cool gardens, blue
hills, and refreshing fountains.
Even into the other kingdoms of Nature he finds his
way. He wrestles with the powers of the earth and, after
conquest, compels them to serve him as useful allies.
Wheat and oats, rye and barley, all need a flinty soil;
all grasses, that feed our domestic animals and man himself, drink with their roots in rain and spring water, large
quantities of dissolved flint.  It is an humble and despised thing, the worthless straw  and the low  stalk of
grass; and yet it surpasses in beauty and boldness of
structure the graceful palm and the storm-defying oak.
Slily, slowly, the pebble's tiniest parts mingle with the
soft waters of the earth, and ascend, through root and
radicle, into the heart of joyous plants.  Man has no
lofty steeple, the world no proud pyramid, that can compare with the airy and yet solid structure of the humble
blade of grass.  Thanks to the -little pebble, its hollow
column rises high above moss and clod; its tower fills
story after story with rich food for man; the rain cannot
enter into the safe chambers; the wind can bend but not
break the elastic pillar.
Thus the pebble unites with his enemy, water, to create




L LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
a new world, and to become itself, as it were, a lifeendowed being.  He ceases to be the rigid, unbending
stone; with the tiny drop he enters into organic creation.
HIe feeds now as they do upon the ethereal elements of
air and fire, and aids in building up a new kingdom
of organic beings. Surely, there are sermons in stones.
Was there ever sermon preached that taught more clearly
the transfiguration of even lifeless matter, and its resurrection in a higher world?
The pebble spends, however, not all of his creative
power on the Vegetable Kingdom only; he works in a
still higher world also, and gives a form and a house to
millions endowed with animal life. When they die, he
gathers together their abandoned' home with wonderful
care, and builds out of minute, mostly invisible shells,
wide plains and towering mountains!  Does this not remind one of the enchanted princesses of Eastern tales?
Here also there are beings, but beings without number,
held in the icy bonds of death, waiting for the day
when the great word shall be spoken that will change
death once more into life, and sorrow into joy.
Thus, through plants and animals, the pebble has risen,
ever brighter, better, and more useful in the great household of Nature.  No longer a selfish recluse, he now
offers a brother's hand'to other elements, and, with their
aid, he enters into and builds up himself a higher world.
We know that every drop of our spring water contains
some little atoms of the pebble, and plant, animal, and
man, drink, all alike, with this water, an indispensable
element of their life. Man's very body, it is said, holds




ONLY A PEBBLE.                   25
flint; he drinks it in his water, and eats it in his lentils,
his beans, and his cabbage.
But even this does not satisfy the pebble's ambition.
He feels his longing towards light-for even stones, "the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain"-not yet
satisfied.  He presses onward, upward, to the great light
of heaven, and, at last, by a new union, becomes light
itself, bodily, tangible light.
Phoenician merchants, we are told, in days of old
kindled a fire on the sandy shores of Africa, and built
a rude hearth of natron, with which they traded.  They
saw, to their amazement, a beautiful mass, bright and
clear, formed in the ashes. The wily merchants carefully
gathered  the  strange  pieces and-glass was invented.
More recent researches have discovered glass in the cities
of the dead of old Egypt, and, if there is no error about
it, even ancient Nineveh already knew the precious material.
Thus the humble pebble became the invaluable medium
by which we can let light into the dark night of our
dwellings. The poor Esquimaux still builds his miserable
hut like the beasts of the field, darkening and closing all
apertures, to keep out snow and rain, frost and ice.
Other nations are reduced to thin layers of horn, which
allow a faint light to sift through the opaque material,
but soon lose even this transparency under the influence
of wind and weather.  Better fares the contented peasant
of Siberia, who gathers the ample stores of mica around
his hut, cuts them into small thin panes, and thus enjoys
a doubtful light, equally far from  the joyous brightness




26        LEAVES FROM TIIE BOOK OF NATURE.
of day and the sweet, sleep-bringing coziness of night.
Few only could be able to afford the costly luxury of
the so-called window-pane muscle of Chinese waters, and
yet fewer still ever think of what a true blessing the
little pebble is to us in his new form of glass! How
vastly superior is-thanks to him-the poorest laborer's
hut now to the gorgeous palaces of ancient Rome.
Neither the splendid mansions of her senators nor the
glorious temples of Athens and Memphis knew the cheap
comfort, the simple beauty of glass.  Now, poor, indeed,
and wretched must be the man who cannot invite the
cheerful light of day into his humble dwelling, and yet
keep storm and rain, wind and weather at bay. And as
light comes, a welcome guest, to his hearth, so his eye
can, unimpeded by wickerwork or wooden shutter,'as of
old, now pass freely beyond the narrow  domain of his
little home. It can reach far and free into God's beauteous creation, and even the poor, sick sufferer on his
couch may gladden his eye with the sight of green trees,
and his mind by looking upward into the blue heaven
where his great father dwells, that will never forsake him.
It is strange, indeed, that the great value of glass
remained so long unacknowledged.  It is true that Phoenician and C9arthaginian merchant-princes gloried in their
large, brilliant glass vases as the costliest jewels they
possessed. Nero and lHadrian even yet counted them as
by far the most precious treasures of their palaces, pad
paid nearly half a million for one.  To keep their rich
wines in glass and to drink the generous fluid out of
glass was given only to a few, the richest of the land.




ONLY A PEBBLE.                   27
The North of Europe appreciated it still more slowly.
The royal palace of rich England could, in the year 1661,
boast of glass windows only in the upper stories; the
lower were closed with shutters.
Those Phoenicians who first made glass, did certainly
not anticipate that they had thus created a charm by
which  man  would  hereafter  obtain  the  most signal
triumphs in science. They were pleased with its bright
coloring, they fashioned it into graceful vessels, they shaped
it into a thousand forms, but they knew not that a glance
through the glassy pebble would open to their near-sighted
eye the wonders of the Universe. With the lens man
governs the whole world.  He tells the rays of the
sun to come and to depart at his bidding; he scatters
thert as he pleases and he binds them together, until
their united strength melts the very stone of stones, the
hardest of earthly bodies, the diamond.  Near-sighted or
far-sighted, he takes a glass and the rays of light are
made to fall where he pleases, so that he may see what
Nature seemed to have denied him. What a progress
is this from the huge, unwieldy glass globe, filled with
water, of which Seneca speaks with wonder, and which the
Arab Al Hazem perhaps already employed to magnify
small objects! Now the general on the battle-field, and
the bold sea-captain on the wide ocean, marshal their
wide-scattered forces by the aid of their glasses.  But
the greatest of triumphs it accomplishes in the hands
of the Astronomer.  The whole world lies before him;
with one glance he looks through unmeasured space and
into times unknown to man. The secrets of the Universe




28        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
are laid open to him; the stars reveal to him the eternal
laws of the world, and his mind is lifted up to the Infinite. Step by step the despised pebble thus becomes
the teacher of mankind.  He tempts the mind of man
from invention to invention, he becomes glass, lens, telescope.  And he is, perhaps, greater yet when he leads
man not to the infinitely great, but to the infinitely small.
How diminutive appears the microscope by the side of
the gigantic telescope of Lord Rosse!  And yet who dare
say which is the greater, the world in the blue heavens
above, or the world in the drop of water?  Truly, the
pebble has become light itself; it has shown man two
invisible worlds: the great, lost in unmeasurable distance,
the small. lost in invisible diminutiveness.  The pebble
is the restless spirit of the world of stones, that yearneth
and travaileth after light.  It enters the service of man
and, a slave, it becomes his master. It endows him with
unknown worlds; it awakes in him living, heaven-inspired
thoughts-surely, it is more than "only'a pebble!"




NATURE IN MOTION.                      29
II.
a tnUr  in ~Iotiqn
"We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;
The sun flies forward to his brother sun;
The dark earth follows wheeled in her ellipse;
And human things returning in themselves
Move onward, leading up the golden year."-TENNYSON.
0O  vulgar error has perhaps longer prevailed among
men, than that of the permanency and immutability
of our globe. The world is not at rest. The peace in
which our mother  earth  seems  to  slumber, is but an
illusion:  in  all nature  nothing  is ever inactive.   The
moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, that
sun around another great centre, and all the heavenly
bodies in one unbroken circle around the throne of the
Almighty-all are in restless motion, treading their path
in the great world of the Lord and praising his name
in never-ceasing anthems.
But even at home, our own great mother earth is not,
as many still believe, at rest, and her very foundations
are every now and then giving signs of the mysterious




30        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
life which is throbbing  in  this vast globe.  Meteoric
stones, also, come like a6rial messengers from  distant,
unknown spheres, and speak loudly of the life in spaces
unknown to human vision. For stones travel as well as
life-endowed organic bodies; they are, in fact, the very
oldest travellers on earth of whom we have any knowledge.  The mountains are not everlasting, and the sea
is not eternal.  Thousands of years ago, rocks began to
shiver in the fierce cold of the polar regions; even
Sweden and Norway, Greenland and Spitzbergen, became
intolerable, and they set out on their great journey to
the warmer South. But huge, unwieldy travellers as they
were, they soon tired and rested awhile in the wide,
sandy wastes which stretch through Northern Europe and
Asia. Some, the large ones, remained there, bleak, blasted
masses of rock, sterile and stern, like grim giants of dark,
old ages.  Their lighter companions, smaller and swifter,
rolled merrily on towards the foot of mountains, and
there they also lie, scattered over the plains of Europe
and Siberia.  Science calls them  "erratic" stones, the
people know  them  as "foundlinJgs," for there they are,
like lost children, belonging to another climate and a different race from those which surround them. When they
travelled, man knows not. It must have been in times
of yore, however, when the great Northern Ocean covered
yet, with its dark waves, mountain and forest in the very
heart of the continent.  Other blocks travelled against
their will, packed up in snow  and ice.  Whole islands
of ice, we know, were torn  off by terrible convulsions
from  the coasts of Scandinavia; the storm-tossed  sea




NATURE IN MOTION.                 31
hurled them  into her powerful currents, and thus they
were carried southward, bearing on their broad shoulders
huge masses of rock that had rolled down upon them
from  their native mountains. These gigantic guests from
the North soon stranded against the mountains of the
continent; they melted under a more genial sun, and
their burden fell to the ground.  When, afterwards, the
bottom of this vast sea'rose and became dry land, these
foreign visitors also rose with it, and found themselves,
with amazement, in a southern country, under a southern
sun.
How long ago these early travels were made by rock
and stone, we know not; but they are by no means at
an end. The same process is still going on, even now.
The Arctic still sends her children out to dwell in warmer
climes, and year after year sees wandering stones come
from high, icy regions, and tumble into the Atlantic, or
strand on the low shores at the mouth of the St. Lawrence.  If the bottom  of the sea on the banks of Newfoundland is ever to see the sweet light of heaven, it
will be found strewn with mighty rocks from  Greenland,
and our children's children may yet erect a monument
to the great father of our country, hewn out of Greenland stone.
Other rocks are sea-born. Lofty mountains, now capped
with snow and wrapped in clouds, bear unmistakeab!e
evidence that they once dwelt at the very bottom of the
ocean. Sandstone blocks, piled up high until they form
large mountain chains, on which gigantic trees are deeply
rooted, and the birds of heaven dwell, to whose summit




32)       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
men now painfully climb to look down upon the sunny
plain, were once mere loose, fragile sand down in the
deep of the sea.  They are still mixed with countless
shells, the bones of fishes, and a thousand relies of their
former home.  On the other hand, we know that large
tracts of sea-bottom once belonged to the firm land, enjoyed air, light, and warmth, and abounded with life of
every kind.  But the sea came and  buried  them  in
eternal darkness. For the ocean, also, the infinite, is not
the same to-day that it was yesterday-it changes form
and shape like everything else on earth. The very heart
of the earth is restless. Its glow and its pulse are felt
through the whole globe, and in its gigantic vigor it
seems ever anxious to break the fetters that hold it a
captive. For the earth longs to live, to live in communion with the great elements around it-and volcanoes,
with their huge, gaping craters, must serve to keep up
the desired intercourse between its unknown interior and
the atmosphere. Fused, molten stones are thus dragged
from  their hidden  resting-places in  the depths of the
earth, passed through fiery ovens, and at last, in fierce
fury, thrown out of volcanoes, where, as lava streams, they
soon become solid, fertile, and fruit-bearing, or form new
mountains on land, new islands in the ocean.
Even  now, stones still migrate, thanks to their old
friends ice glaciers of vast, gigantic size, that move foot
by foot. Their motion is slow but sure: the glacier of
Grindelwald advances only about twenty-five feet a year,
but a signal-post fastened to a large granite block embeded in the Unteraar glacier progressed at the rate of




NATURE IN MOTION.')3
nearly a thousand feet annually.  Thus, stones travel on
the back of icy waves from the mountain top to the foot
of the Alps, where they form grotesque groups and lofty
ramparts, or lie scattered about on the plain, like the
giant rocks of Stonehenge.
They have, however, one mode of travel unlike all
other kinds of locomotion, and so mysterious that human
science has not yet fathomed its nature. Large masses
of rock, namely, of truly gigantic dimensions, when by
accident they fall into the deep crevices of these glaciers,
return with quiet but irresistible energy to the surface,
moving slowly steadily upward.  Thus, not unfrequently
vast pyramids or stately pillars of ice, broken loose from
the mother glacier, are seen standing in isolated grandeur
and crowned with huge masses of stone. After a while
the strange forms change and melt, the rock sinks deeper
and deeper, until at last it is lost to sight, deeply buried
in snow and ice.  Yet, after a time, it reappears above,
and the Swiss say, the glacier purifies itself. For, strange
as it seems, the glacier does not suffer either block or
grain of sand within its clear, transparent masses, and
though covered for miles with millions of crumbling
stones, with heaps of foliage and debris of every kindat the foot of the mountain it is so clear and pure,
that even the microscope fails to discern the presence of
foreign bodies in its limpid waters.  What is equally
amazing is, that whilst all weighty objects, leaves, insects,
dead bodies, stones, or gravel, sink alike into the cold
bed, the organic parts decay quickly in the frozen, rigid
mass, but the inorganic parts are thrown up again. Years




34        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
ago, a horse fell into one of these glaciers; it sank, marking its outline distinctly, until it was seen no more. A
year afterwards the clean, white skeleton projected from
the top through the clear ice. In the middle of the sixteenth century a succession of long winters, during which
immense masses of snow fell, increased the glaciers so
much, that they travelled faster and lower than usually,
and in their course overwhelmed a little chapel at the
foot of the Grindelwald.  All was covered, mountains high,
with snow and ice, and so remained for years, buried in
ghastly silence.  But lo! all of a sudden there appeared
a black ungainly mass, high up on the glittering fieldit was the chapel bell!  Pious hands saved it, carried
it to a neighboring town, and there the long-buried bell
now rings merrily Sabbath after Sabbath.
If stones travel thus by the aid of majestic glaciers
slowly downwards, they have to perform their journeys
from below upward in much less time. That fierce element which many believe to be still raging under the
thin crust which we inhabit, breaks out every now  and
then through the great safety-valves that nature has provided. Already, Strabo and Pausanias tell us how, nearly
three hundred years before Christ, the mountain Methone
arose on the Troicenian plain.  Ovid, also, describes, in
beautiful verses, how a high hill, rigid and treeless, was
suddenly seen where once a fair plain had been spread
out.  He traces it to vapors shut up in dark caverns
below, and seeking, in vain, an outlet through some cleft.
The soil began, at last, to heave, he says, and to swell
under the pressure of the pent-up heat, until it finally




NATURE IN MoTION.;35
yielded, and rose to a lofty height.  Every age has seen
huge rocks and large mountains appear thus unexpectedly
on the surface of the globe.  In the last century, the
volcano of Jorullo rose, in Mexico, 1580 feet above the
surrounding plain.  The sea, also, has its volcanic mountains, which are of a sudden thrown up from  the bottom.
The famous island of Santorin, in 1810 still considerably
below the surface, was in 1830 only a few feet from it.
It appeared as an enormous peak, steep on all sides, but,
on the top, presenting the crater of a sub-marine volcano.
The igneous nature of the land below is strongly shown
by sulphuric vapors, which rise so actively, that ships now
anchor there in order to clean their copper thoroughly
and quickly.  Stromboli, also, was, in like manner, sent
up from the deep, to take its place among the islands
of the Mediterranean; and, although Italy is now  comparatively quiet, still its volcanoes pour forth inexhaustible
showers of burning matter, and temporary islands start up
now and then from the surrounding sea.
Tremendous in their birth, and gigantic in their effect,
these sudden outbreaks can yet not compare, in their
permanent importance, with the quiet and almost imper
ceptible migration of small particles of sand and gravel.
Large granite blocks and masses of sandstone, high on
lofty mountain tops, are exposed to the varying influence
of heat and cold, rain and snow, and crumble, gradually,
into coarse-grained sand. Wind and weather, clouds and
springs, carry this down, where the restless waves of rivers
and streams seize it and hurry it on, through vale and
valley, on their long journey, until, at last, they rea,.A




36        L3LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the coast, and throw their burden into the great ocean.
Thus, age after age, the loftiest parts of heaven-aspiring
mountains are broken to pieces, and swallowed by the
ever-hungry sea. There, by their own gravity, and by
the weight of the impending waters, they are pressed
together, firmly and solidly, until they form new rocks,
which human eyes do not see, and which, for thousands
of years, may not be called upon to take their place
upon  the  dry land.  So  that, if the  ocean  swallows
mountains, they, in return, have their revenge, and fill up
the sea, slowly and unseen, but with unerring certainty.
Such is the might of small things upon earth.
Slow as this process is, its effects are astounding. For,
the same abrasion and dilution has been going on for
centuries, and gigantic rivers have ever since poured their
contents into the ocean.  Overcoming all obstacles, rushing, rolling gaily down from their mountain homes, falling
over huge precipices, running past rocky ridges, they
hurry on without rest and ceasing. Where do they rush
to, so  eagerlye?  Towards certain  death, in  the  great
ocean!  For, no sooner have they reached the distant
shore, than their course is arrested-here they drop all
the solid parts with which they were loaded, and thus
form themselves a barrier against their further progress.
These deposits form shoals and bars; they grow, as
year after year brings new  additions from  the far-off
mountains, until hills rise below  the surface: the river
has to divide, in order to pass them on both sides, and,
at last, the increasing sands appear above the water in
the shape of a delta. Thus, new land is formed by these




NATURE IN MOTION.                37
almost invisible particles, and how much is thus dropped
may be seen from the river Rhone, which is a thick,
muddy stream where it enters the Lake of Geneva, but
leaves it a clear, beautiful river. The same process has
actually choked up the mouths of the Rhine and the Danube; and the Nile, whose sand-laden waters have literally
formed all Lower Egypt with its countless inhabitants
and large populous cities, now needs a canal, made by
human hands, to find a way and an outlet to the Mediterranean!  Our own great river, the Mississippi, becomes, at its mouth, so slow and sluggish, that it can
no longer bear up its burden, the immense masses of
huge vegetable corpses, the giant trees from  the far-off
regions, where its sources lie. They sink to the ground,
sand and mud fill the interstices up, and they form, here
as at the mouths of all large rivers, a peninsula of new,
firm  land. The Ganges, operating on a still larger scale,
pours its gigantic masses far out into the sea: sweet
water being lighter than salt-water, they float for some
time above the dark green waves of the ocean; but,
soon they meet the tide and outside breakers; here they
drop their immense loads of sand, mud, and fertile soil,
and, in spite of an unusually high tide, form an island
more than two hundred miles long.
The power of locomotion is, however, by no means
limited to the agency of water and fire alone.  Much
more remarkable is it, that even without volcanic action
— without visible efforts or spasmodic convulsions of our
mother earth —whole tracts of land, thousands of square
miles large, should move up and down, and, thus, ma



38        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
terially alter the appearance of our globe. It has been
said, that there are few places on earth which are ever
long at rest; and that, as England, alone, has had its
two hundred and fifty-five earthquakes, so some convulsion of the kind is constantly occurring, imperceptible to
our senses, but distinctly felt and shown by the delicate
instruments which modern science has invented for the
purpose.  This, however, would not explain the changes
alluded to; they are on far too vast a scale to be
ascribed  to  such local disturbances. Almost in every
portion of our globe, movement may be observed; the
land is either rising or sinking-certainly in slow, but
constant motion.  Geology teaches us, that this is not a
whimn  of our mother Earth, but that, for long generations, the same change, the same mysterious motion has
been going on.  It is difficult, only, to observe it, because of its exceeding slowness, as we would in vain
hope to mark the progress of the hour-hand in our
watches, and yet, finally, see that it has moved. If man
could  ever, with  one vast glance, take in  the whole
earth-if he could look back into past ages, and, with
prophetic eye, gaze into the future, he would see the
land of our vast continents heave and sink like the
storm tossed sea-now rising in mountains, and then
sinking and crumbling, in a short time afterwards to be
washed back into the calm  impassive ocean.  Some of
these inexplicable changes have been observed for ages.
The whole coast of Asia Minor, from  Tyre to Alexandria, has been sinking since the days of Ancient Rome.
Northern Russia, on the contrary, has risen as constantly




NATURE IN MOTION.                 39
out of the frozen sea, in which it has been buried
since the days when it was the home of those gigantic
mammoths that are now found there encased and preserved in eternal ice, to feed with their flesh the hungry
natives, and to furnish the world with the produce of
strange, inexhaustible ivory mines. Not far from Naples,
near Puzzuoli, there are parts of an ancient temple of
the Egyptian god Serapis still standing-three beautiful
columns, especially, speak of its former splendor. At a
considerable height, they present the curious sight of
being worm-eaten; and recent, careful researches leave no
doubt, that the waters of the Mediterranean once covered
them so high as to bring these, their upper parts, within
reach of the sea-worms.  Since then, the land has risen
high; but, stranger still, they are, by a mysterious force,
once more to be submerged. Already, the floor of the
temple is again covered with water; and a century hence,
new generations of molluscs may dwell in the same
abandoned homes of their fathers, which are now beyond
the reach of the highest waves. An old Capuchin monk,
who lives near by, is fond of telling visitors how he,
himself, in his youth, had gathered grapes in the vineyards of his convent, over which now  fisherboats pass
in deep water.  Venice, also, the venerable city of the
doges, sinks-year aftel year-deeper into the arms of
her betrothed bride, as if to hide her shame and her
disgrace in the bosom of the Adriatic. Already in 1722,
when the pavement of the beautiful place of S. Marco
was taken up, the workmen found, at a considerable depth
below, an ancient pavement, which was then far below




40        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
water-mark.  Now, the Adriatic  has again  encroached
upon the twice raised square; at high-water, magazines
and churches are flooded, and if proper measures are not
taken in time, serious injury must inevitably follow.
Not far from there, at Zara, superb antique mosaics may
be seen, in clear weather, under the water: and, on the
southern side of the island of Bragnitza, at calm  sea,
your boat glides over long rows of magnificent stone
sarcophagi, far below the clear, transparent surface.
France also bears many an evidence of such changes
in place.  The unfortunate St. Louis embarked at the
spacious port of Aigues Mortes for his ill-fated crusade;
the place-a harbor no more-is now  at a mile's distance from  shore.  Only in the last century, in 1752,
an English ship stranded near La Rochelle, on an oysterbank, and was abandoned.  Now  the wreck lies in the
midst of a cultivated field, thirteen feet above sea, and
around it the industrious inhabitants have gained over
two thousand acres of fertile land in less than twentyfive years.  England presents similar instances; thus, the
bay at Hithe, in Kent, was formerly considered an excellent harbor; it is now, in spite of great pains and
much labor bestowed on it, firm land and very good
pasture for cattle.
These gradual and almost imperceptible changes of land
have probably been most carefully observed in Sweden,
where already, in the times of Celsius, the people believed that the water was slowly withdrawing from the
land.  The great geologist Buch has since proved that,
north of the province of Scania, Sweden is rising at the




NATURE IN MOTION.                  41
rate of from  three to five feet a century, whilst south
of this line, it is sinking in proportion. Some villages
in southern Scania are now three hundred feet nearer to
the Baltic than they were in the days of Linnaeus, who
measured the distance a hundred years ago.  Historical
evidence abounds as to this mysterious movement of a
whole continent; the coasts of Norway and England
bear, moreover, ample proof on their surface.  Nearly
six hundred feet above the actual level, long, clear lines
of the former level may be seen, distinctly marked by
horizontal layers of shells, not of extinct species, but of
such as are still found in the adjoining waters. As we
go further south, the land seems to sink: all along the
coast of Germany and Holland legends and traditions are
found, speaking of lost cities and inundated provinces.
The Germans have their songs of the great city of
Iduna, in the Northern Sea, the bells of whose churches
may still be heard, in dream-like knelling, on a quiet,
calm Sabbath-day; and in Holland they tell of the
steeples and towers that can be seen in clear weather,
far down in the Zuyder Sea.  Stern reality shows that
these are not idle inventions; it is well-known that great
cities, large islands, and whole provinces have actually
been engulfed, and in both countries man is even now
incessantly at work to protect the sinking shore against
the encroaching waves. In Greenland, the level changes
so much, and the ocean intrudes so fast, that the Moravian settlers had more than once to move the poles to
which they moored their boats, nearer inland.  On the
low, rocky islands around, and on the mainland itself,




42        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
numberless ancient buildings have been submerged, and
for ages the inhabitants have ventured no longer to build
near the sea-coast.
For the sea also has its strange motions like the firm
land-gentle, progressive oscillations which return at stated
periods, or act with sudden force. In the South Sea, we
are told, the bottom of the sea rises and sinks in regular
alternation; the same occurs near the coast of Chili,
teaching us by land and by water, the inconstancy of
the present order of things, and the changes to which,
at great intervals, the outlines of our continents are
probably subject. Truly He alone, who is our God, He
changes not.
Thus, all is life and motion in the earth, on the earth
and around it.  What a source of incessant movement
is even the sun alone! From the bottom of the ocean
it raises high into the air the rivers that are to water
the two worlds. The sun orders the winds to distribute
them over continents and islands, and these invisible children of the air carry them under a thousand capricious
forms from land to land. They spread them across the
sky in golden veils and purple hangings; they raise them
into huge dark domes, threatening deluge and destruction.
They pour them in tempestuous torrents upon high
mountains; they let them  drop gently upon the thirsty
plains.  Now  they shape them  in beautiful crystals of
snow, and now  shower down pearls of peerless beauty
in clear, transparent dewdrops.  However whimsical their
service seems to be, each part of our globe receives,
nevertheless, year by year, only its proper and good pro



NATURE IN MOTION.                 43
portion.  Each river fills its bed; each naiad her shell.
And the winds themselves, what busy travellers are not
they in their own great realm  of the air!  They blow
where they list and we hear the sound thereof, but we
cannot tell whence they come and whither they go. A
merry life they lead, these sailors of the air. Now they
chase golden clouds high up in the blue ether, and now
they descend to rock in merry sport gigantic oaks and
Northern firtrees.  As pleasant pastime they give life to
wandering shadows, wake the slumbering echo, and gather
rich perfumes from  the flowery meadow.  To-day they
bend down vast oceans of gracefully waving corn-fields;
to-morrow they peep under the branches of trees to look
for golden fruit, or they strip them of their leaves to
show to man through their bare arms, the blue heavens
above. On sultry days they cool themselves in the floods
of the ocean, and carry refreshing dew back to the
parched land.  Passing on their manifold errands, they
trace their characters in a thousand ways on the liquid
plains of the sea.  Some scarcely wrinkle the placid
surface, others furrow it deeply with azure waves, or toss
it up in raging billows and cover their crests with white
foam.
Such are evidences of motion in Inorganic Nature.  If
organic bodies travel faster and more visibly, they leave,
on the other hand, fewer great marks behind them.
Rocks, when they wander, remain themselves as milestones,
by which we may count the distance from  which they
came. }Men keep in sagas and myths a certain hold on
the past, or erect, with their own hands, monuments of




44        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK: OF NATURE.
great events.  But plants and animals consist, at best,
only of perishing individuals, and have no power given
them  to speak to future ages.  What we know, therefore, of their wanderings is little, but even that little
gives us such an insight into the inner life and motion
of Nature, that it is well worth recording.
Plants have ever travelled most and furthest of all
children of this earth.  Much has been said and much
has been written about poor flowers, these true and genuine children of their mother earth, coming directly out
of her bosom, and ever busy to draw from the air of
heaven  food for their great parent.  Often have they
been pitied because they are chained to the soil, whilst
their own shadow, as in mockery, dances around them
and marks the passing hours of sunshine.  Trees have
been called the true symbols of that longing for heaven
which is innate in man's soul.  Bound for life to one
small spot on earth, they are represented as stretching
out widely their broad branches, far beyond the reach of
humble roots, trying to embrace the balmy air, to drink
in the golden light of the sun, and to arrest the very
clouds in their aerial flight.
But in reality plants travel far and fast.  It is true,
they perform their journeys mostly in the seed; but there
is, perhaps, no earthly kind of locomotion which they do
not employ for their purpose. Wind and water, the beasts
of the field and the winged creatures of heaven, above
all, Man himself-all have been pressed into their service,
to carry them from sea to sea, and from shore to shore.
Countless powers of Nature are incessantly at work to




NATURE IN MOTION.                 45
scatter the blessings of the vegetable world over the
nations.of the world.  Almost one-fourth of all plants
upon earth bear seeds that are provided with wings, parachutes, or other contrivances, by means of which they
may be carried on the wings of the wind to distant
regions. Every brook and every river, even a short-lived
rain, carry a thousand plants to remote countries.  The
great ocean itself, on its mighty currents, bears fruits and
nuts from island to island, and every coral reef in the
South Sea is almost instantly covered with a rich, luxuriant vegetation.
New plants appear thus constantly, where they were
formerly not found, whilst of the disappearance of vegetables there are but few isolated instances known.
Thus, Egyptian monuments have in their quaint and
well-preserved paintings, three kinds of sea-rose; only two
of these are now met with in Egypt or the adjoining
countries; the third is not found there or anywhere over
the wide world.
The most efficient agent employed by plants for their
journeys is man himself. History and science both teach
us that the heated air, which, coming from the poles and
rushing to the equator, there falls in with the great lifeartery of the globe, and in a constant, almost organic
current follows the apparent course of the sun from east
to west, gives us the direction in which all life and
motion proceeds upon earth.  This great movement, no
doubt as old as the globe itself, and yet the last known
to man, is still going on; and whilst history furnishes us
with a vast number of well authenticated facts, the pre



4-D       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
sent day verifies and substantiates them more and more
clearly.  All good things, it has been truly said; come
from the Orient.
Plants also seem  to have their common home in the
East, from whence they have travelled and scattered in
all directions, far and wide.  We mean not to speak
here of the first epoch in the history of the earth, when
islands rose out of a vast chaotic ocean, covered with
plants which thence spread over the globe, wandering
from the equator to the poles, and from high mountains
to humble valleys.  We speak not of the days when
palm-trees and ferns were buried under the eternal snows
of northern seas.  Of those grand movements we have
as yet too little positive knowledge. But we can follow,
in comparatively modern times, the migrations of some
plants, step by step, and we always see them travel
from  the rising towards the setting sun. Coffee and tea,
sugar and cotton, bananas and spice, all were first known
in the far East, and have, from thence, slowly followed
the apparent light to the Wvest.  Alexander the Great
brought firom his expeditions the broad bean and cucumber to Greece, and flax and hemp are of Indian birth.
Most important, however, for the life of man, and therefore his most faithful companions in his own great journeys, are the grasses.  It is these which mainly feed him
and domestic animals. Tropical regions certainly produce
the breadfruit, cocoanut, and - date, which  support man
spontaneously all the year round; but they are bound to
and confined within small districts, and cannot be transplanted.  Providence, therefore, has endowed some grasses




NATURE IN MOTION.                  47
-and  these the most essential to  man-with greater
flexibility of structure, so that he may carry them  with
him wherever he wanders. He is, after all, not the master
oI creation; he cannot at will alter the natural distribution of vegetables, to suit his pleasure or to satisfy
his wants.  Hence he has been compelled to choose, all
over the world, among the four thousand varieties of
grasses which adorn our generous earth, some twenty
kinds only, which will in one summer, in a few months,
produce rich food, independent of the dry heat of the
tropics and  the rigid cold of the North.  It is they
which mark the periods in man's history; with them
came everywhere civilization in the change from a wandering, pastoral life to the higher grade of permanent
agriculture. Thus, the great phases of man's history are
written also on the green pages of the vegetable world.
At a very early period already these cerealia must have
come from the Eden of God into the fields of man.
Their subsequent path may be distinctly traced from
nation to nation, but the unfathomable antiquity of their
first culture is clearly seen in the fact that, in spite of
the most careful researches, the genuine natural home
of the more important varieties has never been discovered.  Their original source is wrapped in the same
mystery which hides the first history of those domestic
animals that have accompanied man all over the globe
since his earliest migrations.  They are, in truth, homeless. After tracing them up through a few centuries, we
reach traditions and myths only, which invariably point
to the gods themselves as the first givers of these rich




48        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
blessings. In India Brahma descended from heaven for
that purpose, in Egypt Isis; Greece owed the gift to her
Demeter, Rome to Ceres.  The ancient Peruvians even
had similar legends about the origin of maize, which
the bold Spaniards, who invaded their ancient kingdom,
found cultivated on sacred ground around the Incas'
Temple of the Sun, at an elevation of 12,000 feet above
the sea.  The ripened grain was solemnly sacrificed to
their god or distributed among the people who ascribed
to it miraculous powers.  But, setting these fables aside,
both tradition and history point invariably to the East
as the land from which these grasses first came.  Myths
even lose them  on the high table-lands of Asia, where,
it has been conjectured, a late and last rise of the land
in distant ages, and a sudden elevation of mountains may
have scattered them so, that they can no longer be found
even in their original fatherland. Now they are met with
only cultivated or run wild, and even ancient Sanscrit has
no proper word for them, but calls wheat already food
of Barbarians, thus indicating its Northwestern origin.
Not all nations, however, can lay equal claim to the
distribution of these noble gifts of nature.  It is the
Caucasian races alone who have caused the migrations
of the most important plants from  their original home,
wherever that may be, to the four quarters of the globe.
Europeans have, by degrees, transplanted to their own
land all the characteristic plants of other races.  They
have fetched the finer fruits, the almond, apricot, and
peach, from  Persia and Asia Ainor; they have brought
the orange from  China, transplanted rice and cotton to




NATURE IN MOTION.                 49
the shores of the Mediterranean, and carried maize and
potatoes from America to Europe.  But the influence of
these races in changing the natural distribution of plants
is even more evident in the colonies which they have
established abroad.  These they have endowed not only
with their own vegetables, but also with those which would
not flourish in Europe, but might thrive in more favored
regions. Thus we find all European corn-plants in every
part of America; the vine has been carried to Madeira
and the Canaries, to the southern parts of Africa, and
America; rice and cotton are raised in vast quantities
in the United States and in Brazil; nutmeg and clove
have found their way to Mauritius, Bourbon, and the West
India Islands, and tea is now cultivated in Brazil, India,
and Java. Othet races have done but little; the Arabs
helped to diffuse cotton, which the ancients already knew
in India, and later in Egypt, coffee, sugar, and the datepalm; the Chinese have imported cotton from Hindostan,
and the Japanese tea from China.
The earliest grains known in Europe were undoubtedly
wheat and barley, although even the oldest authors are
at variance as to their first home.  Charred grains of
both are found in. Pompeii, and'pictures on the walls
of the silent city show quails picking grains out of a
spike of barley.  The Bible, Homer, and Herodotus, already mention them as widely diffused, and Diodorus
Siculus even speaks of the belief entertained by many,
that wheat grew wild in the Leontine fields and several
other places in Sicily.  So certain is it that antiquity
itself was at. a loss where to fix the original abode of
3




50        LrAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
these grasses; all references, however, point to India, and
yet Humllboldt tells us, that the varieties there found in
our day bear unmnistakable evidence that they were once
cultivated, and have but recently become outcasts.  The
Spaniards carried wheat-to North Amnerica; a negro slave
of the great Cortes was the first who cultivated it in
New Spain, beginning with three grains which he had aecidentally found among the rice brought out as provisions
for the army.  At Quito, they show  to this day, in a
Franciscan  convent, the  earthen vessel which  had  contained the first wheat sown there by a monk, a native
of Flanders, in front of his convent, after cutting down
the original forest.  The great Humboldt says, justly, in
connection with this fact: "Would that the names had
been preserved, not of those who made the earth desolate
by bloody conquests, but of those who intrusted to it first
these, its firuits, so early associated with the civilization
of mankind." Barley, which HIomer mentions as the food
of his heroes' horses, has at least this merit, that it is
the most widely spread of all the nutritious grasses.  It
is known from  the utrmost boundary of culture in Lapland down to the elevated plains near the equator.
At a much later period, rye was brought to Europe;
at the time of Galenus it found its way through Thracia
into  Greece, and  Pliny  speaks of it as having  been
brought fiomn Tauria by Massilian merchants; in his day
it was occasionally met with in the neighborhood of
Turin,  Serbian Wendes brought it, in the seventh century to Germany, where Charlemagne at once distinguished
its great importanlce, and wisely encouraged its culture,




NATURE IN MOTION.                  51
so that it soon spread over the continent, and now sus.
tains at least one-third of its inhabitants.  This grass
also was apparently found growing wild in the Caucasus,
but more careful observations have since shown that the
presumed originals were a different species: their stems
were so brittle that they could not be threshed. M[ore
recently still, oats were brought to  Europe  froml  the
East, and whilst in Greece they were only used as green
fodder, Pliny already represents the Germans as living
upon oat groats, a dainty which they have by no means
abandoned since.
Rice seems at a very early period of European history
to have acquired no small importance among the more
widely diffused grasses. Hence we can more easily follow
its gradual migrations from its home in India, to which,
even the Sanscrit name Vri points, and where the Danish
missionary, Klein, believes that he found it growing wild,
to various parts of the world.  In the East, we know,
it was from  the times of antiquity the principal article
of food; at the time of Alexandar the Great it was
cultivated as far as the lower Euphrates, and from thence
it was carried to Egypt.  The Romans do not seem  to
have known it.  The Arabs, however, brought it, after
their great conquests in Africa, Sicily, and Spain, to
Southern Europe.  North America knows it only since
the beginning of the last century, but produces now a
large proportion of all the  rice consumed in the Old
World.
The New  World claims maize alone as its own indigenous product among the nutritious grasses.  But even




52        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
this is not allowed witnout some opposition.  Theophrastus
speaks of a certain peculiar wheat, with grains of the size
of an olive kernel, which came from  India; and many
believe that this cannot have been  anything  else but
maize. They try to strengthen their position by the fact,
that not one of the mainy carefully searching travellers in
America has ever yet found  maize growing otherwise
than  cultivated  or evidently run wild.  Its names in
European languages certainly refer it to the East.  Germany and Italy call it "Turkish wheat," and the Greeks
also  point with  their "Arabic wheat," to  an  Oriental
home.
It is almost cruel not to allow this continent the merit
of being, at least, the original home of the potato, as is
generally believed.  It was said to grow wild in Peru,
Chili, and Mexico, but learned botanists and careful observers have since ascertained that the tuber there found is
not the common parent, but only a different species of
the numerous genus to which the potato belongs.  Another curious evidence is, that in Mexico itself, only quite
recently, attempts have been made along the coast to
raise potatoes, mainly for the purpose of giving to Europeans in the so-called home of that most useful plant,
the favorite vegetable of their own mother country.  But
alas! they have stoutly refused to grow any longer in the
presumed land of their fathers, and every effort has, so
far, signally failed.
As every great good has its necessary evil, and as every
army of brave soldiers is almost inevitably followed by
crowds of stragglers and robbers, so man also has been




NATURE IN MoTION.                   53
compelled  to  take  along with  these  eminently  useful
grasses their inseparable companions, a whole rabble of
weeds, thorns, and thistles. Most of these, as now found
in our fields, came, without doubt, with the cerealia.  In
still larger numbers, however, and without the agency of
man, certain other plants attach themselves to the lord
of creation and follow him wherever he goes, and builds
himself huts.  These seem  not to  be bound to their
kinsfolk5 the grains and grasses, but to man's own immediate home; they settle with never-failing punctuality
around his house, near to his stable, or luxuriate on his
dunghill.  Travellers can  thus trace, as the celebrated
Augustin St. Hilaire did in Brazil, by the mere presence
of weeds, even in the midst of a desert, the place of
abandoned  and utterly destroyed  settlements.  Stranger
still is it, that the different races of men have different
kinds of weeds following in their wake, so that a careful
observer can, in travelling, see at once, by merely noticing the prevailing weeds, whether Europeans or Asiatics,
Germans or Slaves, Negroes or Indians, have dwelt at
certain places.  It was not without good  reason, then,
that some of our Indian tribes called the common plaintain in their language " the white man's footstep;" a
simple but distinct vetch marks in like manner, even now,
long after the entire abandonment of the land, the former dwelling places of Norwegian colonists in Greenland.
Historians, also, may thus learn yet many a lesson, even
from weeds, as to the direction and length of.the great
migrations of the human race. One of the most remark
able instances of the kind is perhaps the almost univerel




54        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
dispersion of the deadly night-shade.  It came at first
from India, whence gipsies carried it over the wide world,
making constant use of its medicinal virtues and vices.
They always kept it on hand, and even raised it around
their encampments, and thus it followed their trace from
the far east to the far west.
One peculiar effect of this migration in masses is, that
certain plants, first introduced by man, have subsequently
become so generally diffused, independent of his agency,
as to displace, in some instances, the whole original flora
of a country. The rich pampas of South America have
thus been overrun with the artichoke and peach-tree of
another continent; immense tracts are now covered with
these intruders from abroad, and rendered useless as pastures.  Even islands have not escaped this fate.  In St.
Helena, original plants have almost entirely disappeared,
and made room for those which have been brought there
from Europe and Asia. In eastern China the population
is so dense, and the culture of the soil so high, that,
with the exception of a few water-plants in skilfullyflooded rice-fields, all the plants which originally grew
wild there, have been driven out.' The whole land is now
exclusively covered with grains raised by the hand of
man, and the botanist finds, in the. lowlands at least, not
a single plant which is not artificially cultivated.
Some plants thus literally conquer a country and banish
the native inhabitants; others disappear, not before enemies of their own race, but emigrate because of climatic
changes. Palestine, which was once a land flowing with
milk and honey, where the grape and the date abounded,




NATURE IN MOTION.                   55
is nOW  utterly sterile.  The spoiler is fallen upon her
summer fruit and her vintage; joy and gladness are taken
from  the plentiful field, and her plants are gone over
the sea.  Our common clover has distinctly marked its
travelling-stations; requiring much moisture, it left Greece
when her plains were scorched and withered; Italy could
not hold it, after repeated devastations, when it made its
way into Southern Germany; from  thence it is even now
gradually wandering towards the moister regions of the
North.  No Pythagoras need forbid his disciples now the
use of the bean, for Egypt is no longer able to produce
it.  The wine of Mareotis also, that inspired the guests
of Cleopatra, and whose praises Horace has sung in such
graceful verses, grows no more.  The conscience-stricken
murderer would. find no shelter, in our day, in the pineforests of Poseidon, where to lie in wait for the guests
that wandered joyfully to the great festivals of Greece;
the pines have long since left the plain, with its hot, dry
climate, and moved up to the cooler mountains.
t, need hardly be added, that all the finer fruits, also,
have come to us from  the East.  The precious grape,
the cooling cherry, the pomegranate and the peach, in fine
all the luscious gifts of Autumn, we owe to the Orient.
Italy is not originally
"The land where the lemon-tree blows,
In darker leaves bowered the gold orange glows,"
for Seville oranges and lemons came to Europe only
through the Arabs.  The latter are not even found on
the walls of Pompeii, and the common orange, which is




56        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NArURE.
a Chinese by birth, was brought to Europe first by bold
Portuguese sailors.
In Europe, these fruits lingered a while, were remodelled
from their first rough shape, developed and refined, and
then sent, ennobled in shape and quality, across the broad
Atlantic.  Here they have rapidly spread from  State to
State, and are even now on their way, through California,
back to their original home.  The day may not be far
distant, when the youthful Union, which has already given
grain back to starving Ireland, and loads the tables of
the English with the finest apples the world knows, may
send its grapes and unsurpassed nectarines to ancient
Persia, from whence Europe received the hard, unflavored
peach.  Strange it is, that as Europe has never returned
any similar gifts for the many presents it has received
from  the East, so America also has given to Europe
nothing in return  for her many kindnesses.  For the
whole rich blessing of our grain harvest, for the wholesome rice, the profitable  cotton, for sugar and spice,
oranges and pomegranates, all of which we owe to the
Old World, we have sent back but two rather equivocal
gifts. For smokers alone will be disposed to think the
introduction of tobacco a real, valuable present. A plant
which affords no edible root, fruit, or other nutritious part,
distinguished neither by beauty nor by sweet odor; but,
on the contrary, by a disagreeable smell and taste; which
produces, when eaten, nausea, vomiting, and giddiness, and
is, in large quantities or concentrated, even deadly poison
-such a plant is surely at least a doubtful gift. So it is
with the potato: which has long been considered by its




NATURE IN MoTION.                  57
enthusiastic admirers an incomparably rich gift of the
West to the East, but which now might easily be looked
upon as the fatal firuit marking in the annals of history
the first decline of European nations.
But even tobacco is not accepted as a Western gift
by all botanists. Although it is said that the Spaniards
found it used in Mexico medicinally, especially in the
treatment of wounds, and saw it smoked there, as the
English did in Virginia, still it was certainly known as
early as 1601 in Java and China, and there is good reason to believe at an even earlier date in China.  Now,
as tobacco did not reach Europe before 1559, when it
was first used in Portugal-and, consequently, in Europeas medicine, it may at least have been known in Eastern
Asia long  before  the discovery of America.  Nature,
moreover, seems almost desirous to avenge the unnatural
movement from west to east by the rapid degeneration
which marks the culture of both these vegetables in
Europe.  But even if maize really came from  this continent first, if the Indian fig and the closely related agave,
which now grow wild around the Mediterranean and add
so much to its picturesque scenery, have their true home
in the New World, these two plants would still be the
only ones that have ever travelled eastward, single and
isolated exceptions to the great law of Nature, that plants,
animals, and men, all must travel towards the setting sun.
This mysterious but undeniable movement is still going
on. It proceeds, even in our day, on a grand and imposing scale, and essentially alters, from  time to time, the
vegetable character of whole countries, as they are newly




58        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
discovered  or newly settled.  It shows us in indelible
signs the silent, irresistible force with which humble plants
prescribe their path on earth to both the animals that
feed us and the different races of men. For such is the
strange relation between plants and man: they are of
paramount importance for his existence not only, but also
for his welfare.  It is little to say that they feed and
clothe him, and that they enable him to sustain the life
of those animals, fromn whom  he receives in return not
only food and comfort, but, what is incomparably more
valuable, service, affection, and gratitude!  The cerealia
have become the first, and most binding social tie between
men, because their culture and preparation require vast
labor and mutual service. As no society, moreover, can
exist without laws, it may well be said, that these shortlived grasses are in truth the first cause of all legislation.  Not without good  reason, then, was it that the
Romans called their Ceres not only a goddess, but also
a legislator.
To the careless observer, animals seem  to be as permanent features in  Nature  as plants.  Apparently the
same sparrow picks up grains of wheat in the harvestfield that robbed our cherries in early summer, and the
same game which our forefathers hunted, tempts us now
in field and forest.
It is, however, not so.  The demoralized domestic animals, it is true, are nearly the same now that they ever
were; the same sheep of whom  "Abel was a keeper,"
sleep night after night on our pastures, and the "cattle
on a thousand hills" rove now  on our plains.  But all




NATL U E IN MOTION.                 59
nobler, higher life among animals, moves restlessly round
the globe.  Here also there is an incessant going and
coming, flying and pushing, an endless change of home,
to exchange a used-up past for a promising future.
No class of animals, high or low, escapes entirely the
general law of movement, and if we read occasionally of
flights of storks and shoals of herrings, these are mere
anecdotes, nothing but single, detached features of that
unwearied life which moves in grand and restless masses
round the terrestrial globe.
Of the earliest migrations of animals, even of those
whom man has bound up with his own existence, we
know but very little.  History, which tells us nothing of
man's own first journeys, condescends not to speak of
beings less noble.  We guess, rather than we know, that
the domestic animals at least left their common home
in the great centre of all earthly life, Upper India, together with the first migrating nations.  We conclude this
mainly from the fact that the races of men separated at
a time when they were all shepherds.  This we know
from  Language; for in all idioms the words relating to
pastoral life are cognate words, whilst in other respects
the relationship is far more complicated and difficult to
trace. A remarkable instance of this connection is the
word "daughter" in German, "tochter," from the Greek
9vya-Trp, which is in Sanscrit " duhitri," and there means
"milking woman," because we know that it was the cus.
tom of all pastoral nations to leave the milking of the
herd to the daughter of the owner. The animals themselves maintain a certain connection with their first home




60        LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
on earth, for most of them  have still some wild rela.
tions on the high table lands of Middle Asia, where, in
primitive fierceness, strength, and beauty, they rove about,
and race for hundreds of miles along the valleys to exchange exhausted lands for new rich pastures.
Animals, like plants, travel occasionally by means of
the various agents whom nature herself places at their
disposal.  The giant rivers of the  earth, the Ganges,
Congo, Amazon, Orinoco, and Mississippi, annually float
islands towards the ocean, covered with living inhabitants.
Nothing is more common than to meet out at sea, thousands of miles from  all land, masses of fucus floating on
the surface of the water, and serving as a resting-place
for small shell-fish, unable to transport themselves by
swimming, far from  their native shore.  Off the Moluccas
and Philippines, sailors often meet, after a typhoon, with
floating islands of matted wood, full of life, and covered
with large trees, so as to deceive their eyes, and to endanger the safety of their vessels. Trunks of trees, also,
are found drifting in the great currents of the ocean,
perforated from end to end by the larvae of insects, and
filled with the eggs of molluscs and fishes.  At other
times they have been known to convey lizards and birds
from  land  to  land, and on the island of San Vincent
there appeared once a huge boa constrictor, twisted around
a large, healthy cedar-tree, with which it had been torn
from  its home in  the primeval forests of Brazil.  It
swallowed several sheep before it could be killed by the
astonished natives.  The  gulf-stream, it is well known,
carried, more than once. dead bodies of an unknown race




NATURE IN MOTION.                  61
with unusually broad faces, to the Azores, and thus con.
tributed to the discovery of our continent by confirming
Columbus in his faith in the existence of a New World.
Greenlanders and Esquimaux have even been carried alive
across the Atlantic, and found themselves, to their amazement, on the coast of England.
Nor are these always individual journeys. Currents of
air carry myriads of vegetable seeds, and with them countless eggs of insects and infusoria all over the world. To
settle this formerly disputed question, a German philosopher, Unger, placed several plates of glass, carefully
cleaned, between the almost air-tight double sashes with
which he protected his study against the rigors of a fierce
northern climate.  Six months later, he took them  out
and examined the dust that had fallen on them through
imperceptible cracks and crevices, with the microscope.
The result was, that he discovered, in the apparently inorganic dust, the pollen of eight distinct plants, the seeds
of eleven varieties of fungus, the eggs of four higher infusoria, and living individuals of at least one genus!
But larger animals also are thus carried about by as
yet little known modes of conveyance. There exist, among
others, countless examples, from the oldest times to our
own, of mice and rats, insects, fishes, and reptiles being
carried off by storms and whirlwinds far from home.
Only a few years ago, a long and violent rain in the
heart of France brought with it millions of well-sized
fishes, which were eagerly devoured by hosts of storks and
crows, and other birds, that came suddenly fromn the four
quarters of the wind, to share in the rich and unexpected




I602       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
repast.  Rains of frogs are even more frequent, and have,
since  the  days  of Moses, occurred  in  almost every
country.
Far more  remarkable, however, are the spontaneous,
though  casual, journeys of certain  animals; as, for instance, those of the almost invisible gossamer of Europe,
floating  in  the air on a silvery thread.   They were a
marvel to former days, and Chaucer even says —
"As sore some wonder at the cause of thunder,
On ebb and flood, on aosonzaer, and mist,
And on all thing till the cause is wist."
The tiny aeronauts may be seen, on almost any fine day
in autumn, spinning a wondrously fine thread, without fastening it, and then letting it waft about, until it is strong
enough to carry them. All of a sudden they shoot out
their web, and mount aloft, even when no air is stirring.
And on these slender threads they travel, we know not
how  far, for Darwin  found, three  hundred  miles from
shore, thousands of these little red sailors of the air, each
on its own line, fall down upon his vessel.  Various and
curious have been the surmises as to the precise nature
of their mysterious power to float in the air.  As they
are mostly observed on misty daysj when a heavy dew
falls, it has been thought that their fihny thread might
get entangled in the rising dew, and by its brisk eva.
poration be enabled to rise even with the additional weight
of the spider. Others have discovered that the little crea.
tures are quite familiar with the laws of electricity, and
avail themselves  of it for their airy voyages.  Their




NATURE IN MOTION.                 63
threads are said to be negative electric, and consequently
repelled by the lower atmosphere, but attracted by the
higher layers, which  are positive.  This remains to be
proved, and in the meantime, we can but repeat: Hearken
unto this; stand still and consider the wondrous works
of God!
Among the well-known causes of such spontaneous and
irregular migrations, none is so frequent and so all-powerful,
as hunger. The wild ass of the steppes of Asia, of whom
it was said that, "the wilderness and barren lands are his
dwelling," leaves the deserts of Great Tartary, and feeds
in summer to the north and east of Lake Aral; in fall
they migrate by the thousand to the north of India, and
even to Persia. The hare of Siberia, and the rat of Norway, the reindeer, and  the musk-ox, all leave at their
season the Arctic regions, and travel, impelled by hunger,
to southern latitudes..More regular are the lemmlings,
a kind of Lapland marmot.  Scarcity of food, or overpopulation drives them  once or twice every twenty-five
years, in prodigious bands, from  the Kolai and Lapland
Alps, one species to the east, another to the west.  A
terrible scourge, they devastate field and garden, ruin the
harvest, and hardly spare the contents of houses. Turning
neither to the right nor the left, they march on in a
direct, straight line, undeterred by mountain, river, or lake,
passing boldly through village and town, until their ranks,
thinned by numerous enemies, are lost in dense forests,
ol they reach the Western Ocean, and there end both
their journey and their life.  Other bands go through
Sweden, and perish in the Gulf of Bothnia, so that but




64        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE
rarely, and often after an interval of long years, small
armies re-unite again and turn their steps once more towards home.
Of the lower animals, molluscs and infusoria travel
probably in largest numbers; their hosts are literally
countless, and it is well known how they give a peculiar
color to large tracts of the ocean.
The most curious circumstance in the life of insects is
their migration.  They appear in large flights from  unknown regions, in places where they have never been seen
before, and continue their course, which nothing can check
for a moment. They fly, they jump, they even crawl, for
hosts of slow, clumsy caterpillars have been met with in
the attempt to cross broad rivers.  The more disgusting
they are, the more persevering seem their labors to fill
the earth.  The bed-bug, that most hated, and yet most
faithful companion of man in all parts of the globe, was
not even known in Europe before the eleventh century,
when it first appeared in Strasburg, and then, with the
beds of exiled Huguenots, was carried to London.  The
far more useful silkworm, on the other hand, defies all
our care and attention, and will not travel beyoild the
reach of his beloved friend and only food, the mulberry
tree, whose leaf has to be destroyed by a vile caterpillar
to be changed into bright, beautiful silk.  A  native of
Asia, this worm also was used in China long before any
other nation knew of its existence; in the sixth century
a monk brought the first eggs in his bosom to Constantinople, and the emperor, Justinian, at once spread the new
branch of industry zealously through Greece. When king




NATURE IN MOTION.                 65
Roger of Sicily conquered that land, he carried the silkworm home with him, as his most precious booty, and
introduced it into Sicily. From thence it was, with equal
care, carried further North, and finally also to this country.
The bee loves the West so dearly, that it is not found
beyond the Ural Mountains, and at the beginning of this
century great pains had to be taken to carry it into Siberia. Unknown to America, it had no sooner reached
our shores, in 1675, than it spread, with amazing rapidity,
all over the continent.  "The fly of the English," soon
became an abomination of the Indian, because their appearance in the woods was to them a sure sign of the
coming of the white man.  Even now it leads the great
movement towards the. West: first is heard the busy humming of the bee, then the squatter's weighty axe, and after
him the German's strange jargon.
Ants also have their well-known migrations, and aimless
as they seem to be to human eye, blindly as the little
insects seem to wander in the dust, still they go as little
astray as the countless stars in heaven.  The black ant
of the East Indies, especially, becomes even useful to man.
They travel in countless hordes; the fields are black as
far as the eye can reach, and field and forest are left
bare behind them.  Boldly they enter human dwellings;
they sweep over roof and garret, cellar and kitchen; no
corner, no crevice, ever so small, remains unexplored, and
no rat or mouse, no cockroach or insect can be found
after their instinct has moved these not unwelcome guests
to continue their march.
Very different are the migrations of the fearful locust,




LEAVES FROM TIE BookI OF NATURE.
that ancient symbol of mighty conquerors, laying bare
country after country, as an overshadowing and dark cloud,
pregnarnt with the wrath of heaven. Their home is in the
far East, in places near the desert.  There they deposit
their eggs in the sand; when hatched, by the heat of the
sun, their young emerge, without wings, from the, ground;
but when mature, they rise on the first faint breeze that
stirs, and fly, under the guidance of a leader, in masses
so huge and so dense, that the air is darkened and the
sound of their wings heard like the murmur of the distant
ocean.  In immense flights t'ley travel from  the East to
the West, penetrating far into the interior of Africa, crossing, apparently without difficulty, the wide waters between
Africa and Madagascar, and from  Barbary to Italy.  They
have been seen in the heart of Germany, and a few have
even been met with in Scotland.  The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them  a desolate
wilderness, for they destroy all vegetable life with unfailing
certainty, and thus often cause famine, whilst the myriads
of corpses which they leave behind, poison the air and
not unfrequently produce disease and pestilence.  Well did
the Jews of old know this fierce plague, and well can we
understand how the angel of the bottomless pit could appear to the inspired seer in the form of a fearfully armed
locust.
On the easiest routes and in the most favorable element for locomotion travel fishes, in incessant movement;
even swift birds, in their rapid and unwearied flight, must
yield the palln to them, the eagle to the shark, the swal
low to the herring.  Their form, also, is so particularly




NATURE IN MOTION.                  67
well adapted to swift and easy motion, that the unavoidable resistance of the fluid in which they travel, never
seems to impede their progress.  While birds, when they
undertake long flights, are often obliged to alight, and
even try to rest on the yards of vessels, fishes never
seem to be exhausted by fatigue and to require respite
or repose.  Sharks are known to have kept pace with
fast-sailing ships during whole long voyages, and to have
sported around them as in mockery.
For known and for unknown purposes, in the tiny mountain brook, and in the wido ocean, fishes are seen in unceasing motion, darting in all directions, travelling now
single, and now  in shoals.  Their regular journeys are
mostly unDdertaken for the purpose of spawning; the delicate mackerel moves southward when its time comes, and
the beautiful sardine of the Mediterranean goes, in spring,
westward, and returns in autumn to the east.  The sturgeon of northern Europe is seen singly to ascend the
great rivers of the Continent, and the ormul, or migratory salmon of the polar seas, travels, we know not how,
through river and  lake, up into the Baikal, and there
swims, in whimsical alternations, but always in immense
crowds, first on the southern and then on the northern
bank. The travels of the salmon are probably best known,
because the fish was a favorite already in the days of
Pliny, and yet, strange enough, is found in every sea in
the Arctic, near the equator, and off New Holland, only
not in the MIediterranean.  They press in large, triangular
masses up all the great northern rivers of Europe, Asia,
and America.  They enter Bohemia with Shakespeare, by




68        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
sea, at least, sailing up the river Elbe; they approach
Switzerland in the green waters of the Rhine, and even
the foot of the Cordilleras by a journey of three thousand
miles up the Amazon! Their crowds are not unfrequently
so dense that they actually stem, for awhile, the current
of mighty rivers; still these bands are formed with great
regularity. The strongest and largest females lead-a fact
which will rejoice the strong-minded women of our agefollowed by others of the same sex, travelling two and
two at regular intervals; after them come the males in
like order.  With a noise like the distant roaring of a
storm, they rush up the stream, now sporting in easy,
graceful motion, and  now  darting  ahead with lightning
speed that the eye cannot follow. Do they come to some
rock or wall that impedes their way, they leap with incredible force, and repeat the effort until they have overcome the difficulty; it is even said, that, at the foot of
cataracts, they will take their tail in their mouth, and
then, suddenly letting it go, like an elastic spring, rise
twelve or fifteen feet in the air.  Thus they travel on,
undismayed and untired, until they have found a suitable
place for depositing their eggs, and with the same marvellous instinct return, year after year, to the distant ocean.
It is in their connection with the wants of men, however, that these migrations of fishes become most impor.
tant and interesting.  It is well known that they furnish
the sole food of some nations, and contribute in others a
vast and cheap supply that covers the table of the poor
man with plenty.  Migrating fishes are thus one of the
greatest and most invaluable gifts of the Creator, by which




NATURE IN MOTION.                   69
thousands support themselves and their families, and which,
at certain times, form the exclusive food of whole races,
as the sturgeon, upon which all Greek Christians subsist
during their long and rigorous fasts. Hence, also, the im..
portance of the herring, a small, insignificant fish, which
yet gives food to millions, and employment to not less
than three thousand decked vessels, not to speak of all
the open boats employed in the same fishery.  Where
their home is, man does not know; it is only certain that
they are not met with beyond a certain degree of northern
latitude, and that the genuine herring never enters the.
Mediterranean, and hence remained unknown to the ancients. In April and June, all of a sudden, innumerable
masses appear in the northern seas, forming vast banks,
often thirty miles long and ten miles wide. Their depth
has never been satisfactorily ascertained, and their denseness may be judged by the fact, that lances and harpoons
thrust in between themn, sink not and move not, but remain standing upright! Divided into bands, herrings also
move in a certain order.  Long before their arrival already their coming is noticed by the flocks of sea-birds
that watch them from on high, whilst sharks are seen to
sport around them, and a thick oily or slimy substance
is spread over their columns, coloring the sea in daytime, and shining with a mild, mysterious light in a dark,
still night.  The sea-ape, the "monstrous chimera" of the
learned, precedes them, and is, hence, by fishermen, called
the king of the herrings. Then are first seen single males,
often three or four days in advance of the great army;
next follow the strongest and largest, and after them enor



70        LEAVES FROM TIIE BOOK OF NATURE.
mous shoals, countless like the sand on the sea-shore and
the stars in heaven.  They seek places that abound in
stones and marine plants, where to spawn, and like other
animals they frequent the localities, to which they have
become accustomed, at a regular time, so that they may
be expected as surely as the sun rises and sets.
Other fishes have strange peculiarities connected with
their travels.  Thus, we are told that the mackerels spend
their winter in, what would appear to others, a most uncomfortable position.  In the Arctic as well as in the
Mediterranean, as soon as winter comes, they deliberately
plunge their head, and the anterior part of their body, into
deep mud, keeping their tails erected, standing straight up.
This position they do not change until spring, when they
emerge, in incredible numbers, from  their hiding-places,
and go southward for the purpose of depositing their eggs
in more genial waters.  Still they are so firmly wedded
to this element that they die the instant they are taken
out of the water, and then shine with phosphorescent
light.
The eel is the strangest of travelling fishes; he even
performs journeys on land.  In hot, dry summers, when
ponds and pools are exhausted, he boldly leaves his
home, and winding through thick grass, makes his way,
by night, to the nearest water.  H-e is a great gourmand, moreover, and loves young tender peas so dearly
that he will leave the river itself and climb up steep
banks to satisfy his desire and, alas! to  fall into the
snares of wicked men. Other fishes travel in large crowds
all night long, and  a perch  in Tranquebar not only




NATURE IN MOTION.                 71
creeps on shore, but actually climbs up tall fan-palms, in
pursuit of certain shell-fish, which form  its favorite food.
Covered with viscid sline, he glides smoothly over the
rough bark; spines, which he may sheathe and unfold at
will, serve him  like hands to hang by, and with the aid
of side fins and a powerful tail he pushes himself upward,
thus completing the strange picture of fish and shell-fish
dwelling high on lofty trees.
In remarkable contrast with this amazing mobility of
fishes stands the comparative quiet of Amphibia, which,
double-dealing creatures as they are, now claim  the dry
land as their home, and now the deep waters. The cunning lizard, the creeping snake, the venomous toad, or the
voracious crocodile, in fine, all the disgusting animals of
this class, whom man looks upon with awe or horror, are
fortunately bound to the glebe on which they are born,
and of them, as of reptiles, few, if any, love to travel.
The violet crab of the West Indies and South America
is almost the only. one among them all that undertakes
long journeys. They live on firm land only, filr from the
ocean, hid in dark caves or caverns of the mountains.
But once in the year, in April or May, the sun, the heat
and love penetrate the thick armor of these cold-blooded
beings. All of a sudden they burst forth, from  cleft and
crevice, and move in crowds of hundreds and thousands,
so that the ground, the roads and woods are covered with
their uncouth shapes.  The vast army travels in strict
battle array; first come strong men, then the females, in
closely packed columns, fifty to sixty yards wide, and often
half an hour long. They prefer moving at night, and the




72        LEAVES FROM THE BOOrK OF NATURE.
loud rattling of their armor, which sounds like the falling
of fierce hail, wakes old and young. During the day they
rest at least twice, and hide from the hot sun; with the
cool of the evening they set out once more.  Instinct
shows them the shortest way to the ocean; nothing arrests their march, and they never break their ranks. If
rocks or walls impede their way, they scale them with
untiring perseverance; if a house blocks up their road,
they coolly enter at the open window, frighten for a moment the astonished inmates, but move peaceably out at
the other side and pursue their march.  If men try to
arrest them, they rise with great indignation, stretch out
their huge claw, and open and shut it with a loud noise.
Only when they are violently frightened they show real
alarm, and hurry, in wild, reckless flight, in all directions;
they recover, however,'very soon, form again at a short
distance, and march bravely onward. The injury they do
arises much less from what they eat than from  the destruction of fields and gardens, in which they trample down
and break with their claws everything that is in their
way. It is another strange provision of nature, that only
few, the strongest, return to their mountain home; by far
the largest number are so lean and weak, that they cannot
perform the long journey back, and serve to feed the
hungry on the sterile beach of the Antilles.
As the liquid wave sustains the rapid fish, so the still
lighter air bears the swift bird on broad wings.  The
number of birds who always remain in the same region
is extremely small; by far the most avail themselves of
their admirable means of locomotion to go to very great




NATURE IN MOTION.                 73
distances, in order to avoid the hardships of winter, and
to exchange the snow-covered fields of the north for the
sunny regions of lower latitudes.  Some are perfect cosmopolites.  The raven is met with, not only throughout
Europe, but croaks mournfully on the shores of the Black
and the Caspian Seas; he wings his sombre, heavy flight
to distant India, and haunts the houses of Calcutta.  He
forces his way, with daring impudence, over the guarded
shores of Japan, dwells a free citizen in the United States,
looks with equal gravity into Mount Etna and ice-covered
Hecla, and braves the rigor of the Arctic regions as far
as Melville Island.
Generally, however, birds have a home, from which they
only migrate at stated times, to find a supply of food
and a temperature well suited to reproduction. Their admirable powers of motion enable them  to circulate, for
these purposes, more widely and more freely all over the
earth than any other class of animals.  In this they are
led by the same instincts from the Almighty, that direct
alike the life-withering flights of the locust, and the cheerful
migrations of the swallow. They are never deceived in
their time by any peculiarity of wind and weather; for
truly, "'the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed
time, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming."  It even seems as if
certain impulses were given to birds, independent of their
early imitative propensities, which must proceed directly
from the Almighty power that governs the universe. How
else could the instinct of migration be felt by birds kept
in cages, whom  neither cold nor want of food could in4




74        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
fluence? And yet birds, who were raised from the egg,
who never saw the flight of their brethren, never heard
the voice of their companions, will, at the appointed time,
become restless, show an insurmountable uneasiness, and
when let loose, dart off, as if guided by the compass, to
join their unknown friends on their journey. Little, delicate beings, these feeble birds of passage, supported by
the hand of Him before whom not one of the sparrows
on the house-top is' forgotten, bear up against storms of
snow  and rain, and make their way through such vast
turbulence as would apparently embarrass and retard the
most hardy and resolute of the winged nation. Yet they
keep their appointed time and season, and in spite of frost
and winds, return to their station on earth, to gladden
and cheer the hearts of men.  Besides these birds that
visit the temperate zone during the more genial parts of
the year and add so greatly to the beauty and music of
our groves, in spring and summer, there are others, and
those a numerous tribe, that wing their way to the same
regions when the reign of winter has commenced. When
the Arctic seas, and lakes and rivers present an unbroken
field of impenetrable ice, various waterfowl, swans, geese,
and ducks, and an infinite number of others seek a warmer
climate to the south.  In their travels each variety of
birds has not only its own appointed time, but also its
own peculiar way of arranging their vast armies.  Some
fly singly, and some in groups, others migrate in thousands.  Most travel by day; a few only at night, so that
they have been found dead in light-houses, having flown
against the dazzling light. Wild geese fly in long lines,




NATURE IN MOTION.                    75
swans in the shape of a wedge, and swallows in broad
ranks; starlings roll on in large crowds, constantly whirling around an axis in the centre of their body, and all
"- ranged in figure, wedge their way and set forth
Their airy caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight."
Even feeble, ill-winged birds follow the all-powerful impulse, and traverse vast seas and continents as best they
can. The Virginia partridge, when going north, is so heavy
on the wing, that many fall into the rivers and end their
journey by swimming.  But of all birds the quail proceeds, probably, in the most peculiar manner.  When they
wish to leave Europe for Africa, they wait patiently for
a strong northwestern wind; as soon as this sets in they
start, and flapping one wing, while they present the other
to the gale, half oar half sail, they graze the billows of
the Mediterranean with their fat, heavy rumps, and bury
themselves in the sands of Afirica, that they may serve
as food to the famished inhabitants of Zara. On other
journeys, when they have to pass over land, they make
their way running and hopping, until they reach the shore.
Tired and exhausted, the weary rest on the rigging of
ships, or make regular stations in the Mediterranean, on
Malta and the Lipari islands; in the northern  seas, on
I-eligoland and Norderney, so that the inhabitants of these
places depend upon a large harvest of quails, like the
Jews of old, as a condition of their existence. In IHeligoland there prevailed, we are told, the quaint usage, that
the preacher in his pulpit, when he saw from his elevated




76        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
station, a flock of quails approach, immediately broke off
his sermon with the awords: Amen! my dear brethren, the
quails are coming!
Famous are also the flights of storks, who have their
summer-houses high up in the north of Europe, on the
roof of the poor peasants' huts, and live during winter,
in stately pride, on pyramid and mosque. Cranes, like.
wise, and herons, travel in fall to the warmer south;
when they take wing, their clang is heard from afar, and
they rise so high up in the air, that the eye cannot reach
them, and we only hear their rough voices, for they do
not fly in silence, as most other birds, but utter constant
cries, especially when travelling at night, to keep the scattering flock together.
Among the most remarkable migrations of birds are
those of the North American pigeon, the very "herrings
of the air," as they have, most unpoetically, been called.
Like them, however, they appear in astounding numbers,
nobody knows whence, and are found alike all over this
continent, from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. About broodtime, they
unite in millions to seek a comfortable home. Their numbers are far beyond all computation; they darken the
heavens with their vast armies, and break down the forests
on which they settle. Not less strange is the inexplicable
faculty which other pigeons possess, to find the way to
their home. Birds have been taken, that had never been
further from the place of their birth than a few miles;
they were carried by rail to the distance of more than
a thousand miles, and then let loose.  They were seen




NATURE IN MOTION.                  77
to fly around a few times in large circles, and then, in a
straight line, with marvellous swiftness, directly to their
home! They cannot see it, for the roundness of the globe
would prevent that; no other sense can possibly come to
their aid, and yet they never fail to reach the place from
which they were taken!
Thus birds travel from land to land all over the earth;
some sailing high in the air, passing without astonishment
over populous cities, disdaining fertile valleys and plains
covered with rich grain, bent with fixed purpose upon the
way to their last year's home; others, like the swallow,
gladdening both Europe and Africa, and, at the appointed
time, leaving their nest to seek a warmer climate, as the
soul is anxious to leave this earthly home to seek a
better world above.  The tender nightingale travels, both
sexes together, from  north to south; but in early spring
the females leave several weeks earlier, and wing their
way from Egypt and Syria, alone, to northern regions.
Of finches, the females only migrate, the males remain
behind, and being thus widowers during the long winter,
have, from  the French, received the name of celibataires.
Not inaptly has, therefore, the question been asked, whether
the females of birds are not, perhaps, more sensitive to
the magnetic current that whirls around our globe, than
the males?
The Mammalia do not roam  and rove so much as the
lighter birds and favored fishes; they are generally bound
to certain localities, and at all events chained to the soil.
Still we find among them  also travellers, now driven forth
by hunger, and now by an overwhelming number of beasts




1,18      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of prey, to seek new pastures and new  dwelling-places.
Others, again, follow man in his migrations over the globe,
and thus spread from country to country. To the former,
belong the horses which now roam wild on the plains of
South America, and travel, at times, thousands of miles.
The wild asses, also, in the wilderness, "which stand up
in the high places and snuff the wind like dragons," travel
in bands of two or three hundred, and leave, in winter,
the tropics for a still warmer region in the south of
Africa. They are called "the Bushman's harvest," for the
wild Bushman hunts and consumes what has been left by
the royal lion and the hungry vulture, who follow them
in their march and feast upon them for a season. Gazelles and antelopes migrate in like manner, and even
huge elephants are seen wandering in large herds over
the boundless plains of Africa. The shaggy buffalo roams
in vast numbers over the prairies of our own continent,
and migrates at regular intervals from the north to the
south, and from the plain to the mountain. Salt springs
are with them the great centre of attraction, but generally their movements seem to be regulated by the state
of their pastures.'As soon as the fire has spread over
a prairie, and is succeeded by a fine growth of tender
grass, immense herds are sure to appear. How they discover that their table is spread, we know not; it has
been surmised that stragglers from the main body, who
have wandered away when food became scarce, may first
notice the new growth, and by some mysterious means,
communicate the good news to their hungry brethren.
Monkeys, also, wander from  land to land, when driven




NATURE IN MOTION.                 79
by hunger or fierce enemies; they have even been suspected of passing through a tunnel under the straits of
Gibraltar, from Africa to Europe. Their mode of crossing
rivers is a beautiful evidence of their ingenuity and instinct. A powerful male seizes a branch that projects
over the banks of the stream, and suspends himself by
his prehensile tail; another takes hold of him, and so on
until they have a row as long as the river is wide. Then
they begin to swing the living chain, and continue until
the impetus is powerful enough to enable the last one
to take hold of a tree on the opposite shore. Over this
strange bridge the whole host passes safely; as soon as
they are across, the first monkey lets go his hold, the
chain swings again, and so they all safely get over large
rivers.
The so-called domestic animals travel exclusively by the
agency of man, and in his company. It is thus that the
horse, a native of the wide steppes of Central Asia, which
was not known on this continent before the arrival of the
Spaniards, now roams over it in vast herds from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn. To man we owe it, that the
goat climbs our RIocky Mountains, and white, woolly sheep
graze on scanty hill-sides, whilst the heavier, slower cattle
fatten on rich low grounds, and remind us, in the far
backwoods, by the sweet harmonies of their bells, of the
neighborhood of men. But here, also, the weeds have come
with the good plants. Thus the domestic (!) rat, a native
of the Old World, was carried in ships to the Cape, to
Mauritius and Bourbon, to the Antilles and Bermuda. An
Antwerp ship brought them, 1544, first, to this continent,




80        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
where they astonished the good Peruvians so much, that
they obtained with them  the name of "things that came
out of the sea."  Now  they are rarer in Europe than
in America.
The importance of the useful domestic animals cannot
be overrated.  The very existence of man is bound up
with the horse, the ox, and the sheep.  Brazil lives almost exclusively by means of her horses and her cattle;
and Australia has developed her resources and progressed
in civilization only since sheep have been introduced. It
is strange, surely, that like the best gifts in the vegetable
world, the cerealia, so these domestic animals, also, are
presents which the east has sent to the west, and for which
no return has yet been made.  Here, also, an invisible
but insurmountable barrier seems to prevent such an exchange.
What shall we lastly say of the wanderings of man?
His history is still darker than that of his servants, and
his first home, our Eden, is truly defended, even now, by
an angel with a flaming  sword.  The place where his
cradle stood is utterly unknown. The first period of his
life is veiled in dark night; only a few brief flashes of
light are, by revelation, thrown upon it, which show us
but a single moment in a long period, and consequently,
barely allow usto guess at the connection, without giving
us anything like continuous information.
It is not a little singular that one of the strongest arguments in support of the favorite idea of man's first
home, and the unity of his race, is derived from the analogy between hint and plants and animals. As the latter




NATURE IN MOTION.                 81
invariably accompany man, and as they all come from
the table lands of Central Asia, so, it is said, man also
came probably from that portion of our globe, though,
without doubt, at a time when the now dry and sterile
heights were still the luxuriant, tropical valley of Eden.
For geologists tell us we may with good reason presume
that these rich low grounds were, by some mysterious
convulsion, raised slowly and steadily, and thus the races
of men scattered abroad into the adjoining fertile valleys.
When this happened we know not. It must have been
far beyond the reach of history, legend, or vague tradition. Even the oldest races of the earth, whose myths,
fables, or songs, whose features or language, point to the
distant East with greatest certainty, even these found their
land already in possession of others.
Thus the Celts, among the oldest nations of Europe,
when they arrived from their far eastern cradle, encountered in Europe already nations whose imperfect language,
lawless manners, and superstitious faith, showed how long
they had been separated from their early home, and from
their former intimate communion with the Creator. Nay,
these Celts themselves, coming as they did on one of the
very first waves of immigration from  Asia, were already
comparative barbarians, having lost both the culture and
the faith of our first fathers.  If, then, so little is positively known of the condition of the West of Europe and
the ancestors of the present masters of the globe, much
less can be gathered as to the state of things in East
itself. Still, wherever legends speak, dimly though it be,
wherever traditions begin to shed a faint and often de4*




82        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
ceitful light upon the first condition of powerful nations —
everywhere immense hordes of emigrants are seen to
pour forth, age after age, from the same common centre
in middle Asia.  Chinese myths speak of an immigration from the West, about two thousand years before
Christ, and the "Vendidad" of the Zendavesta says that
the early Persians came under Schemschid from Eastern
table-lands down into the "four-cornered" land, their present home.
By far more positive and certain are the traditions of
the three greatest races on earth, both on account of the
antiquity, and comparative authenticity of their legends,
and on account of the intrinsic evidence drawn from the
mutual relationship in which they stand to each other.
The Hindoos, whom we venerate as the oldest of known
civilized nations, derive their origin from the Northwest,
and call "Ilindukush" and "Belustag" in their traditions
invariably the boundary mountains-behind which their
birth-place is hidden.
The Shemitic nations also point to the East as their
common home, and to the Ararat as the landmark which
divides their first dwelling place from their present residence.
Now, exactly between the Ararat and the Belustag, lies
that vast table-land, which most men are disposed to consider the birth-place of the first among men. Both Indian
and Shemitic races brought with them to their new
dwelling places, not only an indistinct recollection of their
former home, but many rich treasures of their former
civilization, in one word, a history of their people. These




NATURE IN MOTION.                 83
elements they rapidly developed to a high degree of power
and culture, but the latter withered and disappeared as
rapidly again, for it was not grown on its native soil, not
favored by the sun of their true home. Hence they either
ceased to have a real history as the Chinese and the Indians, or they became rude barbarians, as the Shemitic
races.
Different, however, was the destiny of the third great
family of men, the Indo-Germans, who probably left, last
of all children, the paternal house of the East. In millions they poured wave after wave of migrating nations
into Europe, the last of which, fortunately, belongs already
to historical times, and under the well-known name of the
great Migration of Nations, changed completely the whole
ethnography of Europe.  Still, among all the numerous
Indo-German nations, there lives not a single legend connected with the time of their existence in Asia.  They
seem to have broken with the past for ever, to have utterly abandoned their early home, and perhaps even the
civilization which they left behind them. They have devoted themselves, instead, to that grand future, which alone
seems to embody, and to realize the great destiny of mankind.
The only great riddle in the history of the migrations
of men, to which neither revelation nor science has as yet
offered the key, is the origin of the natives of this continent. Surmises abound, from the most absurd to the
most plausible.  The poor redskins have been, at will,
transformed into exiled Jews or banished Chinese; their
language has been called Syriac, Welsh, and Celtic. Their




84        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
traditions speak simply and vaguely first of a rude, original
race which lived in the fertile plains of the West, and of
a more powerfal and more civilized race which, at a later
pariod, came from  the North, moved victoriously southward, and subjugated the early owners of the soil. The
difference of the two contending races is confirmed by the
study of their skulls. But we know not whence the native
settlers came, nor whence the foreign invaders. It is conjectured, and with good reason, that as this continent is
geologically older than that of Europe, so its occupation,
also, dates from  times previous to the Christian history
of the Old World. In those days, however, the nations
of Asia are invariably represented as leading a pastoral
life, and as having, consequently, long domesticated the
ox and the sheep.  It is, then, in the highest degree improbable that emigrants of those times, should have left
these incalculable blessings behind them, if, as many believe, they went from Asia by a northwest passage across
the Atlantic to America.  Yet, no trace of domestic animals was found here. As improbable, however, is it that,
if by accident they should have been compelled to leave
them behind, they should not at once have set to work,
in continuance of ancient custom, to tame the buffalo, the
vicufia, and the alpaca, as the Europeans did when they
arrived on this continent.
Setting this only great riddle aside, and resuming all
that myths, traditions, and revelation itself, tell us, so
much only seems to be certain, that all migrations of men,
like those of plants and animals, have gone from  the
rising fo the setting sun. Everywhere history begins with




NATURE IN MOTION.                 85
an immigration of eastern races. In southern Europe appeared the seafaring Pelasgi; they were soon followed by
the Etruscans; then came the Helleni.  From  the tablelands of the Waldai we see next the Istuni or Fins driven
westward by the pressure of countless Teutons. The latter, together with Slaves, soon rush into Scandinavia, Germany, and France.  The same phenomenon, in fact, is
constantly repeated.  New waves of new nations roll on
from  the East, and shake the foundations of older, well
organized kingdoms, until Columbus opens the western gate
to let loose the rising stream of Asiatic races, which now
flood the new continent.
This resistless movement toward the West is yet unbroken, unrelenting. The same great law of nature impels
man towards the setting sun, and all his efforts to travel
eastward have been ingloriously foiled.  In vain did millions of brave, pious men rush to the Orient to reconquer
the Holy Land; in vain were the most chivalrous courage,
the most devoted self-sacrifice, employed against the stern
eternal rule of nature.  No great expedition to the East
has ever been successful and permanent.  Vast distances
have been traversed, vast reverses sustained, and hardships
incredible endured-only to result in grand defeats, like
the Anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the retreat of
the noble ten thousand. And so it is, still, in our day.
As recently as the latter part of the last century, a whole
Tartar nation, several hundred thousands of Kalmucks,
with all their herds, left southern Russia, and fled across
the boundless steppes of Asia, to escape the iron rule of
the Russian sceptre.  They left unimpeded; they were




86        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
allowed to defy their master's vengeance-but they could
not disobey the great law of nature.  A few beggars returned, long years after, to report that the whole tribe
had perished, a whole nation had disappeared from the
globe! And the same law called to Napoleon, when he
was at the height of his power, sternly uttering the Scripture words: Hitherto shalt thou come but no further!




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.                     87
III.
t e 0than  a0b Its Xfd.
"How sweet....
With half-dropt eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long, bright river draw in slowly
His waters from the purple hillTo hear the emerald-colored water falling
Thro' many a woven acanthus-wreath divine l
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet."-TENNYsoN.
HIGH   on the terrible cliff that overhangs the Scylla of
the ancients stood King Frederick of Sicily; and by
his side the fairest of Europe's fair daughters. Often and
often had he gazed down into the fierce seething cauldron
beneath him, and in vain had he offered the gold of his
treasure and the honors of his court to him who would dive
into the whirlpool and tell him of the fearful mysteries that
were hid beneath the hissing, boiling foam. But neither
fisherman nor proud knight had dared to tempt the God
of mercy, and to venture down into the dread abyss, which
threatened  death, sure, inevitable  death, to  the bold  in.




88        LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
truder. But better than gold and honor, is fair mnaiden's
love. And when the king's beautiful daughter smiled upon
the gazing crowd around her, and when her sweet lips
uttered words of gentle entreaty, the spell was woven,
and the bold heart found that would do her bidding, forgetful of worldly reward, and alas! unmindful, also, of the
word of the Almighty!
He was a bold seaman, and his companions called him
Pesce-Colo, Nick the Fish, for he lived in the ocean's
depths, and days and nights passed, which he spent swimming and diving in the warm waters of Sicily. And from
the very cliff on which the king had spoken his taunting
words, from the very feet of his fair tempting child, he
threw himself down into the raging flood.  The waters
closed over him, hissing and seething in restless madness,
and deeper and darker grew  the fierce whirlpool.  All
eyes were bent upon the gaping gulf, all lips were silent
as the grave.  Time seemed to be at rest; the very
hearts ceased to beat.  But lo! out of the dark waves
there arises a snow-white form, and a glowing arm is seen,
and black curls hanging down on the nervous neck of
the daring seaman. And, as he breathes once more the
pure air of heaven, and as his eyes behold once more
the blue vault above him, he stammers words of thanks
to his Maker; and a shout arose from cliff to cliff, that'he welkin rang, and the ocean's roar was hushed.
But when their eyes turned again to greet the bold
man who had dared what God had forbidden, and man
had never ventured to do, the dark waters had closed
upon him. They saw the fierce flood rush up in wild




THE OCEAN, AND ITS LIFE.               89
haste; they saw the white foam sink down into the dark,
gloomy gulf; they heard the thundering roar and the hideous hissing below; the waters rose and the waters fell,
but the bold, daring seaman was never seen again.
Legend recites the fearful tale, and the poet repeats it
in melodious strains. But it is neither fable nor fiction.
The same dread mystery broods yet over the waters, and
little is even now known of the great deep, where the
hungry ocean demands still its countless victims. For the
calm of the sea is a treacherous rest, and under the deceitful mirror-like smoothness reign eternal warfare and
strife. Oceanus holds not, as of old, the Earth, his spouse,
in quiet, loving embrace; our sea-god is a god of battles,
and wrestles and wrangles in never-ceasing struggle with
the firm continent. Even when apparently calm and slumbering, he is moving in restless action, for "there is sorrow
on the sea, it cannot be quiet." Listen, and you will hear
the gentle beating of playful waves against the snowy
sands of the beach; look again, and you will see the
gigantic mass breathe and heave like a living being.  No
quiet, no sleep, is allowed to the great element. As the
little brook dances merrily over rock and root, never resting day and night, so the great ocean, also, knows no
leisure, no repose.
It is not merely, however, that the weight of the agitated atmosphere presses upon the surface of the vast
ocean, and moves it now with the gentle breath of the
zephyr, and now with the fierce power of the tempest.
Even when the waters seem lashed into madness by the
raging tornado, or rise in daring rebellion under the sud



90        LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
den, sullen fury of the typhoon, it is but child's play
compared with the gigantic and yet silent, lawful movement, in which they ascend to the very heavens on high,
where " He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds,"
and then again sink, uncomplaining to the lowest depths
of the earth.
As the bright sun rests warm and glowing on the
bosom of the cool flood, millions of briny drops abandon
the mighty ocean and rise, unseen by human eye, borne
on the wings of the wind, up into the blue ether. But
soon they are recalled to their allegiance.  They gather
into silvery clouds, race around the globe, and sink down
again, now impetuously in a furious storm, bringing de.
struction and ruin, now as gentle rain, fertilizing and
refreshing, or more quietly yet, as brilliant dew pearls,
glittering in the bosom of the unfolding rose, and filling
each tiny cup held up by leaf and blossom. Eagerly the
thirsty earth drinks in the heavenly gift; in a thousand
veins she sends it down to her lowest depths, and fills
her vast invisible reservoirs.  Soon she can hold the rich
abundance of health-bringing waters no longer, and through
cleft and cliff they gush joyfully forth as merry, chattering springs.  They join rill to rill, and rush heedlessly
down the mountains in brook and creek, until they grow
to mighty rivers.  Thundering over gigantic rocks, they
leap fearlessly down lofty precipices, or gently rolling their
mighty masses along the inclined planes of lowlands, be.
come manl's obedient slaves, and carry richly laden vessels
on their broad shoulders, until they return once more to
the bosom of their common mother, the great ocean.




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.              91
How  quietly, how  silently nature works in her great
household! Unheard and unseen, these enormous masses
of water rise up from the broad seas of the earth, and
yet it requires not less than one-third of the whole warmth
which the sun grants to our globe, to lift them up from
the ocean to the region of clouds. Raised thus by forces
far beyond our. boldest speculations, and thence returning
as blessed rain, as humble mill-race, or as active, rapid
high-road, carrying huge loads from land to land, the ocean
receives back again its own, and thus completes one of its
great movements in the eternal circle through water, air,
and land.
But the mighty ocean rests not even in its own legitimate limits.  When not driven about as spray, as mist,
as rain, when gently reposing in its eternal home on the
bosom of the great earth, it is still subject to powerful influences from abroad. That mysterious force which chains
sun to sun, and planet to planet, which calls back the
wandering comet to its central sun, and binds the worlds
in one great universe, the force of general attraction, must
needs have its effect upon the waters also, and under the
control of sun and moon, they perform a second race
around the globe on which we live.
When the companions of Nearchus, under Alexander
the Great, reached the mouth of the Indus, nothing excited
their amazement in that wonderful country so much as
the regular rise and fall of all the ocean-a phenomenon
which they had never seen at home, on the coasts of Asia
Minor and Greece. Even their short stay there sufficed,
however, to show them the connection of this astonishing




92        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
change with the phases of the moon.  For "'sweet as
the moonlight sleeps upon this bank," it is nevertheless
full of silent power. Stronger even than the larger sun,
because so much nearer to the earth, it raises upon the
boundless plains of the Pacific a wave only a few feet
high, but extending down to the bottom of the sea, and
moves it onwards, chained as it were to its own path
high in heaven. Harmless and powerless this wave rolls
along the placid surface of the ocean.  But lands arise,
New HIolland on one side, southern Asia on the other,
and the low but immensely broad tidal wave is pressed
together and rises upwards, racing rapidly round the sharp
point of Africa.  Quickly it reaches Fez and Morocco;
a few hours later it passes through the Straits of Gibraltar, and along the coast of Portugal.  From  thence it
rushes, with increased force, into the Channel and past the
western coast of England.  There the rocky cliffs of Ireland, and the numerous islands of the northern seas,
arrest its rapid course, so that it reaches Norway only
after an eight hours' headlong race. Another branch of
the same wave hurries along the eastern coast of America,
in almost furious haste, often amounting to one hundred
and twenty miles an hour; from thence it passes on to
the north, where, hemmed in on all sides, it rises here
and there to the enormous height of eighty feet. Such
is not rarely the case in the Bay of Fundy-a circumstance which shows us forcibly the vast superiority of
this silent, steady movement over that of the fiercest tempest.  For even at that most stormy and most dreaded
spot on earth, Cape HIorn, all the violence of raging tem



THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.               93
pests cannot raise the waves higher than some thirty feet,
nor does it ever disturb the habitual calm of the ocean
below the depth of a few fathoms, so that divers do not
hesitate to stay below, even when the hurricane rages
above. Gentle in its appearance, though grand in its effect,
this mighty wave shows its true power only when it meets
obstacles worthy of such effort.  Where strong currents
oppose its approach, as in the river Dordogne, in France,
it races in contemptuous haste up the daring stream, and
reaches there, for instance, in two minutes, the height of
lofty houses. Or it rolls the mighty waters of the Amazon
river into huge dark masses of foaming cascades, and then
drives them steadily, resistlessly upwards, leaving the calm.
of a mirror behind, and sending its roar and its thunder
for miles into the upland.
Still less known and less observed is the third great
movement which interrupts the apparent calm and peace
of the ocean.  For here, as everywhere, movement is
life, as rest would be death.  Without this ever-stirring
activity in its own bosom, without this constant moving
and intermingling of its waters, the countless myriads of
decaying plants and animals which are daily buried in the
vast deep, would soon destroy, by their mephitic vapors,
all life upon earth. This greatest of all movements, never
resting, never ending, is the effect of the sun and the heat
it gel.erates. Like all bodies, water also contracts, and
consequently grows heavier as the temperature sinks; but
only to a certain point, about three degrees Reaumur.
This is the invariable warmth of the ocean at a depth
of three thousand six hundred feet, and below that.  If




SO        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the temperature is cooler, water becomes thinner again
and lighter, so that at the freezing point, as ice, it weighs
considerably less than when fluid.  The consequence of
this peculiar relation of water to heat produces the remarkable result, that in the great ocean an incessant movement continues: up to the above mentioned degree of heat,
th- warmer and lighter water rises continually, whilst the
cooler and heavier sinks in like manner; below that point
the colder water rises and the warmer part descends to
the bottom. Hence, the many currents in the vast mass
of the ocean; sometimes icy cold, at other times warm,
and even hot, so that often the difference between the
temperature of the current and that of the quiet water
by its side, is truly astonishing.  The great Humboldt
found at Truxillo the undisturbed waters as warm  as
twenty-two degrees, whilst the stream  on the Peruvian
coast had but little more than eight degrees, and the sailor
who paddles his boat with tolerable accuracy on the outer
line of the gulf-stream, may dip his left into cold and
his right into warm water.
Greater wonders still are hidden under the calm, still
surface of the slumbering giant. Thoughtless and careless,
man passes in his light fragile boat, over the boundless
expanse of the ocean, and little does he know, as yet,
of the vast plains beneath him, the luxuriant forests, the
sweet, green meadows, that lie stretched out at the foot
of unmeasured mountains, which raise their lofty peaks
up to his ship's bottom, and of the fiery volcanoes that
earthquakes have thrown up below the waves.
For the sea, also, has its hills and its dales; its table



TnE  OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.             95
lands and its valleys, sometimes barren, and sometimes
coyered with luxuriant vegetation.  Beneath its placid, even
surface, there are inequalities far greater than the most
startling heights on the continents of the earth.  In the
Atlantic, south of St. Helena, the lead of the French frigate
Venus, reached bottom only at a depth of 14,556 feet,
or a distance equal to the height of Mount Blanc; and
Captain Ross, during his last expedition to the South Pole,
found no bottom yet at 27,600 feet, a depth equal to
more than five miles, so that there the Dawalaghiri might
have been placed on top of'Mount Sinai, without appearing above the waters! And yet, from the same depth,
mountains rise in cliffs and reefs, or expand upwards in
broad, fertile islands.
Nor can we any longer sustain the ancient faith in the
stability of the " terra firma," as contrasted with the everchanging nature of the  sea.  Recent discoveries have
proved, on the contrary, that the land changes, and the
waters are stable! The ocean maintains always the same
level; but, as on the great continents, table-lands rise and
prairies sink, so does the bottom  of the sea rise and fall.
In the South Sea this takes place alternately, at stated
times.  To such sinking portions of our earth belongs,
among others, New Holland.  So far from  being a new,
young land, it is, on the contrary, with its strange flora,
so unlike that of the rest of the world, and its odd and
marvellous animals, an aged, dying island, which the ocean
is slowly burying, inch by inch.
And a wondrous world, is the world of the great sea.
There are deep abysses, filled with huge rocks, spectral




96        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
ruins of large ships, and the corpses of men. There lie,
half covered with lime and slime, the green, decaying gun,
and the precious box, filled with the gold of Peru's snowcovered Alps, by the side of countless skeletons, gathered
from every race and every clime. There moulders the
bald skull of the brave sea captain, by the side of the
broken armor of gigantic turtles; the whaler's harpoon
rests peaceably near the tooth of the whale; thousands
of fishes dwell in huge bales of costly silks from India,
and over them pass, in silent crowds, myriads of diminutive infusoria; enormous whales, and voracious sharks,
chase before them thickly packed shoals of frightened
herrings.  Here, the sea foams and frets restlessly up
curiously-shaped cliffs, and oddly-formed rocks; there, it
moves sluggishly over large plains of white, shining sand.
In the qmorning, the tidal waves break in grim fury against
the bald peaks of submarine Alps, or pass, in hissing
streams, through ancient forests on their side; in the evening, they glide noiselessly over bottomless abysses, as if
afraid, lest they, also, might sink down into the eternal
night below, from which rises distant thunder, and the
locked up waters roar and rage like evil spirits chained
in the vast deep.
The ocean is a vast charnel house. There are millions
and millions of animals mouldering, piled up, layer upon
layer, in huge masses, or forming mile-long banks.  For
no peace is found below, and under the thin, transparent
veil, there reigns endless murder, wild warfare, and fierce
bloodshed. Infinite, unquenchable hatred seems to dwell
ill the cold, unfeeling deep.  Destruction alone maintains




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.                97
life in the boundless world of the ocean. Lions, tigers,
and wolves, reach a gigantic size in its vast caverns, and,
day after day, destroy whole generations of smaller animals.  Polypi and medusa, in countless numbers, spread
their nets, catching the thoughtless radiati by tens of
thousands, and  the  huge whale  swallows, at one gulp,
millions of minute, but living creatures.  The swordfish
and the sea-lion hunt the elephant and the rhinoceros of
the Pacific, and tiny parasites dart upon the tunny fish,
to dwell in myriads in his thick layers of fat. All are
hunting, killing, murdering; but the strife is silent, no
war-cry is heard, no burst of anguish disturbs the eternal
silence, no shouts of triumph rise up through the crystal
waves to the world of light.  The battles are fought in
deep, still secresy; only now and then the parting waves
disclose the bloody scene for an  instant, or the dying
whale throws his enormous carcass high into the air,
driving the water up in lofty columns, capped with foam,
and tinged with blood.
Ceaseless as that warfare is, it does not leave the ocean's
depths a waste, a scee- of desolation.  On the contrary,
we find that the sea, the most varied and the most wonderful part of creation, where nature still keeps some of
her profoundest secrets, is teeming with life.  "Things innumerable, both great and small, are there." It contains,
especially, a most diversified and exuberant abundance of
animal life, from the microscopic infusoria, in inconceivable
numbers, up to those colossal forms which, free from the
incumbrance of weight, are left free to exert the whole
of their giant power for their enjoyment.  Where the
5




98        LEAVES FROM THE BOOsK OF NATURE.
rocky cliffs of Spitzbergen and the inhospitable shores of
Victoria land refuse to nourish even the simplest, humblest lichen, where no reindeer is ever seen, and even the
polar bear finds no longer a home, there the sea is still
covered with fuci and confervae, and myriads of minute
animals crowd  its life-sustaining waves.  Naturally, the
purest spring-water is not more limpid than the water of
the ocean; for it absorbs all colors save that of ultramarine, which gives it the azure hue vying with the blue
of heaven.  It varies to be sure, with every gleam  of sunshine, with every passing cloud, and when shallow, it reflects the color of its bed.  But its brightest tints, and
strangest colors, are derived from infusoria and plants. In
the Arctic Sea, a broad band of opaque olive green passes
right through the pure ultramarine; and off the Arabian
coast, we are told, there is a strip of green water so distinctly marked, that a ship has been seen in blue and
green water at the same time.  The Vermillion Sea of
California, has its name from  the red color of vast quantities of infusoria, and the Red Sea of Arabia changes
firom  delicate pink to deep scarlet, as its tiny inhabitants
move in thicker or thinner layers. Other masses of minute creatures tinge the waters round the Maldives black,
and that of the Gulf of Guinea, white.
When Captain Ross, in the Arctic Sea, explored the
bottom of the sea, and dropped his lead to a depth of
six thousand feet, he still brought up living animalcula;
and even at a depth exceeding the height of our loftiest
mountains, the water is alive with countless hosts of diminutive  phosphoric creatures, which, when attracted to the




TEIE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.              99
surface, convert every wave into a crest of light, and the
wide ocean into a sea of fire. It is well known that the
abundance of these minute beings, and of the animal matter supplied by their rapid decomposition, is such, that
the sea water itself becomes a nutritious fluid to many
of the largest dwellers in the ocean. Still, they all have
their own homes, even their own means of locomotion.
They are not bound to certain regions of that great country
below the ocean's waters.  They travel far and fast; currents, unknown to man, carry them, in vast masses, from
the Pole to the Equator, and often from Pole to Pole,
so that the whale must travel, with locomotive speed, to
follow the medusT of the Arctic to the seas of the Antilles, if he will not dispense with his daily food.  How
strange a chase!  The giant of the seas racing  in furious haste after hardly visible, faintly colored balls of
jelly!
But, for other purposes, also, there is incessant travel
going on in the ocean's hidden realm.  Water is the true
and proper element of motion, Hence, we find here the
most rapid journeys, the most constant changes from
zone to zone. No class of animals travel so much and
so regularly as fish, and nowhere, in the vast household
of nature, do we see so clearly the close relation between
the wants of man, and the provision made for them by a
bountiful Providence. The first herrings that appeared in
the waters of Holland, used to be paid for by their weight
in gold, and a Japanese nobleman spent more than a
thousand ducats for a brace of common fish, when it pleased
his Japanese majesty to order a fish dinner at his house




100       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
in the depth of winter, when all fish leave the coasts of
his country.
Now singly, now in shoals, fish are constantly seen
moving through the ocean. The delicate mackerel travels
towards the south, the small, elegant sardine of the Mediterranean, moves, in spring, westward, and returns in fall
to the east. The sturgeon of northern seas, sails lonely
up the large rivers of the continent of Europe, and has
been found in the very heart of Germany, under the shadow
of the famous cathedral of Strasburg. Triangular masses
of salmon press up nearly all northern rivers, and are
sometimes so numerous, so closely packed, that they actually impede the current of large rivers.  Before their
arrival, countless millions of herrings leave the same waters, but where their home is, man has not yet found
out. Only in the spring months there suddenly appear
vast banks of this remarkable fish, two or three miles
wide, and twenty to thirty miles long, and so dense are the
crowds, so great their depth, that lances and harpoonseven the sounding lead-thrown at random amongst them,
do not sink, but remain standing upright.  What numbers
are devoured by sharks and birds of prey, is not known;
what immense quantities are caught along the coast, to
be spread as manure on the fields inland, is beyond all
calculation; and yet it has been ascertained that over a
thousand millions alone, are annually salted for winter consumption!
The life of the ocean is gigantic in numbers not only,
but also in all its dimensions. Whales of a hundred feet
length and more, are the largest of all animals on earth,




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.                 101
five times as long as the elephant, the giant of the firm
land. Turtles weighing a thousand pounds, are found in
more than one sea.  The rocky islands of the southern
Arctic alone, furnish a yearly supply of a million of sealions, sea-cows, and seals. - Huge birds rise from the foamcovered waves, their homes never seen by human eye,
their young ones bred in lands unknown to man. Islands
are formed, and mountains raised, by the mere dung of
generations of smaller birds. And yet nature is here also
greatest in her smallest creations.  For how fine must, for
instance, be the texture of sinews and muscles, of nerves
and blood-vessels, in animals that never reach the size of
a pea, or even a pin's head!
The ocean has not only its mountains and plains, its
turf moors and sandy deserts, its rivers and sweet springs,
gushing forth from hidden recesses, and rising through the
midst of salt water, but it has also its lofty forests, with
luxuriant parasites, its vast prairies and blooming gardens;
landscapes, in fine, far more gorgeous and glorious than
all the splendor of the firm  land.  It is true that but
two  kinds of plants, alga  or fucus, prosper upon  the
bottom of the sea, the one a jointed kind, having a
threadlike form, the other jointless, and comnprising all
the species that grow in submarine forests, or float like
green meadows in the open sea. But their forms are so
varied, their colors so brilliant, their number and size so
enormous, that they change the deep into fabulous fairy
gardens. And, as branches and leaves of firm, earth-rooted
trees, tremble and bend on the elastic waves of the air,
or wrestle, sighing and groaning, with the tempest's fury,




102       LEAVES FROM TIE BOO3K OF NATURE.
so "the seaweed, slimy and dark, waves its arms, so lank
and brown," and struggles with the ocean, that pulls at
its roots, and tears its leaves into shreds.  Now and then
the mighty adversary is victorious, and rends them from
their home, when they wander homeless and restless, in
long, broad masses, towards the shores of distant lands,
where often fields are found so impenetrable, that they
have saved vessels from shipwreck, and many a human
life from the hungry waves.
These different kinds of fucus dwell in various parts of
the ocean, and have their own, well-defined limits. Some
cling with hand-like roots so firmlly to the rocky ground
that, when strong waves pull and tear their upper parts,
they often lift up gigantic masses of stone, and drag them,
like huge anchors, for miles and miles.  lMost of them,
however, love the coast, or, at least, a firm sea bottom,
and seldom thrive lower than at a depth of forty fathoms.
Still, they are found in every sea; the most gigantic,
strangely enough, in the two Arctics, where they reach
the enormous length of one thousand five hundred feet.
Occasionally, they cover vast portions of the sea, and form
those fabulous green  meadows on deep, azure ground,
which struck terror in the hearts of early navigators. The
largest of these, called the Sargossa Sea, between the
Azores and the Antilles, is a huge floating garden, stretching, with a varying width of one to three hundred miles,
over twenty-five degrees of latitude, so that Columbus
spent three hopeless, endless weeks, in passing through
this strange land of ocean-prairies!
Take these fuel out of their briny element, and they




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.               103
present you with forms as whimsical as luxuriant. They
are, in truth, nothing more than shapeless masses of jelly,
covered with a leathery surface, and mostly dividing into
irregular branches, which occasionally end in scanty bunches
of real leaves. The first stem  is thin and dry; it dies
soon, but the plant continues to grow, apparently without
limit. A few are eatable. Off Ireland grows the Carraghenmoss, with gracefully shaped and curled leaves, which physicians prescribe for pectoral diseases. Another kind of
sea-fucus furnishes the swallows of the Indian Sea with the
material for their world-famous edible nests.  The sugarfucus of the Northern Sea is broad as the hand, thin as
a line, but miles long; well prepared, it gives the so-called
~Marma-sugar.
The Antarctic is the home of the most gigantic of all
plants of this kind. The bladder-fucus grows to a length:of a thousand feet in the very waters that are constantly congealing, and its long variegated foliage shines in
bright crimson, or brilliant purple.  The middle ribs of
its magnificent leaves are supported underneath by huge
bladders, which enable them  to swim  on the surface of
the ocean.  Off the Falkland  Islands a fucus is found
which resembles an apple-tree; it has an upright trunk,
with forked branches, grass-like leaves, and an abundance
of fruit. The roots and stem cling by means of clasping
fibres to rocks above high-water mark, from them branches
shoot upwards, and its long pendent leaves hang, like the
willow's, dreamy and wo-begone, in the restless waters.
Besides the countless varieties of fucus. the bottom of
the sea is overgrown with the curled, deep purple leaves




104       LEAVES FROMI THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of the sea-lettuce, with large, porous lichens, and many.
branched, hollow alge, full of life and motion in their rosy
little bladders, thickly set with ever-moving, tiny arms.
These plants form  sub-marine forests, growing one into
another, in apparently lawless order, here interlacing their
branches, there forming bowers and long avenues; at one
time thriving abundantly until the thicket seems impenetrable, then again leaving  large openings between wold
and wold, where smaller plants form a beautiful pink turf.
There a thousand hues and tinges shine and glitter in
each changing light. In the exuberance of their luxuriant
growth, the fuci especially seem  to gratify every whim
and freak. Creeping close to the ground, or sending longstretched arms, crowned with waving plumes, up to the
blessed light of heaven, they form pale green sea groves,
where there is neither moon nor star, or rise up nearer
to the surface, to be transcendently rich and gorgeous
in brightest green, gold, and purple.  And, through this
dream-like scene, playing in all the colors of the rainbow,
and deep under the hollow, briny ocean, there sail and
chase each other merrily, gaily painted mollusks, and bright
shining fishes.  Snails of every shape creep slowly along
the stems, whilst huge, gray-haired seals hang with their
enormous tusks on large, tall trees.  There is the gigantic
Dugong, the siren of the ancients, the sidelong shark with
his leaden eyes, the thick-haired sea-leopard, and the sluggish turtle.  Look  how  these  strange, ill-shapen forms,
which ever keep their dreamless sleep far down in the
gloomy deep, stir themselves from time to time! See,
how they drive each other from their rich pastures, how




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.               105
they seem  to awaken in storms, rising like islands from
beneath, and snorting through the angry spray! Perhaps
they graze peacefully in the unbroken cool of the ocean's
deep bed, when lo! a hungry shark comes slily, silently
around that grove; its glassy eyes shine ghost-like with
a yellow sheen, and seek their prey.  The sea-dog first
becomes aware of his dreaded enemy, and seeks refuge
in the thickest recesses of the fucus forest.  In an instant
the whole scene changes. The oyster closes its shell with
a clap, and throws itself into the deep below; the turtle
conceals head and feet under her impenetrable armor, and
sinks slowly downward; the playful little fish disappear
among the branches of the macrocystis; lobsters hide under the thick, clumsily-shapen roots, and the young walrus
alone turns boldly round and faces the intruder with his
sharp, pointed teeth.  The shark seeks to gain his unprotected side.  The battle commences; both  seek the
forest; their fins become entangled in the closely interwoven branches; at last the more agile shark succeeds
in wounding his adversary's side. Despairing of life, the
bleeding walrus tries to conceal his last agony in the
woods, but, blinded by pain and blood, he fastens himself
among the branches, and soon falls an easy prey to the
shark, who greedily devours him.
A few miles further, and the scene changes. Here lies
a large, undisturbed oyster bed, so felicitously styled, a
concentration of quiet happiness.  Dormant though the
soft, glutinous creatures seem to be, in their impenetrable
shells, each individual is leading the beautiful existence
of the epicurean god. The world without, its cares and
fE*




106       LEAVES FROMI THE Boox OF NATURE.
joys, its storms and calms, its passions, good and evilall are indifferent to the unheeding oyster.  Its whole soul
is concentrated in itself; its body is throbbing with life
and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its
pleasures.  Invisible to human eye, a thousand vibrating
cilia move incessantly around every fibre of each fringing
leaflet. To these the rolling waves waft fresh and choice
food, and the flood of the current feeds the oyster, without
requiring an effort.  Each atom  of water that comes in
contact with its delicate gills, gives out its imprisoned ail,
to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid blood.
Here, in the lonely, weary sea, so restless and uneasy,
we find, moreover, that strangest of all productions, half
vegetable and half animal, the  coral.  From  the tree.
shaped limestone, springs forth the sense-endowed arm  of
the polypus; it grows, it feeds, it produces others, and
then is turned again into stone, burying itself in its own
rocky home, over which new  generations build at onoe
new rocky homes.
Thus grows the many-shaped, far-branched coral-tree;
but where the plants of the upper world bear leaves and
flowers, there germinates here, from out of the stone, a
living, sensitive animal, clad in the gay form  and bright
colors of flowers, and adorned with phosphorescent brilliancy. As if in a dream the animal polypus awakens in
the stone for a moment, and like a dream it crystallizes
again into stone.  Yet, what no tree on earth, in all its
vigor and beauty, ever could do, that is accomplished by
these strange animal trees.  They build large, powerful
castles, and  high, lofty steeples, resting upon  the very




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.               107
bottom of the ocean, rising stone upon stone, and cemented
like no other building on this globe.
For they are a strange mysterious race, these "maidens
of the ocean," as the old Greeks used to call them. Their
beauty of form  and color, their marvellous economy, their
gigantic edifices, all had early attracted the attention of
the curious, and given rise to fantastic fables, and amusing errors.  For centuries the world believed that these
bright-colored, delicate flowers, which, out of their element,
appeared  only humble, brown  stones, were real, f-agile
sea-plants, which the contact with air instantaneously turned
into stone.  Even the last century adhered yet to this
belief, and only repeated and energetic efforts succeeded
in establishing their claim  to a place in the animal kingdom.  Charles Darwin, at last, in the charming account
he has given us of his voyages, set all errors aside, and
made us familiar with this most wondrous of all creatures.
Now we all know  their atolls and coral-rings, in the
warm seas of the tropics, with the green crowns of slender palm-trees waving over them in the breeze, and man
living securely in their midst.  For in vain has he himself tried to protect his lands against the fury of the
ocean, in vain has he labored and pressed all the forces
of nature, even all-powerful steam, into his service.  But
the minute polypi work quietly and silently, with modest industry, in  their never-ceasing  struggle with  the
mighty waves of the sea.  A struggle it is, for, strangely
enough, they never build in turbid, never in still waters;
their home is amid the most violent breakers, and living
force, though so minute, triumphs victoriously over the




108       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
blind, terrible might of furious waves.  Thus they build,
year after year, century after century, until at last their
atolls inclose vast lakes in the midst of the ocean, where
eternal peace reigns, undisturbed by the stormy waves and
the raging tempest.  But when their marvellous structure
reaches the surface, it rises no further, for the polypi are
true children of the deep, and as soon as sun and air
touch them they die.
Like enchanted islands, these circular reefs of the corals
bask in the brightest light of the tropics. A light green
ring incloses a quiet inland lake, the ground is white, and
being shallow, shines brilliantly in the gorgeous floods of
light, whilst without the dark, black billows of the ocean
approach in a line of breakers, rushing incessantly in white
foam  against the cliffs; above them  an ever pure, deep
blue ether; and far beyond, the dark ocean -md the hazy
air blending at the horizon and melting harmoniously into
one another.  The effect is peculiarly grand and almost
mllagical, when the coral rings are under water, and the
huge, furious breakers toss up their white crests in vast
circles around the still, calm  waters within, whilst no land,
no rock is seen to rise above the surface of the ocean.
Frequently large reefs, richly studded with graceful palms.
surround on all sides lofty mountains, around whose foot
there grows a luxuriant, tropical vegetation.  Inside of
these reefs the water is smooth and miirror-like, basking
in the warm  sunlight; without, there is eternal warfare;
raging, foaming surges swell and rush in fierce attack
against the firin wall, besieging it year after year, century
after century. Thus, the tiny polypi protect proud man




THiE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.             109
on his threatened  island against the destructive flood:
polypi struggling boldly against the unmeasured ocean!
If all the nations on earth united, they could not build
the smallest of these coral reefs in the ocean-but the
corals build a part of the crust of the great earth! For
their islands count alone in the South Sea by thousands;
all but a few feet above the surface of the sea, which,
around, is unfathomable; all ring-shaped, with a peaceful
lake in the centre; all consisting of no other material but
that of still living corals.  These islands are planted and
peopled by the same waves, by whom they were raised
above high-water mark.  The currents bring seed and
carry large living trees from distant shores; lizards dwelling in their roots, birds nestling in their branches, and
insects innumerable arrive with the tree, and water birds
soon give life to the scanty, little strip of newly made
land.
Thus they meet below, plant and animal; the pale,
hueless fucus twining its long, ghastly arms around the
bright scarlet coral, and through their branches glides the
nautilus with wide-spread sails.  Every ray of light that
falls on the surface, changes hue and tinge below. But
the deep has lights of its own. There is the glimmer of
gorgeous fish in gold and silver armor, the phosphorescent
sheen of the milk-white or sky-blue bells of brilliant
medusme, as they pass through the purple-colored tops of
lofty fuci, and the bright, sparkling light of tiny, gelatinous
creatures, chasing each other along the blue and olivegreen hedges of algm and humbler plants.  When day
fades, and night covers with her dark mantle the sea also,




110      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
these fantastic gardens begin to shine in new, mysterious
light; green, yellow, and red flames are seen to kindle
and to fade away; bright stars twinkle in every direction,
even the darkest recesses blaze up now and then, in bright
flashes of light, and fitful rays pass incessantly to and fro
in the wild, dark world beneath the waves.  Broad furrows of flashing light mark the track of the dolphins
through the midst of the foaming waters. Troops of porpoises are sporting about, and as they cut through the
glistening flood, you see their mazy path bright with intense and sparkling light.  There also passes the huge
moonfish, shedding a pale spectral light from  every fin
and scale, through the crowd of brilliant starfish, whilst
afar from  the coast of Ceylon are heard the soft, melancholy accents of the singing mussel, like the distant notes
of an _/Eolian harp, and yet louder than even the breakers
on the rocky shore.  But the great sea itself is not silent.
Listen, and you will hear how the gray old ocean, heaving
in a gentle motion, sings in an undertone, chiming in with
the great melody, until all the sweet sounds of sea, earth,
and air melt into one low voice alone, that murmurs over
the weary sea and, low or high, ever sings eternal praise
to the throne of Him, who "is mightier than the noise
of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea."
The great botanist, Schleiden, tells us how, off the coast
of the island of Sitka, the bottom of the sea is covered
with dense and ancient forests, where plant grows close
to plant, and branch intertwines with branch. Below, there
lies a closely woven carpet of rich hues, made of countless threads of tiny waterplants, red confervae, and brown



THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.               111
rooted mosses, each branching off into a thousand finely
traced leaves. On this soft couch the luxuriant sea-lettuce
spreads its broad, elegant leaves, a rich pasture for peaceful
snails, and sluggish turtles. Between them shine the gi.
gantic leaves of the irides in brilliant scarlet or delicate
pink, whilst along reef and cliff the dark olive-green fuci
hang in rich festoons, and half cover the magnificent sea.
rose in its unsurpassed beauty.  Like tall trees the laminaria spread about, waving in endless broad ribbons along
the currents, and rising high above the dense crowd.
Alaria send up their long naked stems, which at last expand into a huge, unsightly leaf of more than fifty feet in
length. But the sea-forest boasts of still loftier trees, for
the nereocysti rise to a height of seventy feet; beginning
with a coral-shaped root, they grow up in a thin, thread.
like trunk, which gradually thickens, until its club-shaped
form  grows into an enormous bladder, from  the top of
which, like a crest on a gigantic helmet, there waves
proudly a large bunch of delicate but immense leaves.
These are the palms of the ocean, and these forests grow,
as by magic, in a few months, cover the bottom of the
sea with a most luxuriant growth, and then wither and
vanish, only to reappear soon again in greater richness
and splendor.  And what crowds of strange, ill-shapen,
and unheard of mollusks, fish, and shellfish move among
them!  Here they are huge balls, there many cornered
or starlike, then again long streaming ribbons.  Some are
armed with large, prominent teeth, others with sharp saws,
whilst a few, when pursued, make themselves invisible by
emitting a dark vapor-like fluid.  Here, glassy, colorless




112       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
eyes stare at you with dull, imbecile light-there, deep
blue or black eyes glare with almost human sense and
unmistakable cunning. Through bush and through thicket
there glide the hosts of fierce, gluttonous robbers who fill
the vast deep.  But not only the animals of the oceau
pasture and hunt there; man also stretches out his covetous
hand and demands his share.
Proud ships with swelling sails disdain not to arrest
their bird-like flight, to carry off vast fucus forests which
they have torn up from the bottom of the sea, in order
to manufacture kelp or iodine from the ashes, or to fish
at the peril of their lives for bright corals in the depth.
In the streets of Edinburgh the cry of "buy pepper-dulse
and tangle" is heard in our day, and the Irish fisherman
boldly faces death to snatch a load of Carraghen-moss
from the rapid current. The poor peasant of Normandy
gathers the vast heaps of decaying fuci, which wind and
wave have driven to his shore, in order to carry them
painfully, miles and miles, as manure to his fields, and
the so-called sheep-fucus supports the flocks and herds of
cattle in many a northern island in Scotland and in Norway, through their long, dreary winters.  The men of
Iceland and of Greenland diligently grind some farinaceous
kind of fucus into flour, and subsist, with their cattle, upon
this strange food for many months, whilst their wives
follow Paris fashion, and rouge themselves with the red
flower of the purple fucus.
Here, however, one of the great mysteries which the
ocean suggests, often startles the thinking observer. For
whom did the Almighty create all this wealth of beauty




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.              113
and splendor? Why did Hie conceal the greatest wonders,
the most marvellous creations of nature under that azure
veil, the mirror-like surface of which reflects nearly every
ray of light, and mostly returns, as if in derision, the
searcher's own face as his only reward?
But because all the varied forms, all the minute details
are not seen, is therefore the impression, which the ocean
produces on our mind, less striking or less permanent?
We count not the stars in heaven, we see even but a
small number of all, and yet the starry sky has never
failed to lift up the mind of man to his Maker. So with
the ocean. His way is in the sea, and His path in the
great waters. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;
the Lord is upon many waters. From olden times the
ocean has ever been to the nations of the earth the type
of all that is great, powerful, infinite.  All the fictions
of the Orient and Eastern India, all the myths of Greece
of the "earth-embracing Okeanus," and even the Jewish
tradition that "the earth was without form and void, and
the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,"
speak of the sea as the great source of all life, the very
dwelling-place of the Infinite.
There are nations who never see the ocean. How dreamlike, how fantastic are their ideas of the unknown world!
German poetry abounds with wild, fanciful dreams of mermaids and mermen, and even the sailor-nation has its favorite legends of the Ancient Mariner, and a Tennyson
has sung of fabled mermen and their loves. But truly has
it been said that "they that go down to the sea in ships,




114       LEAVEs FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
that do business in great waters, these see the works of
Jehovah and his wonders in the deep."
Uniform  and monotonous as the wide ocean often appears, it has its changes, and is now mournful, now cheery
and bright.  Only when the wind is lulled and a tcaln
has soothed the angry waves, can the ocean be seen in
its quiet majesty.  But the aspect is apt to be dreary
and lonely; whether we see the dark waves of the sea
draw lazily in and out of rocky riffs, or watch wearily
"the sea's perpetual swing, the melancholy wash of end.
less waves." A2way from the land there is nothing so full
of awe and horror as a perfectly calmn sea: man is spellbound, a magic charm seems to chain him to the glassy
and transparent waters; he cannot move from  the fatal
spot, and death, slow, fearful, certain death, stares him  in
the face. He trembles as his despairing gaze meets the
upturned, leaden eye of the shark, patiently waiting for
him, or as he hears, far below, the sigh of some grim
monster, slowly shifting on his uneasy pillow  of brine.
Fancy knows but one picture more dreadful yet than telmpest, shipwreck, or the burning of a vessel out at sea:
it is a ship on the great ocean in a calm, with no hope
for a breeze. Wild and waste is the view. On the sanme
sunshine, on the same waves the poor mariners gaze day
by day with languid eye, even until the heart is sick and
the body perishes.
At other times it is the gladsome ocean, full of proud
ships, of merry waves, and ceaseless motion, that greet the
eye.  Then the wild, shoreless sea, on which the waves
have rolled  for thousands of years in unbroken might,




THE OCEAN AND Irrs LIFE.             1 15
fills the mind with the idea of infinity, and though+t, escap.
ing from  all visible impression of space and time, rises
to sublimest contefmplations.  Yet, the sight of the clear,
transparent mirror of the ocean, with its light, curling,
sportive waves, cheers the heart like that of a friend, and
reminds us that here, as upon the great sea of life, even
when the wrecked mariner has been cast among the raging
billows, an unseen hand has often guided him to a happy
shore.  For He ruleth the raging of the sea: when the
waves thereof rise, He stilleth them.
This sense of the Infinite, suggested and awakened by
the vast expanse of restless and uneasy waters is, however,
not unmixed with a feeling of deep mysterious awe. The
mind cannot seize nor comprehend this boundless grandeur; hence its mysteriousness. The eye cannot see, no
sense can, in fact, perceive the connection between the stupendous phenomena on the wide ocean and the fate of
man. To human eyes the surging billows and the towering waves are both raised by an invisible, unknown power,
and their depth is peopled with beings uncouth, ungoverned, and unknown. The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary,
like a wide, watery waste, compared with the gay, bright
colors of the land, and the might of gigantic waves that
rush from age to age against the bulwarks of continent
and isle, seems irresistible and able to destroy the world's
foundation. Thus the ocean awakens in us feelings of dark
mystery and grim power; the Infinite carries us off beyond
the limits of familiar thought, and the sea becomes the
home of fabled beings and weird images. A11 sea-shore
countries teem with such stories, legends and traditions;




116       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the fickle sea, the envious ocean, the fierce, hungry waves,
the furious breakers, all become the representatives of so
many human passions.  Our fancy peoples the ocean with
sweet, luring sirens, endowed with magic power to weave
a spell and to draw the yielding mariner down to the
green crystal halls beneath the waves.  There sea-kings
and morgana fairies live in enchanted palaces; monsters
of unheard size and shape flit ghost-like through that dark,
mysterious realm, and huge snakes trail themselves slowly
from  "their coiled sleep in the central deep, amidst all
the dry pied things that lie in the hueless mosses under
the sea." The bewildered and astounded mind tries, in
his own way, to connect the great phenomena of nature
with his fate and the will of the Almighty.  It sees in
homeless, restless birds the harbingers of the coming storm.
in flying fishes the spirits of wrecked seamen, and points
to the Flying Dutchman and the Ancient Mariner as illustrations of the justice of God's wrath.
The strong mind, the believing soul, of course, shake
off all such idle dreams and vain superstitions.  To them
the sea is the very source of energy and courage. The
life at sea is a life of unceasing strife and struggle.  IHence
all sea-faring nations are warlike, fond of adventures, and
poetical.  But the sea's greatest charm  is, after all, its
freedom. The free, unbounded ocean, where man feels no
restraint, sees no narrow limits, where he must rely upon
his own stout heart, strong in faith, where he is alone
with his great Father in heaven, gives him  a sense of
his own freedom  and strength, like no other part of the
earth, and makes him return to the sea, its perils and




THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.            117
sufferings, in spite of all the peace and happiness that the
land can afford him. He knows that even if he dwell in
the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall His hand
lead him and His right hand shall hold him.




11 S        LEAVES FROM  THE BOOK OF NATURE.
IV.
"If we could open and unbind our eyes,
We all, like Moses, should espy,
E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity.
But we despise these, his inferior ways,
(Tho' no less full of miracle and praise):
Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze;
The stars of earth no wonder in us raise,
Tho' these perhaps do, more than they,
The life of mankind sway."-CowLEY.
ONG  years ago I was in the Holy Land.  It was the
last day I was to  spend  near Jerusalem, and  as the
sun  sank  towards the  blue waters of the Mediterranean,
I found  myself once  more  sitting  on  the  banks of the
Jordan.  The air was perfectly calm; the tolling of a convent bell came faintly over the plain from Bethlehem, and
mingled its well-beat cadences with the gentle, playful murmuring of the sacred stream  at my feet.  By my side sat
an Arab, tranquilly following with his eye the light clouds
of his pipe, as they gracefully rose up in the clear, blue
ether. but apparently buried in deep thought. I had known




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               119
him  in his desert home, I had eaten his salt.  He was a
Sheikh, and revered as a saint among his brethren.  He
had now come with me from the far south, first my guide,
but now my friend and companion.  Abu Abdallah was
his name; so I said, "Abu Abdallah, do you believe in
God?" "Thou sayest it, oh brother!" was his quiet answer.  "But Abu Abdallah, I fear you do not believe
that your soul is immortal;' for the old Arab, though my
friend for the while, was a sad thief, and when he swiftly
rode through the desert, there were voices heard, it was
said, mournful voices of men, who called for the sweet
life he had taken from  them. He gazed at me for an
instant from the depth of that unfathomable eye, the precious heirloom of a son of the Orient, bult vouchsafed not
a word.  I was struck by his silence, and asked again.' Oh brother, oh brother, thou wrongest me!' he said, and
quietly rising, he seized upon a little shapeless mnass, that
lay half hid in the fragrant herbs at our feet, and gently
pushing it into the purling stream, he added: "Has not
the God of our fathers, whose prophet is Miahomet, given
us the Rose of Jericho? And does not my brother, who
reads the books of the wise men of the Franks, know that
the burning sands of the desert are its home, and that
it delights in the fiery winds of the west, which scatter
the caravan, and strew the sands of the Sahara with the
bones of the traveller? There it grlows and blossoms, and
our children love it. But the season comes again, and it
withers and dies. And the dread simoomn rises, and seizes
the dry, shrivelled roots, that my brother beholds there,
and on the wings of the ternm[)t the Rose of Jericho rides




120       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
far far east, until it falls upon holy soil. Now let my
brother wait and he shall see!"
And we did wait, waited until the shadows grew long,
and dreamy dusk covered mountain and plain. And the
little shapeless mass became a miracle indeed, and right
before our eyes! The roots had expanded, the leaves had
unfolded, life and breath had returned to the dead child
of the Sahara, and the very blossoms began to show, and
to rival the faint rosy tints of the evening sun!
I mnever forgot that lesson of immortality —I never
forgot that Rose of Jericho.   On my return to Europe I learned that botanists called it "Anastatica," the
flower of resurrection.  I wished to know  more about
it, and that was the way I first learned something about
plants.
I found botany very little attractive-very little deserving of its ancient name of the "lovely science." I
found that botanists would go out into the fields, their textbooks in their pockets, and gather the tender children of
Flora into huge maps, then dry them and classify them,
describe their head-dress and uniform, their rank and dignity, and finally deposit them in magnificent herbariums.
There they were, well dried and well pasted, clad, to be
sure, in all the pomp and circumstance of high-sounding
names-so much Latin hay. But where was their color
and graceful shape? where the breath of air that made
them  gently wave to and fro? where the sweet perfumes
they gratefully sent up to their Maker? where the bright
water at their side, in which they reflected their lovely
form? where the whole glorious scene for which they were




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.              121
intended by Nature, and to which they lent, in return, life
and beauty?
Botanists of' old collected the material only-not without
bestowing unceasing industry upon it, not without making
unheard of sacrifices, often of the very lives of devoted
laborers in that field of science-but they were content
with a form only and a name. They were like the French
officer who, in one of the French revolutions, came to
]ome, and there had the good fortune to discover a highly
important inscription on a monument, dating far back into
antiquity. Proudly, and carefully, he detached one bronze
letter after another, then slipped them, all loosely, into a
bag, and sent them to the antiquarians of Paris to be
deciphered.
But there have arisen, within the last thirty years especially, men who have studied plants with the view, not
only to know who they were, but rather what they were,
how they lived and how they died, what their relation
was to the world, and what their purpose in the great
household of Nature.  Kindred sciences have lent their
aid; the microscope has laid open the innermost recesses
of plants; travellers have brought home new, comprehensive views, and an insight has at last been gained into
the life of the world of plants. Great, startling discoveries
have there been made, new truths and new beauties have
been revealed to us, and natural science has unfolded the
most delica'te resources and most curious relations in the
vegetable kingdom.
Thus we have learned, that it is a fallacy-to be sure
as old as botany itself-that plants have no motion. Aris6




122       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
totle, it is true, had a curious idea, that they were buried
in deep slumber, out of which nothing could awake them,
and that thus, by a kind of enchantment, they were spellbound, until the great word should be spoken, that was
to restore them  to life and motion.  Modern science also
teaches that the characteristic of organic bodies is independent motion, that of inorganic, rest.  But plants have
both life and motion; we dare not, as yet, say whether
it be the effect of a mere dream, of a mechanical pressure
from  without, or of instinctive life. within.  For what do
we as yet know  of the simplest functions of the inner
life of plants?  Who has not, however, observed how the
pale sap courses now through the colossal stems of gigantic
trees, and now through the delicate veins of a frail leaf,
as rapidly and marvellously as through  the body of a
man?  Take a microscope and you will see the plant full
of life and motion. All its minute cells are filled with
countless little currents, now rotary and now up and down,
often even apparently lawless, but always distinctly marked
by tiny grains which are seen to turn in them or to rise
without ceasing.  In this world nothing is motionless, says
a modern philosopher. Let the air be so still, that not a
breath shall be felt to creep through it, and yet the forest
leaves will seem stirred as if in silent prayer. The earth
moves small things and great, all obey the same law, and
the little blade of grass goes around the sun as swiftly
as the tallest pine.  The very shadow dances, as if in idle
mockery, around the immovable flower, and marks the
passing hours of sunshine.
But plants move not only where they stand-they travel




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.                 123
also.  They migrate from  land to land, sometimes slowly,
inch by inch, then again on the wings of the storm. Botanists tell us of actual migrations of plants, and a sue
cessive extension of the domain of particular floras, just
as we speak of the migration of idioms and races.  In
dividual plants, however, travel only as man ought to
travel, when they are young.  If they have once found;a nome, they settle quietly down, grow, blossom, and bear
fruit. Therefore at is, that plants travel only in the seed.
For this purpose, seeds possess often special organs for
a long journey through the air.  Sometimes they are put,
like small bombshells, into little mortars, and fired off
with great precision.  Thus arise the well-known emerald
rings on our greensward, and on the vast prairies of the
West, which some ascribe to electricity, whilst the poet
loves to see in them  traces of the moonlight revels of
fairies.  The truth is scarcely less poetical.  A  small cir
cular fungus squats down on a nice bit of turf.  It prospers and fills with ripening seed.  When it matures, it
discharges its tiny balls in a circle all around, and then
sinks quietly in the ground and dies.  Another season,
and its place is marked by an abundance of luxuriant
grass, feeding upon its remains, whilst around it a whole
ring of young fungi have begun to flourish.'l'hey die
in their turn, and so the circle goes on enlarging and
enlarging, shifting rapidly because fungi exhaust the soil
soon of all matter necessary for their growth, and closely
followed by the rich grass, that fills up their place, and
prevents them  from  ever retracing their steps.
A  similar irritability  enables other plants to scatter




124       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
their seeds far and near, by means of springs bent back,
until a breath of wind, a falling leaf, or the wing of an
insect, causes them to rebound, and thus to send the pollen
with which they are loaded often to a great distance. The
so-called Touch-me-not balsam scatters its ripe seeds, by
such a contrivance, in all directions, and the squirting cucumber is furnished, for the same purpose, with a complete
fire-engine. Some of the geraniums, also, of our greenhouses have their fruit-vessels so curiously constructed, that
the mere contact with another object, and frequently the
heat of the sun alone, suffice to detach the carpels, one
by one, with a snapping sound, and so suddenly as to
cause a considerable jerk, which sends the seeds far away.
Other fruit-vessels again have, as is well known, contrivances the most curious and ingenious, by which they
press every living thing that comes near them into their
service, and  make  it convey them  whithersoever they
please.  Every body is familiar with,the bearded varieties of wheat and other grain; they are provided with
little hooks, which they cunningly insert into the wool or
hair of grazing cattle, and thus they are carried about
until they find a pleasant place for their future home.
Some who do not like to obtain services thus by hook
and crook, succeed by pretended friendship, sticking closely
to their self-chosen companions.  They cover their little
seeds with a most adhesive glue, and when the busy 1be,
comes to gather honey from their sweet blossoms, which
they jauntily hang out to catch the unwary insect, the seeds
adhere to its body, and travel thus on four fine wings
through the wide, wide world.  Bee fanciers know very




A CArT ABOUT PLANTS.              125
well the common disease of their sweet friends, when so
much pollen adheres to their head that they cannot fly,
and must miserably perish, one by one, under the heavy
burden which these innocent-looking plants have compelled
them to carry. We have but little knowledge as yet of
the activity of life in the vegetable world, and of its momentous influence on the welfare of our own race. Few
only know that the gall-fly of Asia Minor decides on the
existence of ten thousands of human beings. As our clippers and steamers carry the produce of the land from
continent to continent, so these tiny sailors of the air perform, under the direction of Divine Providence, the important duty of carrying pollen, or fertilizing dust, from
fig-tree to fig-tree. Without pollen there can be no figs,
and, consequently, on their activity and number depends
the productiveness of these trees; they, therefore, regulate
in fact the extensive and profitable fig trade of Smyrna.
A little, ugly beetle of Kamschatka has, in like manner,
more than once saved the entire population of the most
barren part of Greenland from apparently certain starvation. He is a great thief in his way, and a most fastidious
gourmand, moreover. Nothing will satisfy him on a long
winter evening-and we must charitably bear in mind that
these evenings sometimes last five months without interruption-but a constant supply of lily bulbs. The lilies
are well content with this arrangement, for the being eaten
is as natural to them as to a Feejee-islander; and they
are, as compensation, saved from being crowded to death
in a narrow space, whilst those that escape the little glutton, shoot up merrily, next summer, in rich pastures. Still




126       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
better content are the Greenlanders; for, when their last
mouthful of meat, and their last drop of train-oil are gone,
they dig and rob the little, provident beetle of his carefully hoarded treasure, and, by its aid, nmanage to live until
another season.  It is thus that we see every where the
beautiful and close bonds of love connecting even those
parts of creation which seem to be without sense or voluntary motion, humble subjects of their masters, the elements,
and which yet respond to the action of those mysterious
powers, that rule, under God, in nature.  The flower opens
its gorgeous chalice, filled with rich honey, to the tiny
insect; the insect, in return, carries the fructifying pollen
to the flower's distant mate, and thus propagates it anew.
The herbs of the field send forth their luxuriant tufts
of leaves for the browsing cattle, and sheep and oxen
carry the seed in their hides from  meadow to meadow.
The trees themselves, planted by stones that birds have
dropped, grow and flourish until:" they are strong, and the
height thereof reaches unto heaven, and the beasts of the
field have shadow under it, and the fowls of heaven dwell
in the boughs thereof."
When neither quadruped nor insect can be coaxed or
forced to transport the young seed; that wish to see the
world, they sometimes launch forth on their own account,
and trust to a gentle breeze or a light current of air,
rising from  the heated surface of the earth.  It is true,
nature has given them  wings to fly with, such as man
never yet was skilful enough to devise for his own use.
The maple-our maple, I mean-has genuine little wings,
with which it flies merrily about in its early days; others,




A CHIAT ABOUT PLANTS.              127
like the dandelion and the anemone, have light downy appendages, or little feathery tufts and crowns, by which they
are floated along on the lightest breath of air, and enjoy,
to their heart's content, long autumnal wanderings. These
airy  appendages are marvellously well adapted for the
special purpose of each plant: some but just large enough
to waft the tiny grain up the height of a molehill, others
strong enough to carry the seed of the cedar from the
low valley to the summit of Mount Lebanon. The proudest
princes of the vegetable kilngdomn often depend for their
continuance on these little feathery tufts, which but few
observers are apt to notice.  A recent writer tells us that,
some years ago, the only palm-tree the city of Paris
could then boast of, suddenly blossomed. Botanists were
at a loss how to explain the apparent miracle, and sceptics
began to sneer, and declared thhat, the laws of nature had
failed. An advertisement appeared in the papers, inquiring
for the unknown mate of the solitary tree. And 1be.hold,
in an obscure court-yard away off, there had lived, unknown and unnoticed, another small palm; it also had
blossomed apparently alone and  in vain-but a gentle
breeze had come, and carried its flower-dust to its distant companion, and the first palm-flowers ever seen in
France were the result of this unseen mediation.
Reckless wanderers, also, there are among the plants,
who waste their substance, and wildly rove about in the
world.  The rose of Jericho, which lwe have already noticed, and a club-moss of Peru, are such erratic idlers that
wander from  land to land.  When they have blossomed
and borne fruit, and when the dry season comes, they




128       LEAVES FROM TIIE BOOK OF NATURE.
wither, fold their leaves together, and draw up their roots,
so as to form  a light, little ball.  In this form  they are
driven hither and thither on the wings of the wind, rolling
along the plains in spirit-like dance, now whirling in great
circles about, now caught by an eddy and rising suddenly
high into the air.  It is not until they reach a moist
place that they care to rest a while, but then they settle
down at once, send down their roots, unfold their leaves,
assume a bright green, and become quiet, useful citizens
in their own great kingdom of plants.
There are, however, thousands of plants having neither
servants nor wings to gratify their wishes, who seemn condemned to see their offspring die at their feet. But here
again we see how the resources of nature are always far
superior to the apparent difficulty. These very seeds which
seemed so hopelessly lost, often travel fastest of all; they
travel on the wings of birds. The latter steal our fruit,
our cherries and grapes; they carry them off to some convenient place, eat the pulpy part, and drop the stone or
the seed where it is most likely to find a genial soil and
a sheltered home. Even their evil propensities must thus
serve the purposes of nature. Jays and pies, it is well
known, are fond of hiding grains and acorns among grass
or moss and in the ground, and then, poor things, forget
the hiding place, and lose all their treasure.  Squirrels,
also, marmots and mice bury nuts under ground, and often
so deep that neither light nor warmth can reach the hidden store.  But then comes man, and cuts down the pine.
wood, and lo! to the astonishment of all, a young coppice
of oaks shoots up, and the wonder is, where all the acorns




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               129
have so suddenly come from. It is not without its ludicrous side, to see even the ingenuity of men baffled by
these unconscious but faithful servants of nature.  We are
told that the Dutch, with a kind of sublime political wisdom, destroy the plants that proucee our nutmeg, for the
purpose of keeping up their monopoly, and high prices
into the bargain, by the limited amount of the annual
produce, which is entirely in their hands. With this view,
they used to cut down every tree of the kind in the
Molucca Islands, where it was originally indigenous, and
to punish, with the severest penalties, the mere possession of a nut. But it so happens that a little bird of
the same Moluccas, also, is fond of these nuts; and as
the air cannot very well be guarded and watched, even
by Dutch ingenuity, he insists upon eating them, and carries the seed to distant islands of the ocean, causing the
unfortunate Hollanders infinite trouble and annoyance.
Seeds that have not learned to fly with their own
or other people's wings are taught to swim. Trees and
bushes which bear nuts, love low grounds and the banks
of rivers. Why?   Because their fruit is shaped like a
small boat, and the rivulet playing with its tiny ripples
over silvery sands, as well as the broad wave of the
Pacific, carry their seed alike, safely and swiftly, to new
homes. Rivers float down the fruits of mountain regions,
into deep valleys and to far off coasts, and the Gulf Stream
of our own Atlantic carries annually some of the rich
products of the torrid zone of America to the distant
shores of Iceland and Norway. Seeds of plants growing
in Jamaica and Cuba have been gathered in the quiet coves




130       LEAVES FROMZ THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of the Hebrides.  The gigantic cocoa-nut itself, weighing
not rarely more than five pounds, but air-tight in its close
shell, and buoyant by its light fibrous coat, is thus drifted
from island to island, and rides safely on the surges of
the ocean from the Seychelles to the distant coast of
Malabar.  There it lodges, and germinates in the light
moist sand, so that the Indians of old fancied that they
grew  under water, and called them  sea-cocoas.  A  still
more striking provision of nature is this, that there are
some seeds o.f this kind so exquisitely adjusted to their
future destination, as to sink in salt water, while they swim
with safety in sweet water.
Large vegetable masses even travel on the great waters
of the ocean. Compact fields of marine plants are occasionally met with in the southern seas, and on the coast
of Florida, large enough to impede the progress of vessels,
and filled with millions of crustacee.  They are not unfiequently so firm and so extensive as to afford a building
place for the nests of aquatic birds and even for quadrupeds, who thus float at the mercy of wind and waves to
their new unknown home. Amid the Philippine Islands,
also, after a typhoon, floating islands are fallen in with,
consisting of matted plants and wood, with tall, old trees,
growing on them.  These strange, insular rafts, are carried
along by swift currents, or wafted onward by the slightest
breath of air which fans the foliage of their dense woods,
until, after a passage of weeks or months, they land, like
a new ark, on some distant shore.  The very plants of
our fields, that sustain our life, are there only because
man has been compelled to take them  with him  on his




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               131
travels from continent to continent.  Wheat has thus left
its first home in Asia and travelled westward around the
world, whilst maize, and potatoes, have gone in the other
direction, from our land to the farthest east. And, unfortunately, man had to take the bad with the good, and,
for his sins no doubt, weeds seem  to follow him  more
closely, and to adhere more tenaciously to his home, than
all other friends, so that scholars have succeeded in determining the race of early settlers in many a country
by studying the weeds that were found in the place of
their former habitations.
But we need not go to far-off countries to see plants
wandering about in the world: our own gardens afford
us, though on a smaller scale, many an instance of the
travelling propensities of these very plants that are so
much pitied because they cannot move about and choose
their own home. Every casual observer even knows that
many bulbs, like those of crocus, tulips, or narcissus, rise
or sink by forming new bulbs above or below, until they
have reached the proper depth of soil which best suits
their constitution-or perhaps their fancy.  Some orchids
have a regular locomotion: the old root dies, the new
one forms invariably in one and the same direction, and
thus they proceed onwards year after year, though at a
very modest, stage-coach rate.  Strawberries, on the contrary, put on seven-league boots, and often escape from
the rich man's garden to refresh the weary traveller by
the wayside.  Raspberries, again, mine their way stealthily
under ground, by a subterranean, mole-like process; blind,
but not unguided, for they are sure to turn up in the




132       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
brightest, sunniest spot they could have chosen, had their
eyes been wide open, and their proceedings above ground.
As if in return for the manifold services which plants
require and receive from their fellow creatures, they show
kindness of their own to animal life, and shelter and feed
the most timid as well as the noblest of beings, with the
hospitality of their generous life. In early childhood already we are taught, that even the smallest of seeds, the
mustard seed, grows up to be a tree, "in whose branches
the fowls of the heavens have their habitation,"' that "both
Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine
and under his fig-tree, all the days of Solomon," and
that Deborah, the prophetess, "dwelt under a palm-tree."
Modern science has furnished us numerous new and striking instances of the great variety of life, which is thus
intimately connected with the vegetable kingdom. It is
not only that the plaintive nightingale silngs in the murmuring poplar, whilst the gay butterfly loves the sweetscented rose, that the sombre yew hides the owl's nest,
and the dark northern pine harbors the fur-clad squirrel.
Animals, invisible to the naked eye, have been found to
float in the sap of trees, and even the smallest moss has
its own tiny insect, which it boards and lodges. Aphides
and gall insects live, in every sense of the word, on the
leaves of plants, flies and butterflies on their flowers,
and ants and worms crowd upon them, after death, in
countless multitudes. Every plant, moreover, is inhabited
by some insect, to which it affords an exclusive home.
Many caterpillars are thus born and die with the leaf on
which they live. whilst, on the other hand, the proud




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.              133
monarch-oak alone supports seventy different kinds of in.
sects-a swarm, which sets all measurement at defiance,
and, moreover, replaces by numbers and the enormous
voracity which they exhibit, what they want in bodily
magnitude.
Already Pliny was surprised to see small ants run up
the tall cypress, and devour its rich fruit with surprising
avidity; he wondered that so insignificant an insect should
be allowed to destroy the seed of the largest tree of his
country. But plants have to support guests of every size
and shape. The butterfly and its less gaudy relations,
drink with their long trunks sweet honey out of gorgeously colored flower-cups; four-winged bees carry away
the precious dust of anthers in large spoons, fastened to
their thighs; gall insects pierce with sharp daggers the
tender leaf, drink its refreshing juice, and deposit their
eggs in the delicate texture; beetles gnaw and saw with a
hundred curiously shaped instruments through the hardest
wood of noble trees, and naked, helpless-looking worms
make the very trunk their cover and their home, and with
sharp augers often destroy whole forests. The ingenious
ant of South America has its winter residence in the
warm ground, and its cool summer house on tall plants.
For there grows on the banks of the Amazon river a
gigantic reed, nearly thirty feet high, which is frequently
crowned with a large ball of earth, like the golden globe
on the utmost end of a lofty church steeple. This is the
comfortable home of myriads of ants, which retire to these
safe dwellings, high and dry, at the time of rains and
during the period of inundation, rising and descending in




134       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE
the hollow  of the reed, and  living on what they find
swimming on the surface of the water. Another curious
lodger of a South American plant is the famous cochineal
bug, well known from the precious red color that bears
its name, and which it draws from a certain cactus until
its body becomes impregnated with brilliant scarlet.  It
is probably the most sedentary of all insects, making but
one short journey in early life, and then settling down
for ever upon one and the same spot. As soon, namely,
as the young insect leaves its egg, it manifests great activity and a restless desire to travel.  But alas! it finds
itself upon a prickly, thorny stem, hanging high in the
air, and in contact with no other. But nature soon comes
to its aid, and sends a small spider to spin a silken
thread from branch to branch. Upon this slender, trembling bridge the young cochineal wanders boldly out to
a new world, seeks a promising spot, deliberately sinks
its fragile trunk into the juicy leaf-and never draws it
back again, drinking, drinking, like a toper as he is, through
his whole existence.
Even larger inhabitants are often found on quite small
plants. Thus England produces a slight but well supported thistle, which is frequently found to bear little
elaborate nests, a few  inches above the ground.  These
contain  not insects, but mice, though  of the smallest
variety known, and are occasionally large enough to hold
as many as nine young ones, carefully stowed away and
well secured against all enemies and dangers.
Birds seem, of course, the most natural lodgers of
plants; they find there abundance of nourishment, all the




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               135
material for building their nests, and a well-protected home.
The eagle gathers the knotted branches of oaks or pines,
to bring up his fierce brood upon the hard, uncushioned
couch; the thorn tears a handful of wool from the passing
sheep, for its tiny inhabitants, and the despised mullein
covers its broad leaves with the softest of downs, to line
the bed of the delicate children of the humming bird.
There is probably no bush and no tree, that has not its
own particular bird; every where do the fowl of the air
find a foliage, thicker or thinner, to shelter them  against
rain, heat and cold; a hollow trunk affords safe and warm
lodgings; soft moss carpets their dwellings, and insects
and worms swarm around, to offer, at the same time, food
in abundance. The birds give, in return, life and sound
to the immovable plant. Song birds of many kinds perch
and sing their beautiful anthems on every spray; locusts
thrill their monotonous and yet pleasing note among a
world of leaves through long summer noons, and the katydid utters its shrill cry during sultry nights.  They all
love their home, making it their dwelling by night and
by day, and many are the instances in which birds, that
had long lived in certain trees, have died from true sorrow, when the latter were felled.
Monkeys, also, it is well known, are frugivorous animals,
and by their food as well as by the peculiar structure
of their body, so closely bound to trees that they but
seldom leave them. The tree-frog clings to the rugged
trunk, mingling its faded colors with those of the bark,
and feasting upon the insects hid in each crevice. The
unsightly sloth fastens its enormous claws to the branches,




136       LEAVES FROM THE BOOKeS OF NATURE.
and passes thus, head downward, with astounding alacrity,
from  tree to tree; whilst even the black tiger of South
America, finding the undergrowth too dense and impenetrable, lives on trees, and in his bloody race, leaps from
branch to branch, until he has hunted down his exhausted
prey.
Nor has man himself neglected to avail himself of trees,
as a dwelling or a home. Already Lucinius Mutianus,
an ex-Consul of Lycia, took pleasure in feasting twentyone guests in a hollow plane-tree; and modern travellers
tell us of a gigantic Boabab in. Senegambia, the interior
of which is used as a public hall for national meetings,
whilst its portals are ornamented with rude, quaint sculptures, cut out of the still living wood. The sacred figtree of India, which, as Milton says, is seen'Branching so broad along, that in the ground
The bending twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother tree, a pillar's shade
High overarch'd, with echoing wallks between,"
is worshipped as sacred, and the lazy, helpless priest, the
Bonze, builds himself a hut, not unlike a bird's cage, in
its branches, where he spends his life, dreaming in contemplative indolence, under its cool, pleasant shade. Nay,
whole nations live in the branches of trees. There is a
race of natives in South America, west of the mouth of
the Orinoco, the Guaranis, who have never yet been completely subdued, thanks mainly to their curious habitations.  The great Humboldt tells us, that they twine most
skilfully the leaf-stalks of the Mauritius palm  into cords,
and weave them with great care into mats. These they




A CIIAT ABOUT PLANTS.             137
suspend high in the air from branch to branch, and cover
them with clay; here they dwell, and in a dark night
the amazed and bewildered traveller may see the fires
of their dwellings high in the tops of lofty forests.
More civilized countries even have not left us without
similar, though isolated instances of men who have found
a dwelling in the trees of the forest.  Evelyn tells us
of the huge trunk of an oak in Oxfordshire, which served
long as a prison for felons; and he who lived in the
shades of old Selborne "so lovely and sweet," mentions
an elm on Blechington Green, which gave for months reception and shelter to a poor woman, whom the inhospitable people would not receive into their houses. When
she reappeared among them, he says, she held a lusty boy
in her arms.  Men are, however, more frequently buried
than born in trees. The natives of the eastern coast of
Africa hollow out soft, worm-eaten Boababs, and bury in
them those who are suspected of holding communion with
evil spirits. Their bodies, thus suspended in the dry chambers of the trunk, soon become perfect mummies. The
Indians of Maine had a more touching custom of the kind.
They used to turn up a young maple-tree, place the body
of a dead chief underneath, and then let the roots spring
back, thus erecting a sylvan monument to his memory.
Where there is life, there are plants, and on land and
on water, on the loftiest mountain top, and in the very
bowels of the earth, every where does man find a plant
to minister to his support and enjoyment, every where he
sees plants quietly and mysteriously perform their humble
duty in the great household of nature.  Plants alone



138       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
it would, at first sight, appear-have no home, for they
seem to be at home every where. Turn up the soil, where
you will, to any depth, and such a rich abundance of
vegetable life is mixed with the loam, that almost instantaneously plants innumnerable spring up from  seeds, which
may have lain slumbering for thousands of years in the
warm  bosom  of our mother earth.  Man himself cannot
master this exuberance of vegetable life.  HIe may change
it by cultivation, it is true, but that also only for a time.
And what is a generation, or two, in comparison with the
eternal earth?  Do not, even in our day, and before our
eyes, lofty trees raise their proud heads, where our fathers
cut Bte green turf with their sharp plough?  In vain does
man take the Alpine rose from  the banks of its pure
mountain brook and plant it in the lowly valley; in vain
does he bring costly seeds from  the Indies and the warml
ciimes of the tropics, even to the ice-clad coast of Norway.  They live and pine and die.  In vain does he sometimes seek to reverse nature itself.  He places bubbling
fountains on the top of high hills, and plants lime-trees
and poplars between great masses of rocks; vineyards
must adorn his valleys, and meadows spread their soft
velvet over mountain sides.  But "naturam  furca expellas,
tamen  etsi recurret."  A  few  years' neglect, and  how
quickly she resumes her sway! Artificial lakes become
gloomy marshes, bowers are filled with countless brier:s,
and  stately avenues overgrown with  reckless profusion.
The plants of the soil declare war against the intruders
from  abroad, and claim  once micre their birthright to the
land of their fathers.  The fine weell.trimnmled turf is smo



A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.                 139
thered under a thousand coarser plants; rank grass and
fat clover overspread the exotics; briers climb up with
the aid of hooks and ladders, as if they were storming
a fortress; nettles fill the urns of statues with their thick
tufts, and unsightly mosses creep upon the very faces of
marble beauties.  Wild cherry-trees and maples seize on
every cornice and cleft of the stately mansion; hardy invincible roots penetrate into the slightest opening, until
at last victory is declared, and the trees of the forest wave
their rich foliage over the high turrets, and raise triumphantly on spire and pinnacle, the gorgeous banner of
Nature.
Thus we gain the impression, so encouraging and pleasing to reflecting  man, that all nature is everywhere full
of life —a life, moreover, varied by a thousand shades and
as yet but little known.  For there is high life and low
life among plants as among men. The stately palm raises
its high, unbroken pillar, crowned with sculptured verdure,
only in the hot vapors of Brazilian forests and tropical
climes, and like a true "king of the grasses," as the ancient
Indians called the noble tree, it must fare sumptuously
and upon the richest of earth's gifts, before it justifies the
prophet's saying, that "the righteous shall flourish like the
palm-tree."  How  humble, by its side, the lowly imoss,
barely visible to the naked eye, clad in most modest garb,
and  yet faithfully covering, with its warm  mantle, the
dreary, weather-beaten boulders of northern granite, or carpeting our damp grottoes, and making them resplendent
with its phosphorescent verdure! The brilliant flower of
Queen Victoria's namesake, the  most superb cradle in




140       LEAVES FROM TIIE Boox OF NATURE.
which child was ever rocked, must needs float its rosy
leaves on the warm  bosom of the silent lakes of Guiana,
and the aristolochia of South America, whose flowers are
large enough to serve Indian boys as hats or helmets,
deigns not to live, unless it can bathe its delicate roots
in the shady waters of the Magdalen river. Theirs is the
warm golden light of the sun, theirs the richest of soils,
the purest of waters, an everlasting summer, an unbroken
enjoyment. And yet, are they really more beauteous and
graceful than the humble house-leek, which flourishes under
circumstances that would be fatal to almost all other
plants? In the very driest places, where not a blade of
grass, not a spire of moss can grow, on naked rocks, old
crumbling walls, or sandy, parched plains, these stepchildren of nature are seen to thrive and to prosper.
Alternately exposed to the heaviest dews at night, and the
fiercest rays of the noonday sun, they withstand all, and
live upon so small a particle of soil, that it seems to
them more a means of keeping them stationary, than a
source of nutriment.  Rock-roses bear that name, because
they will only flourish in dry, rocky places, where other
plants would never find a due supply of moisture. These
rocks they are industriously engaged in ornamenting with
a profusion of brilliantly colored flowers, for nature loves
to combine every where the beautiful with the useful.
Still, their beauty is but short-lived; their blossoms usually
expand at night, and after a few hours' exposure to the
sun, they perish. But their long evergreen branches trail,
year after year, with great beauty, over the rough banks
and rocky cliffs that give them a shelter and a home.




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               141
The very sand of the sea, dry and drifting at the mercy
of the waves, fickle and false to a proverb, is not too
poor for a most useful plant, the so-called sand-reed. It
has no beauty of form to please the eye, no delicacy of
structure to engage our attention, the cattle themselves
will not touch it. But when planted by the hand of man,
to give firmness to dykes and embankments, it pierces
them with an entangled web of living structure, which
offers a resistance stronger than that of the gigantic walls
of fabled Cyclops, and is but rarely overcome by the
violence of the storm and the fury of the waves. The
loose sand of South American deserts still harbors little
cacti, so small, and so slightly rooted in their unstable
home, that they get between the toes of the Indian-and
even the fearful deserts of Africa, those huge seas of sand
without a shadow, are at least surrounded by forest shores,
clothed in perpetual verdure; even in their midst a few
solitary palm-trees, sighing in loneliness for the sweet rivulets of the oasis, are scattered over the awful solitude,
and wherever a tiny thread of water passes half concealed through the endless waves of sand, a line of luxuriant green, marks it to the exhausted traveller, and
reminds him of the green pasture and still waters of
Holy Writ.
Nor are plants dwellers upon land only: the waters also
teem with vegetable life, and the bed of the mighty ocean
is planted with immense submarine forests and a thousand
varied herbs, from the gigantic fucus, which grows to the
length of many hundred feet, and far exceeds the height
of the tallest tree known, to the little yellow blossom




142       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of the duck-weed on our ponds.  Every river has its own
reed; some, covered with snow for a part of the year,
hardly rise above the sluggish, silent waters of the Irtis
in cold Siberia; others form  ever-murmuring forests of
graceful bamboo on the banks of the Ganges.  Fcr the
earth opposes every where to the encroaching tides of the
ocean, another sea of restless vegetation, yielding constantly, and yet never giving way, with its green waves,
so delicate, fragile, and airy, and yet as strong in their
very weakness as the deep-blue waves of the ocean. Further out at sea, enormous sponges fill vast spaces of the
watery realm, and, when mature, break loose from  their
safe anchorage, to float in countless myriads through the
surrounding sea.  For here, also, nature pours out, with
a lavish hand, living food, storing even the waves with
nutriment for their gigantic denizens, and literally casting
bread upon the waters for the animate world of the ocean.
In other zones, immense and permanent banks of verdure
are met with, by far exceeding the largest prairies on land,
true oceanic meadows. For twenty-three long days did
Columbus sail through one of these marvels of western
waters, covering an area like that of all France; and yet
there it is, even now, as large and as luxuriant as it was
more than three centuries ago.
Truly, man is not alone a cosmopolite. Plants precede
him  as they follow his footsteps, wherever restless, ambition may lead him:  Their domain is the whole earth.
They are not driven away by the cold of the Arctic; they
endure the fiery heat of the volcano.
Trees and shrubs gather around the desolate North Cape




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.                143
in spite of eternal winter, and relentless storms. Ice-clad
Spitzbergen even boasts still of a willow, the giant of these
Arctic forests, the woody stems of which, it is true, creep
so close to the ground, and conceal themselves so anxiously
in the turf bogs, that the small leaves, never rising more
than an inch or two, are hardly discoverable amid the
thick moss. The plains bordering on the Icy Sea are fall
of cryptogamous plants, and show even, here and there,
patches of green turf, a most gladsome sight to the weary
traveller. The swampy districts, also, which there extend
further than eye can reach, are covered with a closely woven
carpet of mosses, minute in size, and yet so abundant,
that they support immense herds of reindeer for a whole,
dreary season.  Even  the perpetual snow  of the polar
regions is often adorned with beautiffil forests of diminutive plants, and extensive fields of bright scarlet are seen,
consisting of myriads of minute fungi and microscopic
mushrooms, which form the so-called "gory dew," beheld
by early navigators with a wonder nearly akliin to awe.
Captain Richardson found the ground near the Arctic circle,
though it remains frozen throughout the whole year to
a depth of twenty inches, covered with bright flowering
plants; and the great Humboldt saw at a height of more
than eighteen thousand feet, on the uncovered rocks of the
Chimborazo, traces of vegetation piercing through the eternal snow of those inhospitable regions. So far from ice
and snow being hostile to plants, it has been observed that
some of the most beautiful flowers on earth grow in the
very highest and bleakest parts of the Alps. There the
snow has hardly melted, and lies still close at hand, when




144       LEAVES FROM THE BOOX OF NATURE.
these Alpine roses unfold their brilliant flowers, with a
haste, as if they knew how costly were the moments of
their short summer-time. They seem to devote their whole
strength to the development of their flowers, and as their
stems are but short and partially buried in the ground,
their bright blossoms often appear to spring immediately
from the unsightly drift and gravel, in which they live.
Thus growing on the very edge of bare steep cliffs, of
vast dazzling snow fields, and dark-blue glaciers, are seen
these graceful little plants, decked with a profusion of
flowers of the purest and brightest colors. The tiny forgetnme-not of the Alps blossoms by the side of huge boulders
of rock, and sweet roses unfold their rich crowns at the
foot of massive blocks of ice, exhibiting a beautiful picture of loveliness mated with grandeur.
The vegetable kingdom extends its colonies even into
the bowels of the earth-the so-called subterranean flora
is large and beautiful. Wherever rain or surface water
can percolate, either through natural cavities or openings
made by the hand of man, there plants will appear, and
busily hide the nakedness of the rock.  Far below the
soil on which we tread, plants thrive and adorn our globe.
When the miner first opens his shaft, or the curious
traveller discovers a new cave-everywhere they find the
rough rock and the snow-white stalactite covered with a
delicate, graceful network of an usnea, or, as in the coal
mines near Dresden, a luminous fungus shines brightly,
and turns these regions of darkness into the semblance
of a begemmed and illuminated enchanter's palace. The
narlrow, deep crevices of the glaciers, have a vegetation




A CHAT AB3OUT PLANTS.              145
of their own, and even in the thick-ribbed ice of the
Antarctic seas, marine plants have been found floating.
Heat deters plants as little as cold; the fiery furnace
of volcanoes is tapestried with confervme, and hot springs,
whose breath is certain destruction to animal life, water
the roots of plants, which bear beautiful blossoms. There
are springs in Louisiana whose temperature is 145~ F.,
and yet not only mosses, but shrubs and trees are seen
to bathe their roots in their boiling waters.  In the Fumarole, on the fairy island of Ischia, near Naples, a sedge
and a fern grow in the midst of ascending vapors, and
in a soil so hot that it instantly burns the hand which
attempts to touch their roots! Nay, in the very geysers
of Iceland, which boil an egg in a few minutes, a small
plant grows, blossoms, and reproduces itself annually.
If land and water abound thus with vegetable life, the
realms of the air are not less well peopled, at least with
germs and seeds of plants; they float upon every breeze,
are wafted up and down the heavens, and round and about
our great mother earth. Nothing is more startling, more
wonderful, than the almost omnipresence of fungus germs
in the atmosphere. A morsel of ripe fruit left exposed to
the air, affords at once ample evidence of this teeming,
living world around us. In a very short time, a delicate,
velvet-like covering envelopes the decomposing mass, and
presently acquires the utmost luxuriance of growth. And
a wonderful race are these fungi, the earth's vegetable
scavengers; called upon by the mysterious distribution of
duties in nature, to destroy all decaying matter, and to
absorb noisome exhalations, they grow with a rapidity that
7




146      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
outstrips decay itself. A very common kind of puff-ball
swells, in one night, from a minute speck to the size of
a gourd, and there is a fungus found on the continent of
Europe, which has been known to increase from a point
invisible to the naked eye, to a weight of more than a
hundred pounds! Or take the simple mould of every
day's life. Arm your eye, and you will behold myriads
of delicate forms, standing up in jaunty attitudes, and
rearing their tender filaments over the decaying mass, in
which they are living in luxurious plenty. They lengthen,
they swell, they burst, and again scatter their light and
invisible germs, like a cloud of smoke, into the air. There
they float around us, like motes in the sunbeam; there
we breathe them, for they have been found in the aircells of birds, and even upon the membranes of the lungs
of living men. Our common house-fly may be seen in
fall, glued by cold and inertion to the window-pane, and
at once covered with its own appropriate mould; in the
West Indies, wasps have been observed flying about with
plants of their own length hanging down from behind their
heads. It is a fungus, the germs of which were introduced
through the breathing pores into the body of the poor
victim, where they take root, and feeding upon the living
substance, develope their luxuriant vegetation.
If we see thus vegetable life on land and on sea, amid
snow and ice, as well as on the burning lava, we might
well question, whether in this astounding variety of form
and home, there can be any law or permanent rule. And
yet we find here, also, the handwriting of the Almighty, in
clear and indelible characters on every page of the great




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               147
book' of Nature. Almost every kind of soil has its own
peculiar plants; some prosper only on limestone, others
on granite, and a few are, as Evelyn quaintly says, "faithful lovers of watery and boggie places."  But the distribution of plants shows itself mainly, when viewed in
larger masses and groups. A.s winter is cold and silent,
but summer all radiant with forms of life and beauty,
so differ Pole and Equator. Near the former vegetable
life is nearly impossible; around the other we behold the
grandest display of nature's most gorgeous gifts.  The
glorious tapestry of the earth, we are told by a master of
the science, is not woven alike every where, nor is the
rich and variegated carpet, with which plants cover the
nakedness of the rock, pieced together, without plan or
rule, of separate patches. It is, rather, like an embroidering of skilful hands, worked from a grand and beautiful
design.
For heat and moisture are the two great requisites of
plants: without them no vegetation is possible-heat, especially, is of all their necessaries of life the most important:
it is the iron sceptre which rules the vegetable kingdom,
whether the plant hang in the air, be half buried in the
ground, or for its lifetime covered with water. The same
degree of heat produces every where the same union of
kindred plants; hence the arrangement of all vegetables
according to zones on our globe. The Arctic, nearest to
the poles, where lichens still support the reindeer, and
cheerful mosses cover the bare rock, is destitute of treesbut it has dwarfish perennial plants, with large flowers,
often of beautiful colors; it has its gentle smiling meadows




148       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
and green pastures, which we miss so sadly in the sunny
South. More varied, and of higher order, is the flora of
the temperate zone, though not approaching in luxurious
abundance and gorgeous brilliancy the splendor of the
torrid zone. But what can compensate for the periodical,
anxiously awaited, reawakening of nature, at the first breath
of the mild air of spring?  What is more beautiful than
the fresh evergreen foliage of firs and cypresses, so rare
in the tropics, which cheer up the desolate winter landscape, and loudly tell the nations of the north, that,
though snow and ice cover the earth, the inward life of
plants is never extinguished, and that spring will come
after winter as surely as eternity comes after death? The
great leading features of the temperate zone are its vast
plains and steppes, which the eye of man cannot compass,
and where he feels himself, as on the high sea, face to
face with his Maker. These large prairies, or savannahs,
are covered with luxuriant, waving grass, expressive of all
that is cheerful in their airy grace and tremulous lightness.
In other regions, strange, fantastic-looking soda plants, sue
culent and evergreen, strike the eye and dazzle it with
their brilliant, snow-white  crystals-or, as  on  Russian
steppes, plants of all kinds are so densely crowded on
the unmeasured plain, that the wheels of the traveller's
carriage can but with difficulty crush them, and he himself is half buried in the close, high forest of grasses, too
tall to allow him to look around.
In the torrid zone all vegetable life attains the highest
development, from the exclusive and constant union of a
high temperature with abundant moisture.  Here we find




A CHAT ABOUT PLAINTS.             149
the greatest size combined with the greatest variety, the
most graceful proportions by the side of the most grotesque forms, decked with every possible combination of
brilliant coloring. Here also-and here alone-are found
truly primeval forests, impenetrable to man and beast,
from the luxuriance of thickly interwoven creepers above
and the density of a ligneous undergrowth, through which
not a ray of light can penetrate.
As the distribution of plants in zones depends almost
exclusively on the amount of heat which they require for
their development, we find that the succession of plants
from the foot of mountains upwards to their summit, is
nearly the same as that from the middle latitudes to the
poles. For heat decreases in the same proportion by
height above the level of the sea as by latitude; and
the horizontal zones on a mountain's side present the same
variety of plants, as the great zones mentioned, only in
a much smaller space, as we feel the temperature of the
atmosphere diminish more rapidly in ascending a lofty
mountain, than in travelling from the tropics to the poles.
Hence the same peculiar plants are found in the arctic
zone, and on the highest mountains which reach the line
of perpetual snow; the same humble but beautiful flowers
blossom in Spitzbergen, or on the icy shores of Victoria
Land, and on the desolate cliffs of the Andes, the Alps
and the snow-covered heights of the Himalaya. Even under the tropics, the evergreens of the north appear again:
the most elevated regions of Peru, and the lofty plains
of Asiatic mountains are covered with superb forests of
that noble tree of which the poet says:




150        LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
"Where summer smiles with verdure crown'd,
Where winter flings his storms, the pine is found;
With heaven aspiring head it grows'Mid burning sun-and everlasting snows."
On the highlands of Mexico, and the mountains of Java,
the traveller from the cold north meets with surprise the
chestnut and the noble oak of his own distant home. It
is one of the most interesting enjoyments offered to the
layman as well as to the botanist, thus to pass from zone
to zone in the course of a few hours or days at most.
Rising, for instance, from the blue waters of the Medi —
terranean, his eye dwells at first with wondering delight
on perfumed orange gardens and dusky olive-trees, "fair
and of goodly fruit;" he passes through thickets of fragrant
myrtle, laurel, and evergreen oaks, above which tower the
stone-pines of the south, and here and there an isolated
date-palm, lifting up its gently-waving crown. A few steps
further, and the aspect changes; he has left the evergreens
of the warmer climate behind him, and stepping out of
the glowing, fiery sunshine, he delights in the cool, refreshing gloom of the wide branches of lofty chestnuts and
proud oaks, the very kings of the forest.  Revived by
their luxuriant foliage, "at dewy eve distilling odors," he
gazes upwards, where their branches interlace and form
grand cathedral aisles, and bows down in awe and reverence in this fit temple of the Most High. As he ascends
he meets yet with the maple, spreading out its broad
dome of dark green leaves in masses so thick, that beneath it he fears not the passing shower, and the beech,
which shows its dappled bark and bright green foliage.




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.               151
The silvery trunk of some white birch, with "boughs so
pendulous and fair"-begins already to gleam  among the
underwood, when he leaves behind him the aspen with its
ever-quivering leaves, which almost shed a sense of breezy
coolness through the sultry day.
His next step leads him into the dark woods of truly
northern trees: pines, firs, and larches. Their dense shade
fills his soul with sombre thoughts; the gentle murmuring
of their boughs sounds to his ear like low complaint, and
even the sweet aroma that perfumes the air, brings with
it-he knows not why —feelings of vague pain and sorrow.
IHe gazes up with amazement at the tallest of the tall,
worthy to be
"Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast of some tall admiral,"
and sees in its heaven-aspiring branches and ever-joyous
verdure, the true symbol of his own glorious immortality.
Now, as he mounts still higher, trees grow fewer and
fewer; low bushes stand scattered about, forlorn outposts
of their happier brethren below; they also soon venture
no higher, and low but fragrant herbs alone remain to
greet his eye and cheer him on his way upward. At
last he reaches the eternal snow, that knows no season
and no change, and stands in unsullied purity, dazzling
white, high in the clear blue ether. All traces of life are
left behind-he stands there alone in the awful, silent so]itude, alone in the presence of his Maker. Thus he has:seen in rapid succession, and in a few short hours, what
it would have cost him months to behold, had he travel



152       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
led from the same Mediterranean northward to the frozen
ocean.
Still more striking is the sudden change in high northern
regions, as in crossing the lofty, snow-capped mountains
which divide Sweden and Norway.  On the south you
leave summer behind; as you climb up the steep ascent,
misty autumn and cold winter seize you by turns. At
last you stand on the very line that forms the water-shed
between the two kingdoms, and parts the loving sisters.
Huge boulders of dark granite lia scattered about in wild
disorder, and gigantic blocks of ite rise in stern majesty
before you. Beyond is Norway. As you turn round one
of these awe-inspiring masses, behold! a sight meets your
eyes that freezes the very blood in your veins. A vast
table land, bare and silent, spreads its horrors before you:
it is strewn with the bones of hundreds of men, who lay
there stiff and cold-not a feature marred —" death had put
on so slumber like a form" —but unburied, uncoffined and
unknown. They are the sad relics of a whole regiment
of brave, blooming sons of Sweden, who had marched into
Norway. It was a fierce, bleak day of winter, and as company after company defiled from the well-protected south
around the very rock, by which you stand, the cold blast
from the pole froze their breath within them, and laid
them, one by one, lifeless on the cold ground.
And yet, within a few hours' ride from this most melancholy scene, there lie spring and summer at your feet.
You descend, from the eternal snow, through the treeless
zones into the faint, fairy sheen of white birch woods, and
the dark shade of pine-forests, brightened up by the showy




A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS.              153
blossoms of the foxglove-when all of a sudden the sweet
odor of fresh-mown hay is wafted upward to greet you.
A short hour more, and the almost magical change brings
you into the midst of waving fields of ripened corn, and
meadows adorned by cherry-trees, which bend under the
weight of their luscious fruit, and luxuriantly-blooming
roses.
7*




154       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
V
wonnmyr Thar5 Of a  VJant,
"Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak,
That in her garden sipped the silv'ry dew."
SIrENSTONE'S " Schol-ffiStress8."
WE all know-thanks to the word of inspiration in our
hands-how  plants were first made.  On the third
day, when God made heaven and earth, He said: Let the
earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the
fruit-tree after his kind! and the earth did bring forth
grass and herbs, the tree yielding fruit, and God saw that
it was good.
Thus plants and flowers were the earth's first-born progeny; they sprang out of her bosom and crowned her
with verdure and beauty. The plains covered themselves
with waving grasses, and the mountains with majestic forests; the silvery willow and the lofty poplar bent over the
banks of rivers, and repeated in their trembling, murmuring leaves, the gentle ripple and the low purling of the
stream. The ocean, also, had its woods and its prairies




YOUNGnER YEARS OF A PLANT.               1.55
in the depth of its abysses; purple algae were suspended
in festoons from the sides of its rocks, and gigantic fucus
rose from the bottom of the sea and danced upon the dark
green waves. Cedars and pines, with their sombre pyramids, formed dark borders around the white fields of
eternal snow and dazzling glaciers.  Humble mosses and
lowly lichens covered the gray granite of the north, and
offered, in the midst of unbroken winter, warmth and food
to the reindeer of the Laplander, whilst the palm tree of
the south, in its lofty majesty, defied the burning sun of
the tropics, and gave shade and luscious fruit in abundance.
So much Revelation itself has told us.  The rest is left
to that innate  thirst of knowledge, the gratification of
which is the highest of all earthly enjoyments. Still, we
are not quite left to ourselves, for aid is promised us,
even now, from  on high.  "Go into a field of flowers,"
said the Lord to Ezra, "where no house is built, and there
I will come and talk with thee."  And who has not felt
the truth of good old Cowley's quaint verse:
"If we could open and intend our eye,
We all, like Moses, would espy
E'en in a bush the radiant Deity."
Thus, even now, travellers tell us occasionally, a wondrous tale of barren islands being covered with luxuriant
forests, and of naked rocks being clothed with rich verdure. We have learned how nature proceeds, even in our
day, to let the grass grow, and the herb and the tree
yielding fruit, on spots where before all was sterility, or
the elements alone reigned supremely.




156       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
For every now and then we hear of some new land,
fresh fromn the hands of the Creator, and destined for ages
so distant that human knowledge cannot foresee them.
Lava streams that have flown from restless craters, begin
at last to cool, and life takes possession of them. Thus
in the still hot lava of Mount Etna the Indian fig is
planted largely by the Sicilians, to render those desolate
regions capable of cultivation. It strikes its strong, wellarmed roots into the fissures of the black, fiery mass, and
soon extends them into every crevice of the rock. Slowly,
but with ever increasing force, the tender fragile fibre
then bursts the large blocks asunder, and finally covers
them with fertile soil and a luxuriant vegetation. At
other times vast tracts of sea-bottom are dyked in and
drained; a thousand varieties of mosses gradually fill it
up, and form by their unceasing labor a rich vegetable
mould for plants of larger growth. Or truly new lands
are suddenly seen to claim a place upon our globe. An
earthquake shakes a continent and upheaves the mighty
ocean, until cities crumble into ruins and the proud ships
of man are ingulfed in the bottomless depths of the sea.
But the earthquake rolls away, the storm rages itself to
rest, the angry billows subside, and the holy calm, which
is the habitual mood of nature, is restored as if it had
never been broken.  Only, where yesterday the ocean's
mighty swell passed freely, there to-day an island has
risen from the bosom of the deep. Vast rocky masses
suddenly raise their bare heads above the boiling waters
and greet the heavens above.  Such was the origin of
Stromboli: of St. IIelena, and of Tristan d'Acunha.  Or




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.            157
the busy host of corals, after having built for a thousand
years the high ramparts of their marvellous rings, at last
rise to a level with the surface; they die, having done
their duty in the great household of nature, and bequeath
to man a low, flat, circular island which now first beholds
the sweet light of day, above the dark waves of the
ocean.  Then come other hosts of busy servants of the
Almighty, to do their duty. A soft, silky network of
gay, bright colors, hides after a few days the nakedness
of the rock. It is a moss of the simplest kind we know:
consisting of single cells and wondrously short-lived. It
dies and disappears, leaving, apparently, no perceptible
trace behind it; still, it has not lived and labored in
vain. A delicate, faint tinge, little more, is left behind,
and in that mere shadow of things gone by lies the germ
of a future, mighty growth. Years pass, and the shadow
grows darker; the spots begin to run together, and then
follow countless hosts of lichens, a kind of humble mosses,
which the great and pious Linnaeus touchingly called the
bondslaves of Nature, because they are chained to the rock
on which they grow, and, after death are buried in the
soil which they make and improve for others only. Little
ugly, blackish-brown or pale white plants as they are,
but niggardly supported by the thin air of mountain tops,
they show us that there are rich garments and humble,
wealth and poverty among plants as well as among men.
The lowliest and humblest of plants, these lichens become,
however, the most useful servants of Nature, which here
as in the other works of the Almighty, affords innumerable proofs that, throughout creation, the grandest and




158      LEAVES FRCM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
most complicated ends are obtained by the employment
of the simplest means. These tiny, faintly colored cups
live, truly aerial plants, on the most sterile rock, without
a particle of mould or soil beneath them, nourished alone
by invisible moisture in the atmosphere. Modestly choosing the most exposed situations, they spread line by line,
inch by inch, and push up the little urns which crown their
short stems, amidst rain, frost, and snow. In these urns
they treasure up their minute, dustlike seeds, until they
ripen; a small lid which has until then been held back by
elastic threads, now suddenly rises, and as from a miniature mortar they shoot forth little yellow balls, which
cover the ground around them. And thus they work on,
quiet, unobserved and unthanked. Dressed in the plainest
garb of Nature, growing more slowly than any other plant
on earth, they work unceasingly until, as their last and
greatest sacrifice, they have to dig their own graves! For
Providence has given them a powerful oxalic acid, which
eats its way slowly into the rock; water and other moisture is caught in the minute indentations, there it is heated
and frozen, until it rends the crumbling stone into fragments, and thus aids in forming a soil. Centuries often
pass, and generations after generations of these humble
bondslaves perform their cruel duty, before the eye can
see a change in the rock that still looks bleak and barren.
Now, however, comes a faint but clear tinge of green.
It is a mere film still, but visible to the naked eye, and
showing the higher and more luxuriant forms of graceful
mosses, mixed with fungi which interpose their tiny globes
and miniature umbrellas. They come, we know not whence,




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             159
for the slightest crevice in the bare rock suffices to arrest
some of the invisible germs which are constantly floating
in the air, and affords them a home. They yield nothing
in industry and perseverance to their humble predecessors; hardy little laborers in the same great work, they
seem to delight in the clouds and storms of a wintry
season, when all other verdure fades. They find a home,
and live and thrive with equal contentment in the burning
cinders of volcanic islands, like Ascension, on which they
formed the first green crust after it had risen from the
ocean, and on the tempest-beaten boulders of Norwegian
granite, which they cover with a scarlet coating, well known
as the violet stone and full of rich, sweet perfume. As
they wither and die, minute layers of soil are formed,
one after another, until grasses and herbs can find a foothold: shrubs with their hardy roots now begin to interlace the loose fragments of earth and to bind the very
stones to a more permanent structure. The ground grows
richer and richer, until at last the tree springs from the
soil, and, where once the ocean and the tempest alone
beat on the bare rock, there we see now the lordly monarch
of the forest raise its lofty crown, and under its rich
foliage shelter bird and beast from the spray and the
storm.  Soon all is fertile meadow, tangled thicket, and
wide-spreading forest. Nor is this always and necessarily
a slow, painful progress.  The bold navigator Boussingault witnessed once, in the south of this continent, one
of those stupendous earthquakes which seem to rend the
very foundations of our globe. Mountains rose and plains
were changed into lakes. Huge masses of porphyry were




160       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
scattered over fertile fields and covered all vegetation,
changing the bright prairie into a scene of utter desolation. Ten short years later the great captain was again
on the same spot. But what a change! The bare wild
masses were covered with a young luxuriant grove of
locusts, and a thousand cattle were grazing on the hills.
Thus we are taught how nature proceeds, in our day,
from the green matter gathering on our ponds to the
giant tree of the forest. But if we turn to the individual
plant-how little do we as yet know of its simple structure! Who can solve the mystery that pervades its silent
yet ever-active life? There is something in the very stillness of that unknown power which awes and subdues us.
Man may forcibly obstruct the path of a growing twig,
but it turns quietly aside and moves patiently, irresistibly
on, in its appointed way. Wood and iron-even powerful
steam-they all obey him and become the humble slaves
of his intellect. But the life of the lowest of plants defies
him.  He may extinguish it to be sure; but to make
use of a living plant, he must obey it, study its wants
and tendencies, and mould, in fact, his own proud will
to the humblest grass that grows at his feet. Thus we
have learned the biography of plants, few events of which
are without interest even to the general observer.
On old walls and damp palings, or in glasses in which
we have left soft water standing for several days in summer, we find often a delicate, bright green and almost
velvety coat-this is the first beginning of all vegetation.
What we see is a number of small round cells, and one
of these delicate cells, a little globe as large as the




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.           161
thousandth part of an inch, is the beginning of every plant
in creation. These cells are the living stones of which
this great temple of nature is built. Each minute cell,
moreover, is an independent plant, vegetating as a living
organism and having a life of its own. There are whole
races of plants, like the algae and the common mould
forming on decaying matter, which consist each only of
a single cell, although in varied and often most elegant
forms, with a brilliant display of bright color.
The first germ of a plant, then, has already a lifefor it feeds, works and produces.  It takes all its nutriment from  without.  How, we know not, for although
plants have no table hanging at their gates with a surly
No Admittance; although they work, on the contrary,
before every body's eyes, unfortunately human eyes are
not strong enough to discern the mysterious process that
is going on in their minute chambers. Even armed with
the most powerful microscope, we cannot penetrate the
mystery, and know not yet by what incomprehensible instinct these diminutive cells, all unaided, pick up and select
their food, and arrange the new material so as to present
us at last with a perfect double of the graceful palm, the
queenly Victoria or the gigantic Baobab. It heightens the
wonder that all this power lies in a seed minute enough
to be invisible to the naked eye, and to be wafted about
by a breath of air. And yet it must be endowed with
most subtle and varied gifts, for out of the same food
plants are enabled to form a thousand rare substances:
now bringing forth nutritious and agreeable food for man,
now yielding materials most valuable to the arts of life,




162       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
and now  ministering to the vilest wants of degenerate
man and arming him with deadly poison.
But these little cells are not consumers only; they live
and work not for the day merely, but for the future also.
An almost invisible point in the cell begins to swell and
to increase, as it consumes first the colorless fluid, then
the soft substance, and at last even the tissue of the outer
walls of the cell, until-already at this early stage of
vegetable life-death ensues, and out of death comes new
life. The old cell dies, giving birth, indeed, as a mother,
to other cells, and thus gradually building up the fullgrown plant. The young ones leave their former home,
after an equally mysterious design, according to the position they are hereafter to occupy in the structure of the
plant, and the function they are destined to perform.
Here is the great turning point in the history of vegetable life.  All plants consist of cells of the same kind
and of the same round or oblong form-but the arrangement and the subsequent shape of these cells differ in
each variety of plants. The finger of the Almighty writes
on the transparent walls of these microscopic cells as
momentous words as those that appeared in flames on the
gorgeous walls of the Syrian palace.  Only,one feature
of this wonderful design is permanent and common to all:
no cell produces more than two others; of these only one
is again productive, it finds a place on the outside, where
its activity is unfettered, and dies after it has performed
its duty.  The other remains within, grows harder and
thicker, until it can expand no longer; the thickening substance coats the inner walls, fills up the interior, and thus




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             163
gives strength and firmness to the beautiful structure. In
some plants this development of new cells goes on slowly;
in others with truly marvellous rapidity, as in one of the
fungi, which forms twenty thousand visible cells in a single
minute!
But the minute, delicate form would be but short-lived,
and fall an easy prey to the first rude breath of air, if
nature did not here also instil the great lesson, that Union
is Strength.  That wondrous chemical laboratory, contained
in the mysterious seclusion of each cell, produces next a
cement which permeates the walls, and glues cell to cell,
so that, hardly developed, they cannot move from the
spot, and, though provided with life and strength for long
generations, they are still, like Prometheus, bound for ever
on the rock of adjoining cells.  At the extremities of
plants this glue hardens into a thick varnish; it is this
material which gives density and mechanical strength to
the so-called woody fibres; it forms the bark of trees
and covers the plum with a coating of wax.  It appears
as a viscid layer on the leaves of water plants, which
are thus made slippery to the touch and impermeable to
water, or as a blue powder on our cabbage, which can
be wholly immersed without being wetted. Only here
and there, but even in the hardest and fullest cells, tubes
of a spiral form are left open. Some are mere small jail
windows, imperceptible to the naked eye, and only lately
discovered; but they always meet, in unfailing regularity,
with a similar tiny look-out from the neighbor, so that
Nature evidently does not seem to approve of solitary confinement. Others are larger, and serve as air passages;




164      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
for Nature, a good architect, knows the necessity of ventila
tion, and provides for it in the humblest of lowly mosses
with as much care as in the lofty dome of the universe.
In aquatic plants, moreover, these same tubes render them
buoyant, as in one of the huge fucus that grow from the
bottom of the ocean. All along the immense stem, which
reaches from the vast deep up to the light of day, little
vessels occur, filled with air, and it is by these tiny balloons, thus continued from story to story, that the enormous leaves of the giant plant are buoyed up, and finally
enabled to float on the surface, covering the waves with
an immense carpet of verdure. And thus, with unerring
regularity, which, in an almost endless variety of forms,
still maintains those great laws of Nature that betoken
the will of the Most High, these same cells have been
formed, not only in the parent plant for its next successor,
but during thousands of generations; and that on all parts
of the earth, in the same way, the same shape! Well
may we, then, with a distinguished German botanist, look
upon the vegetable world as the rich altar-cloth in the
temple of God where we worship the beautiful and the
sublime, because it is His handiwork.
Plants live, then, and feed.  Little do we commonly
think, little do we therefore know of the way in which
they live and feed. We see animals take their food openly
and grossly, in the most conspicuous and eminent part of
their body; they tear and swallow, ruminate or masticate.
We ourselves do something in that line.  But delicate
plants hide the coarse process of nutrition under ground,
or within the close walls of each tiny cell.  There, with




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             165
wondrous art, and never resting day or night, summer or
winter, they draw a few simple elements, mainly water,
from  air and soil, and, by their own power and labor,
live upon them not only, but manage to obtain all the
material necessary for an almost unlimited growth, until
the smallest seed has upreared gigantic masses of wood
and foliage, and the grain of mustard has grown into a
tree, in whose branches the fowls of heaven have their
habitation. Each little microscopic cell is its own busy
chemist, dissolving all it needs, even small particles of
silica, in water, and changing it into food and new substances. The material we know, and the fact that it is
introduced-but then we stand again at the threshold of
that mystery with which Nature surrounds all first beginnings. The night of the cell, where this strange process
is going on, is the same as that in which the grain has
to be buried, in order to rise once more to light as a
tender blade. We are again taught that the knowledge
of first causes belongs to Him alone, who allows the eye
of man to see final causes only, and even those, as yet,
merely through a glass, dimly.
The general process of feeding, in a plant, as far as
known, is simply this: The universal and indispensable
nutrient substance, and, at the same time, that by means
of which all the rest are conveyed into it, is water.
Without water there is no vegetation.  The deserts of
Arabia, the west coast of Bolivia, and similar regions, are
barren, not because they are rocky and sandy, but because
it only rains there once in twelve years, and that not
always, and they have neither dew nor watery deposits.




166       LEAVES FROM THE BoosK OF NATURE.
This water, with all the materials it may contain, is sucked
up by the delicate fibres at the end of roots; thence it
rises, probably by capillary attraction, upwards, transuding
through the cells by apertures invisible to the highest
microscopic power, and  filling cell after cell.  Here it
mingles with the fluid which they already contain, produces new combinations, and is then called sap.  Hence
these little cells, when searched with the microscope, are
found to be filled with an almost incredible variety of
good things. Some, it is true, contain apparently nothing
but a watery juice, but its virtues may yet be discovered; others are little vials filled with gum or sugar;
in many plants they are found to hold just one drop of
oil, and in others sugar, or to inclose beautiful crystals
of every possible shape. Through these cells the sap ascends, until it reaches the main workshop of plants-the
leaves. These bring it in contact with the air, which they
in their turn suck in by minute openings and exhale again,
after it has combined with parts of the ascended water.
It is this continued exhalation of the leaves, and absorption by the roots, which constitutes the circulation, the
Life of Plants. They produce a constant interchange between soil and air, and stand in direct proportion to each
other. For the sap rises with a rapidity corresponding
to the exhalation of the leaves. Hence, in winter, when
there are no leaves, there is no sap ascending. Hence,
also, in spring the earth sometimes opens sooner than the
leaves appear; the sap ascends, finds no outlet, and gorges
the tree with fluid. Man comes to its aid, taps the dropsical plant, and draws from the maple its sugar and from




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             167
the palm  its sweet wine.  That part of the sap which
is not absorbed in its way upward, and not given out
to the air through the leaves, returns again on its mysterious errand, depositing here and there the material most
needed, and hoarding up, at intervals, large quantities that
are not immediately required  for future wants.  Such
provisions, carefully stowed away, are found in the potato,
which is little else than a magazine of nutritive matter,
or in the sage of palm trees and the caoutchouc of South
America. Lastly, that part of the material imbibed, which
is useless or might be injurious-for plants, like animals,
may be poisoned-is thrown out again at night in the
form of manna or resin; and thus secures the plant from
all dangers.
All these features in the life of plants, however, are
visible to the microscope only. What we see with the
unarmed eye, is not less wonderful. The tiny seed once
intrusted to the bosom of mother earth, as soon as the
sunlight falls upon it, and genial beams warm the light
crust under which it is buried, begins to move and to
change. Its starch is converted into sugar and gum, upon
which the young plant is to feed during the first days of
its existence. The tiny root peeps forth from the husk,
and by a mysteriously directed power, plunges downward
into the fertile soil, whilst the slender plumule pushes
upwards towards the light. The soil cracks and heaves,
and at last the infant vegetable being emerges fresh and
moist into the world of air and sunshine; with the unfolding of its first pair of leaves, and with the first lighting of a sunbeam on their tender tissues, commences that




168       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
series of incessant and as yet secret chemical operations,
to which we have before alluded. And the marvel is still
increased, when we consider how strangely alike thousands
of seeds are one to another, how slight the difference even
between the most unlike. And yet, two such tiny seeds,
planted in the same soil and living apparently on the
same food, produce the one an humble herb, the other
a mighty tree. Well may we ask, what wondrous formative power resides there in these little cells, tending exactly in one direction, as though an ideal figure, gradually
to be realized, floated already before their infant eyes?
The first business, then, of the young plant seems to
be, to settle firmly down in the home which is to see
it grow, prosper and die. It sends its roots down into
the ground, in a hundred various forms. Sometimes they
are divided into a number of slender threads, to penetrate into loose, sandy soil, as in the grasses, that bind
the arid sands of the sea-coast together with their long,
articulated roots, and thus protect the dykes of Holland
against the fury of the ocean. Others are in the form
of a single, straight and powerful taproot, to pierce firm,
solid ground.-or even in long flat scales, which adhere
and fasten themselves to bare rocks.  Tender, delicate
fibres though they be, these roots possess an incredible
power. Even in the slim, slender grass they are so firmly
interlaced with the soil, that they cannot be torn out
without a large mass of earth, and therefore compel us
to cut or saw off the straw of our grain. With large
trees they serve as gigantic anchors, chaining the mighty
monarch to the earth by their powerful and wide-spreading




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             169
arms, and firmly supporting it thus against the immense
mechanical force of wind which beats above against the
large surface presented by its huge branches, covered with
dense foliage. In their downward progress they turn aside
from no obstacle. The roots of the colossal chestnut-tree
on Mount Etna, under whose deep shade a hundred horsemen have easily found shelter, penetrate through rock and
lava to the springs at the very foot of the mountain.
Massive blocks are lifted up by roots as if with irresistible force. The beautiful trees that flourish amid the
ruined temples of Central America, upheave huge fragments of those enormous structures high into the air, and
hold them there as if in derision. In fact, the latent energy and slowly accumulated force of these slender fibres
in the process of forcing their way through walls and
rocks of vast size, is only equalled by the grace of their
movement and form; and this union of power and beauty,
the one latent, the other obvious, explains, in part at least,
the singular charm that the vegetable world exercises over
3o many strong but susceptible minds.
But roots serve not only as fastenings: they are, as
has already been mentioned, the principal avenues for the
introduction of food into the plant.  They operate by
means of most delicate fibres at the end, called spongioles,
endowed with so minute openings, that all nutriment to
be taken in must be liquid. Nor is it the least of the
mysteries of plant life, that these fine, slender roots do
not absorb all that is presented to them in a liquid form,
but evidently have a power of discrimination.  They open
or close their minute apertures,lt will, admitting only
8




170       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
fluids of a certain consistency, and thus select those suhstances which are best adapted to the growth and welfare
of the plant.  The finer, suitable material is taken in,
the coarser rejected.  Repeated, careful experiments have
proved this beyond doubt.  A grain of wheat and a pea,
raised in the same soil, and under absolutely the same
circumstances, draw entirely different substances from the
earth. The wheat consumes all the silica or flinty matter,
that water can absorb, while the pea takes up no flint.
consuming, on the other hand, whatever lime or calcareous
matter the water of the soil may contain.
Thus the roots of a plant pump up nearly all the nutriment that is required and at least ninety-nine per cent
of all the water which the plant needs, the only other part
needed being brought by the vapors of the atmosphere
and absorbed through the humus. They perform this duty
with a vigor little suspected by the inattentive; but if
we cut a vine and fasten a bladder to the wound at the
time when the sap is rising, it will in a short time be
filled and finally burst; and it has been stated that the
root of an elm-tree, which was by accident badly wounded,
poured forth, in a few hours, several gallons of water.
Not all roots, however, have to perform this difficult
and responsible task of extracting food from the earth
around them; those of aquatic plants draw it directly
from the water itself, az in our common duckweed, where
each little leaf has its own tiny root, a single fibre, which
hangs from the lower surfiace.' In the mangrove, on the
contrary, they form  a kind of enormous network in the
water, which intercepts all solid matter, that floats down




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             171
rivers and estuaries, until the thus arrested and decomposing substances form fever-breeding swamps. When the
flood recedes the roots are left uncovered, and often found
filled with shell-fish-a fact which explains the wonderful
tales of early travellers in the tropics, that there were
trees found in the East and West Indies on whose branches
oysters were growing.
Other roots have no home in earth or water; they
must even be content to hang, all their lifetime, high and
dry in the air.  Some, it is true, accomplish a firmer
settlement, late in life, as those of the screwpine of the
tropics, which grow not only at the foot of the tree, but
for a considerable height from all parts of the trunk, to
protect the plant against violent winds.  From  thence
they hang down into the air and furnish us with a beautiful
evidence of creative design in the structures of the vegetable world. They are, namely, at this stage of their growth,
provided with a kind of cup at each extremity, which
catches every stray drop of rain and dew, and thus enables them both to grow themselves and to furnish nutriment to the parent plant. In the course of time, however,
they reach the ground, and instantly these cups fall off,
as the roots now need such extraordinary assistance no
longer. Others spend their lives, literally, in building castles in the air.  Almost all the orchids of the Tropics
use a tree, a block of wood, or a stone, merely as a
support on which to settle down, and over which to spread
their aerial roots. These, however, do not penetrate into
the substance; the plants have no other source of nutriment than the vapor of the damp, heated  atmosphere




172       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
which constantly surrounds them, and from  which a.loe
they are supplied with food by those same roots, that thus
serve the double purpose of claspers and feeders. Even
law-defying squatters are found among the plants, as
the mistletoe of sacred memory.  It fastens upon some
strong, healthy tree, and having no power of forming true
roots for itself, it sends out branches which creep through
crevices in the bark, into the wood, so that the roots of
the parent stem must supply it with food, and the parasitical plant lives, in truth, upon the very life's blood of
the tree on which it has fastened itself. Even the stately
palm is frequently seen in the murderous embrace of a
plant, which is emphatically called the parricide tree.  It
commences, like every thing vicious, with a small and rather
pleasing growth on the trunk or among the branches, then
rapidly extends its graceful tendrils in every direction, and
increases in bulk and strength, until at last it winds its
serpent folds in deadly embrace around the parent tree.
The conflict lasts sometimes for years, but the parricide
is sure to be victorious in the end, and to strangle the
noble palm  in its beautiful but deadly coils.  The prosperity of the parasite thus becomes an almost infallible
sign of the decay of its victim, and a most affecting image
of life crushed by a subtle, brute force. And yet it has
its redeeming feature in the remarkable fact that these
parasites never attack firs or evergreens, but only cover
with their foliage those which winter deprives of their
glory. The ivy, which often wraps the largest giants of
the forest in its dark green mantle, thus appeared to older
nations as the symbol of generous friendship, attaching




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.              173
itself only to the unfortunate, and making its early protector, even after death, the pride of the forests in which
he lives no longer-when it gives him new life by covering his lofty trunk and broad branches with festoons of
eternal verdure.
Still, wherever roots may be lodged, in the dark, still
earth, or under the restless waves, in the damp air of the
tropics, or the bark of a foreign tree-they labor without
ceasing, night and day, summer and winter. For the life
of plants, and the work of their roots, does not cease in
winter as is commonly believed, and deep-rooted trees,
especially, enjoy the benefit of the warmth which is laid
up during summer, in the crust of the earth, and that at
the very time when their branches groan under a load
of snow, or stand encased with ice and fantastic glittering
pendants.  Far under ground the roots continue to work
indefatigably, until the bright sunshine returns once more,
and they feel that the fruit of their industry can again
safely ascend through the dark, gloomy passages of the
tree, to pass at last into the merry green leaves, and there
to mingle with the balmy air of spring.  For they are
a hardy class of laborers, these roots, and neither cold
nor ill treatment checks their activity. It is well known,
that the common maple tree may be completely inverted;
its branches being buried under ground and its roots
spread into the air, without being destroyed.  The finest
orange trees in Europe, in the superb collection at Dresden, were brought as ballast, in the shape of mere blocks
of timber, without roots or branches, in the hold of a
German vessel, and found their way to Saxony.  Solne




174       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
curious gardener, anxious to know what plant furnished
this new wood, planted them, but unfortunately mistook
the upper end for the lower, and thus actually turned the
poor, mutilated trees upside down. Yet, in spite of their
early mutilation, the long sea voyage, and the subsequent
cruel treatment, they have grown and flourished beyond
all other orange trees on the continent.
The next step in the life of a plant, after it has thus
riveted itself firmly and for ever to its mother earth, is
to send its stem  or trunk upwards.  In doing this, it is
evidently influenced by a desire to approach the light of
day. This has been proved by experiments as cruel as
those that used to shock our sensibilities in the days of
early anatomy. Seeds have been so placed, that the light
reflected from  a mirror should fall upon them  from  below, and lo! the so-called natural direction of the growth
of plants was completely changed; the stem was sent
down and the roots grew up! When Nature, however,
is allowed to have her own way —which we humbly surmise to be the best-stems grow  towards the light, to
support the plant in its proper position and to raise it
to the requisite height above ground, where it may enjoy
air, light and heat. At a certain point, moreover, it spreads
out into branches, as the best mode of presenting the
largest surface, covered with leaves, to those necessaries
of life. Plants are thus enabled to receive the fullest
action of light and air, and the branches are, besides, so
arranged that they yield readily to the fitful impulses of
winds5 and quickly return, by their elasticity, to their na
tural position.




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             175
In similar beautiful adaptation to outward circumstances,
we find that the stem  of the graceful palm-tree is high
and slender, but built up of unusually tough, woody fibres,
so that it sways gently to and fro in the breeze, and yet
resists the fiercest storms, while the lofty bare trunk gives
free passage to every breath of air, and the broad flat
top tempers the burning sun and shades the fruit hanging
down in rich clusters. The solemn and imposing fir tree,
on the other hand, branches low, but just high enough to
let man pass beneath, and then drops its branches at the
extremities, like a roof, exposing, on terrace after terrace,
its small fruit to all aspects of the sun, and, in winter,
letting the heavy snow glide down on the smooth polished
leaves. If the palm were a pyramid like the pine, it would
fall before the first storm of the tropics; if the pine were
tall and shaped like a broad parasol, the snow and ice
of the north would break it by their heavy weight. Yet,
both the burning tropics and the arctic zone have their
evergreens.  At the south it is the towering p-alm  that
protects, with its gigantic leaves, all that lives against the
fierce heat, and lets the ground be covered with green
creepers and countless ferns, to keep it fresh and cool.
At the north it is the dark pine, whose lofty, dense pyramid and ample branches, covered with ghastly moss,
protect, in like manner, the ground underneath, so that
reindeer and man may find their abundance of soft dry
leaves and thick layers of downy mosses.
It is this part of the plant which gives it, in common
life, its proper rank and name in the vegetable kingdom.
When the stem is not woody and dies after the flowering




176       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
season, we speak of it as an herb, while a shrub has already a greater size and a stem that branches at the base.
The tree lifts its head high into the air, and divides mostly
above. The stems of climbers and creepers are long, thin
and winding, whilst runners crawl along on the ground or
beneath it, and produce new plants at their termination.
The stem has frequently a decided tendency to grow
spirally; in creepers it is twisted from the root to the
end, the better to enable them to lay hold of and to enmbrace the objects around which they twine. So it is in
all climbing plants and their tendrils, and they derive from
this peculiar structure such strength, that they are found,
in South America, to form  long, slender, but perfectly
safe bridges over broad rivers.  Even large trees have
frequently the same spiral tendency, as we see in many
a blasted trunk in our forests, or when we attempt to
remove the bark from a cherry tree, which will not tear
straight and must be torn off in a spiral.
In the stem, also, we see the main differences of the
growth of various kinds of wood in a beautiful variety of
grain and wavy lines.  Its outside is protected by bark,
sometimes smooth, as if polished; in others, as in the
pine, carved in huge square pieces; hard and invulnerable as stone in the cypress, but cut and cracked in the
elm.  Most mountain trees have their bark deeply furrowed with numerous channels, to lead the moisture of
rain and dew down to the rocky home of their deep
buried roots.  Dark colored and soft in tropic climes, to
resist the heat, it is white as snow in the Arctic regions,
and in northern trees, as birches and willows, in order




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.              1 77
to reflect what little heat is found in such high latitudes.
The bark is, moreover, the last part of a plant that decays, and in some trees may be called almost indestructible. Thus Plutarch and Pliny both tell us, that when,
four hundred years after the death of the great lawgiver
Numa Pompilius, his grave was opened, the body of the
king was a handful of dust, but the delicate bark, on
which his laws had been written, was found uninjured by
his side.
Not all stems, however, are of the same firm, upright
structure.  Nature shows beauty not only in the forms
themselves, but even more in their endless variety. In
the cactus family stems are represented by what we commonly, though erroneously, call their leaves, viz., fleshy
expansions, tumid with watery juice, and clothed with a
leathery cuticle, instead of bark. Of all cactuses, but one
has real leaves: all others possess little more than mis,
erable substitutes in the form  of tufts of hair, thorns and
spines.  These only, as far as they go, are their true
leaves.  The stems, it is well known, display in this same
family an unusual variety of odd, outlandish-looking shapes.
Now they rise, under the name of torch-thistle, in a single
branchless column to the height of forty feet; and now
they spread their ghastly, fleshless arms in all directions,
like gigantic funereal candelabras. The melon-cactus imitates, in shape and bristling spines, the hedgehog to perfection, whilst the so-called mammillaria are smooth or
ribbed globes of all sizes.  Others, at last, grow  longitudinally, like the long whip-like serpent-cactus, which
swings ominously from  the trees on which it lives as a
8*




178       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
parqsite. Nature, however, has made them ample compensation for their uncouth appearance and gloomy, wretched
aspect, by giving them a profusion of flowers of unsurpassed brilliancy.
The snake-like form of the last mentioned cactus is still
more strikingly presented in the stem of the lianes of
South America. They are almost entirely stem. Stretched
out like the strong cordage of a vessel, on which tigercats run up and down with wonderful agility, or winding
serpent-like in and out, now as cords and now like flat
straps, they extend frequently more than a hundred feet,
without leaves and without branches.  In the primeval
forests of the tropics they may be seen hanging from
tree to tree, often ascending one, circling it until they
choke his life's blood in him-then wantonly leaping over
to another-next falling in graceful festoons, and then
climbing up again to the topmost summit of a palm,
where, at last, they wave perhaps their bunch of splendid
flowers in the highest, purest air.  Repulsive in themlselves, these lianes also grow beautiful by the contrast
they present with the sturdy monarch of the forest, around
which they twine, a contrast which yet, as every thing
in nature, produces harmony.  How  different are these
stems again from the beautiful structure of the various
grasses! Here a slender column rises, sometimes to the
height of a few inches only, as in our common mountain
grasses, and then, again, in the bamboo, to a towering
height, waving their wide-spread tops in the evening breeze,
or growing like the gigantic grasses on the banks of the
Orinoco, to a height of more than thirty feet, whelre they




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.              179
have joints that measure over eighteen feet from  knot to
knot, and serve the Indians of that country as blowpipes,
with which they kill even large animals.  And yet the
delicate graceful tissue of all these grasses resists, by their
wondrous structure, the storm that would break columns
of granite, of the same height and thickness!  Nature
knows full well that a slender hollow tube, with well
strengthened walls, the most solid parts being placed outside, is the best form in which to give firmness and
solidity to such structures.  Hence it is that their delicate walls are hardened by a copious deposition of silica,
so that e. y. a kind of rattan has solid lumps of it in
joints and hollows, and will readily strike fire with steel;
and the so-called Dutch rush, a horsetail moss, is largely
imported from  Holland for its usefulness in polishing furniture and pewter utensils.  The grass which grows on
less than half an acre of land is said to contain flint
enough to produce, when mixed with sand, and by the
aid of the blowpipe, a glass-bead of considerable size;
and after a number of hay-stacks, set up by the river
side, had once been struck by lightning and burned, large
lumps of glass were found in their place.  Wondrous indeed are the works of the Almighty, and well can we
understand the deep pathos with which Galileo, when
questioned as to his belief in a Supreme Being, pointed
at a straw on the floor of his dungeon and said: "From
the structure of that little tube ajone would I infer with
certainty the existence of a wise Creator!"
Other stems, like our bulbs, whose scales are the real
leaves of the plants, grow under ground, where they alone,




180       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
well protected from cold and tempest, live through the
dreary winter season.  Or they are hid by the water in
which they live, and then frequently reach an almost ir.credible length.  Some marine algae have been found
more than fifteen hundred feet long; they branch off as
they approach the surface, until they form a floating mass
of foliage, hundreds of yards square.  These stems resemble cords in every variety of form and twist, and are
used by the natives of the north-west coast, where they
are most frequently found, as fishing lines-while others
of the same kind are dried to serve as siphons, or are
formed by the natives into trumpets, with which they
collect their roving cattle at nightfall. The most remarkable stem, however, of all more common plants, is probably that of the valisneria, an aquatic plant which grows
at the bottom  of rivers.  It consists of long, elastic cords,
twisted like a corkscrew, and sends some branches up to
the surface, while others remain below and are completely
submerged.  When the flowering season approaches, the
plant shows an instinct so closely approaching conscious
action as to startle the careful observer.  Some of the
flowers are produced below, where they cannot exhibit the
beauty of their frail blossoms; these begin to stretch and
to twist, as if they longed for the bright sunshine above,
and at last they succeed in breaking loose from their dark,
gloomy home.  In an instant, they rise to the surface,
being lighter than water, expand there under the benign
influence of light and air, and mingle their dust with other
flowers, which are  already floating there.  This "high"
life continues until the seeds are beginning to ripen, when




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             181
the elastic stems contract once more, and, with like wonderful instinct, carry the seed vessels down and bury them
in the watery bed of the stream, where alone they can
hope to find all the requisites for their future growth and
welfare.
The stems or trunks, finally, indicate in all long-lived
plants the age with unerring accuracy.  Their growth
being limited only by external causes, the years of trees
are seen in their size, and this union of age with the
manifestation of constantly renewed vigor, is a charm peculiar to the life of plants.  Animals, however curious,
beautiful or imposing, have still a limited size and figureplants alone grow without limit, and bring forth new roots
and new branches as long as they live. This gives to very
ancient trees, especially, a monumental character, and has
ever inspired nations with a kind of instinctive reverence,
which from  the days of antiquity to our own has often
degenerated into open worship. Who has not heard of
the oaks of Mamre and the pilgrimages made to them
from  the time of Abraham to that of Constantine-or of
the far-famed cedars of Lebanon, which have always been
distinguished as objects of regard and veneration, so that
no threat of Sennacherib was more dreaded than that he
would level them to the ground? Herodotus dwells with
delighted sympathy on the marks of respect with which
Xerxes loaded the famous plane-tree of Lydia, while he
decked it with gold ornaments and intrusted it to the care
of one of his ten thousand "Immortals."  As forest trees
increase by coatings from without, the growth of each
year forming a ring round the centre of the stem, the




182       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
number of years is usually ascertained-since the wellknown author Michael Montaigne first started this theory
-by counting the concentric rings. Care must, however,
be had not to forget, that some trees begin to form these
only after several years' growth, and that, whilst northern
trees shed their leaves but once a year, and therefore add
but one ring during that time, those of the tropics change
their foliage twice or thrice a year, and form as many
rings. This renders the age of such trees, as were heretofore considered the oldest, somewhat doubtful; still there
-re some remarkable cases of longevity well authenticated.
Humboldt measured a gigantic dragon-tree near the peak
of Teneriffe, and found it possessed of the same colossal
size, forty-eight feet round, which had amazed the F'rench
adventurers, who discovered that beautiful island more than
three centuries ago-and yet it still flourished in perpetual
youth, bearing blossoms and fruit with undiminished vigor!
Some yew trees of England, and one or two oaks, claim
an age of from one thousand four hundred to three thousand years, and would, if their claims were substantiated,
be the oldest trees in Europe-but a famous baobab, on
the banks of the Senegal, is believed to be more than
six thousand years old, in which case its seed might have
vegetated before the foot of man trod the earth! Its only
rival is a cypress tree in the garden of Chapultepec, which
Humboldt considers still older; it had already reached a
great age in the days of Montezuma. A curious old age
is that of a rose-bush which grows in the crypt of the
cathedral of Hildesheim, in Germany; it was there planted
by the first founder of the church, and is expressly men



YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.              183
tioned in the MSS. in which his donation and the building
itself are described; it also flourishes still, and bears as
fragrant roses in these years of change and revolution,
as eight hundred years ago, when Germany wasone and
great!
Most plants are accustomed-we hope not for their sins
— to cover themselves, like our first parents, with leaves,
and it is well established now, that the plant, properly
speaking, consists only of stem  and leaves-all other parts,
like buds, flowers and fruits, being only modified forms
of leaves.  These are mostly green, and the depth of
their color is an indication of the healthfulness of their
action.  But there are a hundred shades, and the color
invariably contrasts most beautifully with the back-ground,
on which the plants appear.  The humble moss shines
with its brilliant emerald green on the dark sides of
rocks, whilst mushrooms display their gorgeous scarlet and
orange between the sombre rugged roots of the trees,
under whose shadow they love to dwell. The glossy color
of the ivy looks all the more cheerful by the gray bark
of crumbling ruins, which it hides with the folds of its
warm mantle, and vies" with the carpet of verdure that
vines spread over old turrets or the fallen trunks of ancient trees, whilst in fall they reflect permanently the gold
and purple of the setting sun.  But, here also, beauty is
not given to all with the same lavish hand. Whilst the
queenly Victoria floats its richly-tinted leaves in gorgeous
beauty on the dark mirror of calm, shady lakes, the poor
lichens of the north shiver in their scanty coat: gray and
withered in the shade, they look, when lighted up for a




184       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
brief noonday time, like gigantic snow-crystals, and cause
a chilly shudder.  In Australia, where all extremes meet,
from  the bird-fashioned quadruped to the millionaire con.
vict, the leaves of trees and bushes have a leathery look
and are oddly twisted, turning their edges up and down,
instead of standing horizontally, as with us. They aflbrd
no shade, and are covered with a white, resinous powder,
which gives them a most dismal and pallid appearance.
Yet-whatever form  leaves may assume —their wonderful
adaptation to their great duty strikes us in all plants alike.
The immense extent of surface which they present to light
and heat, the thinness and delicacy of their structure, the
microscopic beauty of their minute apertures, their power
of breathing in and out-all answer admirably the great
purpose of exposing the crude sap, that rises from the
root, to the air and the sun, to be by them digested into
highly nutritious food.
All leaves change their color in autumn, when a peculiar chemical change goes on in their substance, and takes
the bright, fresh green from them, to leave them  in sadcolored livery, or to clothe them, as a parting gift, in
the brilliant drapery of an Indian summer.  It is then
that, especially in American woods, a combination of hues
is produced, which no painter can hope to imitate, when
the maple burns itself away, and "all the leaves sparkle
in dazzling splendor with downy gold colors dipped in
heaven."  Not less variety may be perceived in the shape
of leaves. Needle-shaped in northern evergreens, they are
gathered, like tiny brushes, to collect at every point whatever heat and  moistures may surround  them.  Plants




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             185
growing in arid places, or high mountains, have leaves
shaped like cups, with broad channels to conduct the precious water of dew and rain to their roots.  In trees
bearing cones they are dry, pointed and narrow; they
seldom rustle, being silent; but, as a compensation, they
are ever green. Their high polish enables them to reflect
what little heat they can gather in northern lands, whilst
the light may still pass between them  with ease.  On
catkin-bearing trees they are broad and tender, so that
the gentlest wind gives them  motion and sound, a charm
wholly wanting in evergreens; but their time is short, and
they perish after a season! As we approach the equator,
we find leaves without polish, so as to reflect no heat,
placed horizontally to form a shading roof. They grow
broader and larger, with every degree, until the cocoa-palm
has them more than one foot square, and a single leaf
of the tallipot-palm  of Ceylon can cover a whole family.
Those of the waxy palm of South America are, moreover,
so impermeable to moisture, that they are used as coverings for houses, and have been known to stand all the
vicissitudes of the weather for more than twenty years,
without being renewed. They thus form a screen by day,
a tent by night, and become eminently useful in a land
which is half the year burnt by a scorching sun, and the
other half completely under water. In like manner leaves
change according to the wants of the tree, whose ornament
and best servants they are at the same time. The oak
of our mountains has thick, broad leaves-that of the seashore, which we call willow and live oak, is satisfied with
thin narrow leaves. The honeysuckle changes them at will




186       LEAVES FROM THIE Boon OF NATURE.
into tendrils, the pea into hands with three or five fingers,
with which to grasp its support, though only when it has
reached a certain height, and needs the latter; the passion
flower converts them into cork-screws, whilst the common
nasturtium is content with a simple hook at the end of
the leaf. Their arrangement also around stem and branches
is not left to accident: a distinguished mathematician of
our Cambridge once astonished a large and learned audience not a little, when he informed them that plants
knew mathematics, and arranged their leaves according to
fixed rules. A. spiral line drawn from the base of one
leaf, around the stem, to that of another, shows regular
intervals between them, which vary in different plants, but
are in each carefully and strictly observed.
The great purpose of life in leaves is to carry on their
most active and important vital function-their respiration.
They are the lungs of plants, not condensed, as in man,
in one organ, but scattered independently in countless numbers over the branches.  For the purpose of breathing
they are endowed with innumerable and often invisible
little openings, commonly on both sides —in aquatic plants,
however, whose leaves float on the surface of the water,
only on the upper side. In the cactus tribe these are almost wholly wanting, hence the latter are so succulent,
as they retain all the fluid that their roots have sucked
up, and exhale nothing.  Their activity is, of course, a
twofold one, as they both take in and give out, without ceasing. They inhale atmospheric air, appropriate its
carbon for the formation of their juices, and return the
veparated and disengaged oxygen in the form of gas. This




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.            187
process, however, can only go on during daytime, as light
is indispensable-and is performed by all the green parts
of a plant alike.  It is this incessant labor which makes
plants not only an ornament of our earth and a food for
man and cattle, but renders them so eminently useful in
the great household of Nature. They absorb the carbon,
that man cannot breathe, and furnish, in return, the oxygen,
without which he cannot exist; thus virtually, by their
industry, rendering the atmosphere fit for the support of
animal life.  Besides the exhalation of oxygen, the leaves
also evaporate nearly two-thirds of the water which the
roots have imbibed, and sent up to them through the interior of the plant. The moment this now perfectly pure
water is exhaled, it is dissolved in the air, and becomes
invisible to the eye.
Another duty, which the leaves of plants perform with
still greater energy, is the drawing of water Jfrom the
atmosphere. They drink it in, from the first moment of
their short life, to the last day, by all possible means and
contrivances. The young leaves, as yet wholly or in part
rolled up, are but so many cups or spoons, turned to
heaven to gather all the moisture they can hold. As the
young plants grow, they unfold leaf after leaf, and all
perform  the same duty with the same eagerness.  From
the cedar of Lebanon down to the bashful violet, each
plant holds forth its gigantic mass of foliage or its tiny
goblet, to have its share of the precious moisture.  A
glance shows us that leaves have generally a little canal
passing from the end up to their base, in which the water
they have gathered runs down; and it has been observed




188       LEAVES FROM THIE BooK OF NATURE.
that the drier and sandier the soil is on which plants grow,
the more deeply furrowed are their leaves. In large trees,
therefore, a constant stream of water flows fiom the end
of the leaf to its stem, and from branch to branch until
it reaches the trunk, and then in the deep furrows and
crevices of the bark down to the roots, so that not a
drop of the precious nutriment is lost.  Water-plants, on
the contrary, needing no such ingenious contrivances, as
they have an abundance of the element all around them,
display smooth leaves, often so highly varnished that the
water runs off or stands in silvery pearls on the dark
green surface.
All plants are greedy consumers of water, and know
how to obtain it, by some peculiar, as yet unknown process, even in such regions of the tropics, where for half
the year no cloud darkens the ever-serene sky, and where
not even dew is given to refresh the panting vegetation.
Their power, in this respect, is as great as it is mysterious. The most succulent plants of the tropics cling
to the faces of barren cliffs, or rise from dry, dust-like
sand. It is true, their leaves contain both caoutchouc and
wax, and are covered with a thin layer of these substances,
as with a water-proof cloak, to prevent evaporation under
a burning sun. Some plants, however, support themselves
not only, but actually increase in weight when suspended
in the air, and unconnected with any soil, as the common
houseleak and the aloe.  The so-called air-plant, perhaps
the most remarkable of the whole vegetable kingdom, is
but a single leaf, without stem or root, and yet it is able
to maintain life, to grow and to blossom, if only hung




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.            189
up in a warm  and damp atmosphere, though it be not
even in contact with any other substance.  It puts out
buds, these become leaves, drop tiny roots into the air,
and soon exist as independent plants.
And here again we cannot help observing, how quietly
the work of Nature is going on, unsuspected and unheeded by others.  The innumerable leaves of our forest
and arbor trees form a vast summer laboratory, in which
the great work of plants is incessantly continued, and which
contributes, to an incalculable extent, to the support and
the health of all animal existence. They afford us thus
another of the countless proofs of creative design, which
we may, at a glance, obtain from the vegetable world.
They labor and work for themselves apparently all the
while, but render the earth and all life thereon invaluable
service.  Even when they greedily draw up all moisture
by roots or leaves, they become our benefactors.  The
despised mosses hold up their little cups to collect the
waters of heaven, and make most ample return for its
bounty.  They clothe the steep sides of lofty hills and
mountain ranges, and their densely-crowded delicate leaflets
attract and condense the watery vapors constantly floating
in the air, and thus become the living fountains of many
a proud stream.  The tall trees of the forest draw down
the rain-filled cloud, as the lightning-rod invites the thunder
storm, and the moisture so distilled is condensed into little
streamlets which trickle down from twig and bough, even
when the ground is dry and dusty. This gives fertility
even to adjoining fields. The heavy, damp air, gathered
by the woods, sinks down as fog or mist when the still




190       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
cool evening comes, and rich dew pearls in the morning
on the meadows, and refreshes the fields. Trees thus affect
materially the climate and general character of countries.
Thickly-wooded regions, like our own continent, are colder
tnd more humid than cultivated or broad treeless savannahs; they abound in rain and fertile dew; and to cut
down our trees is seriously to impair the supply furnished
by them to springs and rivers. Some lands would not
be habitable but for trees. In one of the Canaries neither
springs nor rivers are found; but there grows a large,
tall tree, called with veneration the Saint, in some of the
deep recesses of the mountains. It keeps its lofty head
all night long wrapped up in mist and clouds, from which
it dispenses its timely, never-ceasing moisture in little
rivulets, running merrily down from  the leaves.  Small
reservoirs are built for the purpose of catching the precious gift, and thus alone the island is made a fit dwellingplace for man.
Humbler plants store up water in smaller quantities,
but not the less pure or welcome. The melon cactuses
have been called the vegetable fountains of the desert,
because they conceal under their hideous prickly envelope,
covered with dry lichens, an ample supply of watery pith.
The great Humboldt tells us graphically, how, in the dry
season, when all life has fled from the pampas, and even
snakes lie buried in the dried-up mud, the wild mule, perishing with thirst, gallops up to the ill-shapen plants, strikes
with its hoofs at the powerful prickles, until it has made
an opening, and then warily approaches, with long pro.
truding lips, to drink the well-defended, cool and refresh



YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.               191
ing juice.  Brazil, also, has a plant-the rainy one, it is
called-that is remarkable for a constant flow of water
from the points of its leaves, which falls upon the parched
ground like a gentle shower of rain-drops. Quite a number
of plants, it is well known, have regular pitchers, in
which they accumulate moisture-some from  within, and
others by holding them open in rain or damp weather
and closing a curiously-fashioned lid, when they are filled.
Such are the side-saddle flower of our own country, with
leaves like pitchers, covered with a top, and half full of
water; the monkey-cup of South America, to which it
was once believed the monkeys resorted to quench their
thirst, and the distilling nepenthes, which hold up their
capacious and elegantly-formed pitchers, full of cool, colorless water, in the burning sands of the desert.  A  few
trees change the nature of the fluid, and one, the cow-tree,
is even good enough to satisfy hunger as well as thirst.
It yields a rich, bland and oily juice, closely resembling
milk, and that in sufficient abundance to refresh and to
satisfy the hunger of several persons.  But if the leaves
of plants are so industriously and incessantly at work, it
must not be forgotten, that some go regularly to rest,
and sleep so profoundly that in a clover-field not a leaf
opens until after sunrise, and others in South America are
universally known as the "sleepers."  Most mimosas fold
up their delicate, feathery leaves, as night approaches, and
when the sun rises once more, the little sleepy ones unfold again, slowly, and, as it were, reluctant, like some
of us, to begin their work anew. It has even been observed, that these so-called sensitive plants, when wounded




192       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
or otherwise suffering, cannot sleep, but keep their leaves
open and erect all night long, until they perish. Other
plants close their leaves during the day, and awake from
their slumbers at night, while a few even droop and clasp
the stem, as if seeking support in its strength, whenever
the sky is overcast and a storm is threatening.
This peculiar faculty of sleep stands in immediate connection with the general power of certain leaves to move,
either upon coming in contact with other bodies, or, apparently, in spontaneous motion. All the above-mentioned
mimosas fold up their leaves, when merely touched; first
one little leaflet will be closed, then another, until the
whole leaf proper, with its delicate footstalk, droops down
and clasps the stem of the parent. If the plant be very
irritable-and nervousness is here found to be in proportion to good health-the other leaves will follow the example, until the whole little plant plays, to use a Virginia
phrase, "'possum," and looks, for all the world, as if it
vere asleep. The oxalis of this continent requires several
successive strokes to produce the same effect, and the
robinia, our locust, which sleeps at night, must be violently
shaken.  The common wild lettuce, also, shows a great
irritability, and, curiously enough, only when the plant is
in flower.  Upon being touched, the leaves contract beneath, and force out, above, a milky juice, with which they
soon become covered.
The so-called spontaneous movements of leaves and
other parts of plants arise mostly, though not always,
from their general tendency to turn towards the light.
Little is as yet known with accuracy of this interesting




YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT.             193
feature in the life of plants.  A great number of leaves,
however, alter their position by night and by day. Some
make a half, some a quarter revolution, and then turn
their points downward. Others, again, fold up, in regular
order, the youngest leaf first, as if it required most rest,
whilst the oldest are apt to do entirely without it. In
other plants it is the state of the atmosphere which determines such movements —the beards of the geranium and
the wild oat curl up in dry weather, and straighten again
in damp days-other plants do the contrary. The hygrometrica of South America closes the leaflets of its finely
pinnated foliage long before the clouds rise, and thus foretells the impending change of the weather, and the plant,
known among us as the fly-trap, is called in its home on
the warm plains on the banks of the Senegal, the goodmorning flower, because at that season of the day it gracefully bends over and bows to the passer-by.  On the
banks of the Ganges, however, exists a vegetable form, so
quick of life as to resemble some of the minor animals
in its motion.  The leaflets of this singular plant are in
perpetual motion: one leaflet will rise by a succession of
little starts and then fall in like manner; while one rises,
another droops, and thus the motion continues and extends
over the whole foliage.  Nor does it cease at night; in
fact it is said to be more vigorous even in the shade, and
in the still, hot hours of an Indian summer-night the plant
is full of life and incessant motion.  Not less singular is
the action —for it is more than motion-of plants, like
Venus's fly-trap, and others. The flowers are covered with
sweet honey, and thus allure many an unfortunate insect,
9




194       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
which has no sooner touched the sweet store, than the
plant moves either the long stiff hairs, which grow along
the middle nerve, or closes its crown of gorgeously colored
leaves above, and thus seizes upon the unlucky robber.
We can speak no longer of sweet innocent flowers-for
so fond are these blood-thirsty plants of their favorite
delicacies, that they will not thrive in green-houses from
which insects are excluded, and gardeners have been compelled to supply them, strange as it may sound, literally
with animal food, to see them thrive and blossom as in
their native home!




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.                  195
VI.
rater    eare  of  a  tTalnt.
"Soft whilst we sleep beneath the rural bow'rs,
The loves and graces steal unseen away;
And where the turf diffus'd its pomp of flow'rs'We wake to wintry scenes of chill decay."-SHENSToNE.?THE  true, full life of plants may be said to begin and
to end with their period of blooming.  Whilst trees
do not blossom until many years have passed over their
lofty heads-the fir-tree and the beech, for instance, seldom
before the fiftieth year —the humbler plants look upon the
time when they are crowned with flowers as the happiest
— and last, of their existence.  It comes, with some, after
a short year, whilst the Agave Americana  lives many,
though not quite a hundred years, without ever flowering.
Then it produces, with amazing rapidity, an innumerable
host of flowers, growing almost visibly, until it has u:-.folded its magnificent candelabrum of nearly fifty -feet
high, and then it perishes. So also the beautiful talipot
palm: it grows and flourishes, and forms a vast crown,of broad leaves at a great height.; then  only it flowers




196       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
for the first time, produces its seed and dies; so true is
it, that
"Hie bids each flower his quickening word obey,
Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay."
Plants, however, have not only their age of blooming,
but also their season. Whilst most of them open their
bright chalices in spring or midsummer, when " the sun
smiles on the earth, and the exuberant earth returns the
smile in flowers," others do not bloom until fall or even
winter. The autumnal crocus, which gives us saffron,
blooms not until almost all the other flowers are gone.
The black hellebore sends its pale green flowers as a
Christmas present, and the fragrant blackthorn blossoms,
while the cold, north-east winds blow, in spite of cold
and frost.  The vernal crocus sends up its golden cups
in early March, however cold it may be in the reign of
what Coleridge calls "the dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teethchattering month," and the silvery almond flower blooms
on a leafless bough.  Nay, the very hour of blooming is
appointed to plants with mysterious accuracy. A few years
ago I went to see, near Upsala, the cottage of old Linn6,
the father of modern botany, and among all the precious
relics carefully preserved, near his home, there was no
token of the pious reverence with which his countrymen
honor his name, more touching than his floral clock. In
a half circle, carefully arranged around his writing table,
stood a number of plants which opened their flowers each
at a certain moment, so that they revealed at a glance
to the great master, the hour of the day, with unerring
precision. For, as every bird has his hour when he awakes




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              197
and sends up his hymn to praise his Maker, so every
flower also has its time.  They open commonly to the
light, some in the morning, to close again at night, whilst
others will not open at all, except in clear bright weather.
The degree of light which they require, determines mostly
the hour of the day at which they will unfold their beauty.
Thus the daisy, like a true day's eye, opens its white and
crimson-tipped star to meet the early beams of the rising
sun; and the morning-glory closes its sweet-scented flowers
before the sun has risen high; the dandelion opens at
half:past five, and closes at nine; the scarlet pimpernel
waits patiently until mid-day, and dreads rain so anxiously
that it folds quickly up, even before the impending shower,
and remains closed during the passage of a cloud. Hence
its name of the "poor man's weather-glass."  Others love
late hours: the evening primrose opens its golden eyes
in the sweet hour of eve, and retires before the returning
glare of day. The brilliant white lotus, opening when the
sun rises, and closing when he sets, still loves shade so
well, that, when it has no shelter to screen itself, it folds
up its pure leaves as soon as the sun reaches the zenith,
as though unable to endure the too ardent rays of the
luminary that called it into life. There are, on the other
hand, also bats and owls found among plants, wide awake,all night long.  The convolvulus of the tropics blooms
only at night, and so does that magnificent cactus, the
large flowered torch-thistle.  Late in the silent night, when
all other flowers are sleeping, this strange plant, with its
dry, bare stem, unfolds its gorgeous, vanilla-scented flowers.
There are few others known of greater beauty; they somo



198       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
times measure a foot in diameter, and when several of
these magnificent creatures are open at once, upon the
same plant, they seem like stars shining out in all their
lustre, and verifying the poet's assertion, that
"Darkness shows us a world of light
We never see by day."
But it is a short glory indeed: at midnight they are
fully blown, as soon as the morning dawns upon them,
they fold up their charms, and'a few hours later they
are decayed, leaving not a trace of their gorgeous beauty
behind them.
Not all plants, it is well known, have flowers "to gaze
on us with gentle, child-like eyes;" the ferns and allied
plants bearing seed without apparently blooming first.
Where they occur, however, they are only a collection of
several circles of more or less transformed and brightcolored leaves, which mostly alternate with each other. In
the centre of these circles stand the reproductive organs,
and a minute dust is generally found on the petals, apparently resting so lightly on them, that a breath of air
might blow it away. The variety of their color is surpassed
only by that of their shape. The purest colors occur in
Alpine plants, where living flowers skirt the eternal frost;
it is among these that we must look for the loveliest skyblue, the purest snow-white, and the most beautiful rosecolor, until we reach the very glory of luxuriant rhododendrons forming a bright purple girdle around snowcovered peaks.  By their side the flowers of the plain
look impure and stained.  But they have no odor, fira



LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.               199
grance being given to the children of the low lands only.
So with man-it is not proud beauty that is most lovely;
there is a far more potent charm in the sweet perfume
that surrounds the meek and the gentle.  Trees are different, for here Nature seems to have wished to compensate the north for the absence of gay colors, by giving
sweet odors to whole classes of plants. Thus the numble
reed is there aromatic enough, to form with sugar a favorite
luxury; as dew falls there spreads abroad the fruit-like
perfume of the golden furze; the birch-tree exhales in
early spring a sweet rose fragrance, and the pine is aromatic from  the root to its graceful cone.  Some flowers
have unpleasant odors.  The largest on earth, which takes
its name from its discoverer, Raffles, and which is more
than three feet in diameter, has an animal smell, closely
resembling that of beef, and the so-called friar's-cowl
smells so strongly of spoiled meat, that it deceives the
blue-bottle fly, and tempts it to deposit its eggs there,
as if it were carrion. Poisonous plants have, generally,
a sickening and noxious smell, like our aconites, the ailanthus, and Kentucky locust, which exhale a subtle poison,
and are fatal to many insects. In all instances, however,
fragrance is given to plants for some special and beneficent purpose, mostly to attract animals, and to tell them
where a table is spread for them. It is well known that
all animals smell what they want to eat, often at a prodigious distance, and as Nature calls by their smell the
vulture and the buzzard to perform that duty, which is
their highest enjoyment, so all theory of botany lies, with
animals, in their exquisitely developed smell.  Nor ought




200       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
we to omit mentioning here, in humble gratitude, that
Columbus, when his crew mutinied, and his brave heart
nearly failed him, felt his hopes revived and his courage
restored by the sweet odor of sassafras, which the land.
breeze brought upon its wings from the distant shores of
the New World.
The oddest shapes of flowers are probably found among
the orchidaceae of this continent, whose flowers, rich in
every shade and variety of color, portray in their extraordinary formation almost the entire scope of animated
nature, beasts, birds, and fishes. Some represent a helmet
with its visor up; others look like ants and larger insects.
The bee and the fly, the spider and the lizard, are each
accurately copied in certain varieties; one looks for all
the life like a dove, and is irreverently called the Holy
Ghost; and another resembles a large and beautiful butterfly so closely as to deceive even the instinct of birds.
It is perhaps one of the most curious, and, as yet, most
mysterious features in the life of plants, that the appearance of flowers is in some instances accompanied by very
remarkable phenomena. In many of our creepers, in the
lilies and the common gourd, a kind of fever-heat is perceptible at the time of inflorescence.  Sometimes it appears in paroxysms, then again it rises and falls regularly,
and so distinctly, that in one plant, which has perhaps
only been subjected to more careful observations than
others, the heat has been noticed to increase daily from
60 to 110, or even 120 degrees, and then again to fall to
the temperature of the atmosphere.  Some have thought
that this very striking peculiarity of certain flowers might




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.             201
be connected with the power of others to emit light. The
gentle daughter of Linn6, when walking on a dry, sultry
summer evening through her father's green-house, first observed flashes of phosphorescent light on a few plants.
Since then others also have been found to be so endowed,
and the common nasturtium  of our gardens, if plucked
at the time of a bright sunshine, and at once carried into
a dark room, will become visible to the eye, after a while,
by a gentle light emitted from its leaves.  In fact, most
of our yellow or orange-colored flowers, our marigold and
monkshood, will in serene summer evenings give out light,
either in the form of sparks, or in a steadier, but more
feeble glow.  In a few plants this peculiar gift is not
limited to the flowers only, but common to all leaves.
Thus many lichens, creeping along the roof of caverns,
lend an air of enchantment to them, by the soft and clear
light they diffuse, while another plant, abounding in the
jungles of the Madura district in the East Indies, gives
such an extraordinary vivid light, that it illuminates the
ground around it for some distance.
Equally striking and peculiar is the clear, loud sound
with which the golden or dazzling white flowers of certain palm-trees open-a sound already noticed in times
of antiquity, as we learn from Pindar, who speaks of the
season, when "the first opening shoot of the date-palm
proclaims the arrival of balmy spring." This, however,
seems to be the only exception to the general stillness,
with which Nature proceeds in her work, ever showing
how calm and unpretending the growth of every thing
beautiful is in God's visible world.  It is a frequent re9*




202       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
mark that "we never hear a rose opening or a tulip
shooting forth its gorgeous colors," and yet of the same
quiet flowers it was said: Consider the lilies of the field:
I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not
arrayed like one of these!
When the beauty of flowers is gone, their leaves drop
quietly, silently to the ground; but a part of the flower
always remains attached to the stem, and this contains
the fruit or the seeds of the plant by which it continues
its existence and reproduces itself. It is in the process
of preparing these parts that plants show most distinctly
how well they know what time of the year it is. In
autumn they feel that winter is coming, and prepare for
it, by completing all the necessary processes with far
greater activity than they have shown at any other period
of their life.  It is, of course, not an innate consciousness of the season that impels them to do so, but an
extremely delicate and now  much heightened perception
of outward influences, inappreciable to our less refined
senses. The production of seeds is the great end of the
life of the majority of plants, though not of trees and
all those who live for many years.  But the humbler
plants see in it the great purpose of their existence: for
this they have grown and worked and lived, for this they
have unfolded the whole rich apparatus of flowers, and
now their best cares are bestowed upon the ripening fruit.
No precaution is neglected to preserve it; the little capsules which hold the precious seed of future generations,
are surrounded with thorns, or covered with down, cased
in leather, buried ill large masses of succuleit flesh, or




LATER YEARS or A PLANT:.             C)03
carefully packed away in hard, air-tight shells. A mother
could not have better care for the cradle of her beloved
one. Then, when the seed is ripe, and has to be turned
out into the wide world to seek a resting-place and a
home, it is furnished with a crest of feathers, or intrusted
to a tiny embarkation. Nature gives it wings to fly with
or a boat to swim in. And so admirably is the minute
grain protected, that the smallest have often survived for
centuries. Raspberry-seeds, it is well known, have been
found in a barrow, thirty feet deep, alongside with coins
of the Emperor HIadrian, and yet, when sown, they have
borne fruit. The pyramids of the Pharaohs are crumbling
into dust, but the grains of wheat, found in their interior
and once more intrusted  to the tender care of their
mother earth, have joyously sprouted and made an ample return.
The fruit undergoes, of all parts of the plant, perhaps
the largest number of remarkable changes, even after it
has already reached its full size and complete shape. Acid
whilst growing, it becomes sweet as it ripens, and is
sugary when perfectly mature.  Fermentation  makes it
vinous, and, dried up, it turns sour or bitter. Fruits vary
in taste, apparently to suit, by the kindness of an Allwise Providence, the changing wants of man. During the
oppressive heat of summer, nature ripens for him juicy
and refreshing cherries, peaches and melons; the more
sugary figs and mulberries disappear as fast as the bright
days that produced them. When the warm sun is leaving
us, and cold chills begin to threaten, more vinous fruits
ripen, like pears and apples, with their warm, nutritious




204       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
juice. At last, when autumn already veils the sun in cold
mists, and cuts off its warmth from us by dark clouds,
the grape gives us, in its fermented juice, the most powerful cordial.  Winter brings oily and farinaceous nuts,
almonds and olives, which keep long and warm well.
Still it must not be forgotten that those fruits which are,
so to speak, necessaries of life, the wheat of the north,
and the date, cocoanut and bread-fruit of the south, are
constantly found in all stages of development, and last
longer than a short season.
But fruits do more; they actually tell us when they
are ripe and wish to be gathered. They mostly change
their color for this purpose: as long as they are unripe,
they are green like the leaves, among which they are
concealed, or reddish like the bark to which they closely
adhere, as is the case with plums. When they approach
maturity, they assume brighter colors, so that the very
change announces them to be ripe, and their rich red,
blue, yellow, or black, invites those for whose use they
were intended.  Others appeal to us by their smell-and
some even to our ear.  The chestnut-burr snaps in the
keen air, when the silent groves are already clad in autumn's garb; acorns and beechnuts are heard to fall in
the clear atmosphere, and the ripe cocoanut strikes the
ground with such force that the sound is heard for many
miles. Other fruits of palms, which, until ripe, were hid
under the piotecting screen of broad leaves, burst with a
noise like a pistol shot, a signal at which more than one
guest is seen to hurry up to the rich treat.  Among the
latter none am e perhaps more curious than the land-crtabs




LATER YEARS OR A PLANT.              205
of the West Indies. They are exceedingly fond of these
nuts, and yet it is vain for them to look up to a height
which even man can but rarely reach; so the tree itself
rings the dinner-bell when all is ready, and as night falls
the hungry gourmands are seen to rush in armies to the
feast to which they have been so quaintly invited.
After the fruit has ripened and the seed has been sent
adrift, comes mostly the "last scene of all, that ends this
strange, eventful history." For plants also die, and when
they have bloomed and given seed, they droop and hide
themselves in the ground, to rise once more and ever again
with the coming spring.  "The grass withereth and the
flower fadeth," now under a burning sun, and now for want
of moisture; excessive cold kills even the proud oak and
glorious elms; the action of poisons or the ravages of an
insignificant beetle make an end to their lives, but they
die-happy plants!-without pain, without consciousness,
still and silent as they have lived.  Their time of life
varies greatly, from the athletic oak, that stands the storms
of a thousand years, a monument of nations, to the humble
mushroom under its shade, which rises in a night, to perish
in the morning.  But the season comes for all, when the
wind passes over them, and they are gone, and the place
thereof knows them no more. And the vine is dried up,
and the fig-tree languisheth, the pomegranate, the palmtree, also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the
field are withered. But how sweet is here even the parting, how full of comfort for the present, how full of hope
for the future!  The dying breath of fiading flowers is
their sweetest perfume, and a deep flush often overspreads




206       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
their rich crowns, before they fall. Even the leaves, when
they shrink and tremble in the autumn breeze, are full
of unwonted sweetness. And what can equal the oft described glory of fall, when the grasses take their humble
russet garb, and the maple wears its "gorgeous crimson
robe like an Oriental monarch." For leaves also change
-some only as the ermine whitening in the cold season,
or as birds who change their plumage in winter; such are
the evergreens; others change to live no more; as man
does, before he also returns, dust to dust.  Their bright
green grows pale, their vigor declines, their delicate tracery,
that had so often induced us to marvel and worship the
hand that made them, is effaced, and no longer serves to
pass the life-blood of the tree.  Then they shrink and
shrivel, they flutter awhile anxiously on their feeble leafstalks, as if reluctant to leave their sweet summer home,
and then comes the rude boisterous gale, and tears them
for ever from the parent tree. "The bare skeleton of the
tree becomes transparent, rising in spectral grandeur, as
it stretches, full of woe, its bare branches against the cold
evening sky, and rattles in the fierce tempest. A new,
ghastly light is shining through its stripped anatomy. And
it is a light, as with man-the same light of heaven, which
in the waning lustre of life makes his spirit become
lovelier every hour, giving him a sublimer faith, a brighter
hope, a kindlier sympathy, a gentler resignation.  Like
the autumn leaf, he also glows into decay, and kindles
into death. The sun of another world, already risen upon
his soul, though human eyes cannot behold it, burns through
the delicate texture of his thoughts, feelings and desires,




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.               207
and shines, already here on earth, in all the radiancy of
truth, hope, and peace."
Varied, therefore, as the appointed time of plants is,
it has its fixed, irrevocable term. Not all leaves fall at
the same time.  The pine-tree keeps its leaves two or
four years; the fir and spruce change only every ten
years; some trees drop annually certain branches. The
dead foliage of some oaks clings to them, long after all
others have been swept away, and the young elm waits
all winter, and drops not a leaf until its successor pushes
it out of its resting-place. Some fall to form a soft litter
beneath; others remain to afford shelter in bleak winter.
But no art of man can arrest the falling leaf when its
day has come.  Artificial heat, removal to  a warmer
climate, and great care, may succeed in bringing out new
crops almost without pause —but the process exhausts the
ill-used plant, and it dies a premature death. Still even
the decayed leaf is not lost.  It enriches the soil, and
fall produces spring, the dying leaves helping to bring
forth the bright verdure of the coming year.  Thus the
great circle of life goes on without interruption.  The
general signal for the shedding of leaves is the maturity
of the seed; that greatest purpose of the life of plants
once accomplished, they die, or at least, rest for a season.
Thus death comes to some after a few days; bushes and
low trees keep their seeds during the winter, welcome
food for starving birds; and the humble chickweed brings
forth seed seven or eight times a year, not resting even
during winter, and keeps open table for many a tiny wren




208       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
or hungry sparrow; showing us once more Providence so
much greater, as its creature is feebler.
This kind of decay excepted, plants, it is thought, are
not subject to the destructive operation of internal causes;
vegetable life succumbs to outward influences only. The
vitality of trees is certainly almost incredible. No kind
of mutilation can, apparently, destroy them. Who has
not seen old willow trees, adhering but with a small portion of the bark to their roots, and yet continuing to live
and to perform  their duty?  How beautifully does not
the chestnut of our own noble forests send out a crown
of young shoots to hide the vacant space where once it
reared its mighty stem?  The whole vitality of the inner
wood may, in fact, be destroyed; if only some layers
of the bark survive, the tree will vegetate with undiminished vigor, and continue its life for an almost unlimited period. They will, in very old age, lose some of
their height by decay at the top, for it seems as if the
sap could no longer ascend the whole lengthy road from
the deeply buried roots to the lofty crown, but they continue still to increase in girth, and patiently wait for the
stroke of the axe or the fierce rage of the tempest. Thus
it is that England boasts of many a yew or an oak tree,
which has survived the massive church, by the side of
which it was planted, and which yet, spring after spring,
shelters the ruins of its once so proud companion, with
its dark, refreshing verdure. The tender leaf even resists
in its fragile texture, the winds and rains, the burning sun,
and the nipping cold of a whole season.  Greek and Roman sepulehres, stately palaces and lofty monuments over




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              209
the graves of the great and the renowned, have disappeared; nothing is left to mark the place where they once
stood, but the dark cypresses that saw them rise, and since
have overshadowed them for ages.
But even after death, plants live on, as it were, and are
useful to man. Vast tracts of heath, covering large, low
basins, and formed by the annual accumulation of veget.
able matter, which in water becomes to a certain degree
decomposed or carbonized, finally produce those blackened
remains of plants which we call peat.
Or extensive forests, covering valleys, and hillsides, are
overflooded, and the uprooted trees form a gigantic barrier,
which prevents the flowing off of the waters. An extensive marsh is formed, particularly well adapted for the
growth of various kinds of mosses. As they perish they
are succeeded by others, and so for generations in unceasing life and labor, until, in the course of time, the
bottom, under the influence of decay and the pressure
from  above, becomes turf.  Far below  lies hard coal;
the upper part is light and spongy. At various depths,
but sometimes as much as twenty feet below the surface,
an abundance of bogwood is found, consisting mostly of
oak, hard and black as ebony, or of the rich chocolate
colored wood of the yew. Such ancient forests every now
and then rise in awe-inspiring majesty from  their grave.
The whole city of Hamburg, its harbor, and broad tracts
of land around it, rest upon a sunken forest, which is
now buried at an immense depth below the surface. It
contains mostly limes and oaks, but must also have
abounded with hazel-woods, for thousands of hazel-nuts are




210       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
brought to light by every excavation, not exactly made
for nuts.  Our own city of New  Orleans, it has been
recently discovered, is built upon the most magnificent
foundation on which city ever rose.  It was the boast
of Venice, that her marble palaces rested in the waters
of the Adriatic on piles of costly wood, which now serve
to pay the debts of her degenerate sons, but our Venice
has not less than three tiers of gigantic trees beneath it.
They all stand upright, one upon another, with their roots
spread out as they grew, and the great Sir Charles Lyell
expresses his belief that it must have taken at least
eighteen hundred years to fill up the chasm, since one
tier had to rot away to a level with the bottom of the
swamp before the upper tier could grow upon it.
But there is still another vegetable world buried beneath our feet. For the trees of so-called primeval forests
belonging to a period of hoary antiquity and far surpassing
in exuberance the rankest tropical jungles of our day,
have not, like modern woods, undergone decay, but are
treasured up in subterranean houses.  There they were
transformed into vast enduring beds of coal, which in these
latter ages has become to man the source of light, of
heat, and wealth. Almost all of these trees are gigantic
fern-trees, such as the world of our day knows no more;
a few are so-called club-mosses of equally vast dimensions.
Leaves and twigs rest closely one upon another, but often
entire stems are found standing upright, forty to fifty feet
high, with all their roots and branches, dread memorials
of times beyond the memory of man.
Thus we may trace the biography of plants through




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              211 
their often brief but always eventful life, from  the first
appearance of a small microscopic cell to  their last
burying-place under our feet, through all the glories and
delicacies of vegetable life, beginning with the softened
and decayed germ, and ending with the fossil coal. We
see that each plant has a life of its own, that there dwells
still in each tree a Dryad who watches over it and determines its growth, or sighs her last when it dies. We
observe the beautiful harmony that exists between all
their parts and the world that surrounds them.  How
the roots fasten themselves to the earth on which they
grow, while the stem plays with every breath of air that
comes we know not whence. The leaves breathe the water
of rivers and of the atmosphere, the sun unfolds bud and
flower, and the seed at last connects the plant once more
with its future home, an eloquent witness of our own
blessed immortality. But there is no monument set by
their grave to tell us how they lived and what they
achieved.  Yet, they had their duties to  perform, and
faithfully have they done them. Well may we, then, in
conclusion, ask-For what purpose does the plant spring
up, the soil feed and nourish it, and the blessed sun mature its seed?
Plants satisfy the common necessities of man and beast.
They nourish man's body in health, they restore him in
sickness; they give him the clothing that covers him, the
varied hues that delight his eye, and the odors which refresh his senses; the timber of which his houses, his factories, and his ships, are partly or wholly constructed-all
these are but a few of the many benefits which the veget



212       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
able world confers upon man. Wherever we look, we
see in it our great resource; even our railroads and our
mines could not exist, were we not masters of forests.
We would succumb to the cold of winter, food that becomes nutritious only by the aid of fire, would be useless,
the power of steam would not carry us from land to
land and over the broad ocean, if we had no trees. The
very destruction of plants is made necessary for their existence, for the wisdom and forethought of the Creator is
in this also manifest, that, whilst plants invest and ornament the earth, animals browse and trim  them  to check
their luxuriance, so as to maintain the whole system of
creation in order and beauty. And yet this is but the
humblest purpose that plants serve on earth-the hunlblest because it only satisfies material requirements, however we ourselves may have refined and varnished them
over. Only in one point of view does this important end
of their existence obtain a higher value:
It is true, plants are there for man, for the countless
poor, and God said: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread; thou shalt eat the herb of the field. But the
very curse of the Almighty has since been turned into
a blessing. If man does labor in the sweat of his brow,
to eat the herb of the field-how abundantly is he rewarded! Of a mere thorn he has made, as if by enchantment, the beautiful and fragrant rose.  Before he thus
labored, the olive was dry and offensive, the peach bitter,
the pear had but a hard, woody flesh, and the apple-tree
was full of thorns. Mlan labored and the thorns fell, the
rose doubled and trebled its brilliant crown, the peach




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              213
and the pear filled with perfumed juice, the olive lost its
bitterness, and the wild grasses were converted into waving
fields of life-sustaining  grain.  The influence which the
vegetable world thus exercises on the civilization of man,
is as yet but little noticed; only in the great outline has
it been observed, that wherever the spontaneous productions of the earth supply him with food, he is completely
savage-only a degree farther advanced where he plants
the palm and the banana-but where grain is his principal
support, as in the temperate zone, industry and intelligence
are most perfectly developed. We are thus taught, that
the rich heir is not the happiest, but that the child of
the poor man, gifted with industry and indomitable will,
has far more power over prosperity.
Modern science has revealed to us, of late, a higher
duty and a nobler purpose in the life of plants. Working
in masses they regulate the numerous and comprehensive
physical processes of the earth.  Theirs is the duty to
keep the atmosphere dry or moist, as may be required.
On them depends the warmth or the coldness and the fertility of our soil; they alter the climate, change the course
of local winds, increase or diminish the quantity of rain,
and soften the rigor of the seasons.  It is not merely
that whole countries and regions look to certain plants
for their sole support, or that the life of entire nations
is bound up with that of a single tree, like the Mauritius
palm, but whole races of men, through numberless generations, can live only where it pleases, under Providence,
eertain plants to grow and to prosper.
By far the noblest and imost exalted purpose for which




z214      LEAVES FROM THE Booir OF NATURE.
plants live is, however, to adorn the surface of our beautiful earth, and thus to make manifest to us, in their very
existence, and in all their thousand wonders, the Almighty
Creator of heaven and earth.  It is in this aspect only
that plants, the types of nature, acquire their highest significance. They become then, not our friends and sup
porters only, but our kindly teachers also. Whether we
look down upon soft mosses that creep over the rugged
rock, and humble lichens weeping with slow oozing, or gaze
up at the giant tree of the forest, every where our mind
is lifted up, in awe and wonder, to that Intelligence which
watches over the destinies of the universe, and gives us
here already a faint glimpse of the great plan of crea
tion and its great author.
Clearly, however, as we all feel the impressions which
the vegetable world, and especially the consciousness of
their still, unceasing life and labor produces upon our
mind, it is extremely difficult to explain the causes, or
even to determine and express them  in words, clearly
and distinctly. The mere farmer, it is true, sees nothing
but tons of hay in a flowery meadow, and so many bushels
of wheat in a glorious field of golden grain-the majestic
forests represent to him but so many coards of wood, and
the broad branched elm, in all its lovely beauty, shades
his land, and is a nuisance. On the other hand, we know
that it is not the refined mind and the most fastidious
taste that enjoy the beauties of the vegetable world most
and best.  The humble men of St. Kilda, we are told,
Mwaho went to pay their duty to their lord in the "far
aoutherin" islanld of Skye, could hardly proceed on their




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.             215
journey, because "the trees-such beautiful things they
had never seen even in their dreams-rthe trees kept
pulling them  back."  It is, moreover, evidently not the
mere mass of foliage, nor the depth and variety of color,
that affects our senses, but the almost imperceptible and
unconscious effect of all these elements together on our
soul. The rose does not please us merely because of its
tender glow and delicate hue, but because our imagination connects with it the idea of blooming youth, and a
thousand other images float around this. The landscape,
with its various parts and beauties, acts upon man, upon
his tone of mind, and thus imperceptibly upon his entire
inward development.  How different must needs be the
idea of the world to him who obtained his first impressions from the solemn, evergreen pine woods of the north,
overshadowing deep blue lakes and vast granite-strewn
plains; and to the happier man, whose early days passed
under the bright leaf of the myrtle and the fragrant laurel,
reflecting the serene sky of the south! Even in the same
land, how differently is the mind affected by the dark
shade of a beech-wood, the strange sight of a few scattered pines on a lonely hill, sighing sadly in the fitful
gusts of wind, or of broad, green pasture-lands, where the
breeze rustles gently through the trembling foliage of
birches! Our hearts beat gladly and joyously when fields
of flowers are lighted up in bright sunshine; our spirits
droop when we see them look sad and forlorn on a rainy,
melancholy day. Peace and quiet happiness teach their
gentle lessons to him who dwells in fertile valleys, with
velvet lawns on their bottom, and the sides tufted with




216       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
the ash, the cheerful beech or the feathery juniper, shaded,
it may be, by the soft dark verdure of ancient yew-trees,
whose venerable trunks were slender saplings in the age
when Druids worshipped there. Men live not so on the
boundless prairie, where the wolf chases the swift crane,
where cloud races after cloud, and the white man wages
war against the red man.  Free and bold, beyond all
others, breathes the mountaineer, bred in the fierce, incessant warfare with the rigor of Alpine winters and the
dangers of the chamois hunt; defying all earthly power,
he looks down from  his lofty home, proud that liberty
dwells on mountain-heights, and that the foul breath of
the grave does not reach up into the clear blue ether
around him.
The effect is as varied when we take not the whole vast
scenery of a landscape, but its more isolated parts. Few
will look upon the ineffable beauty and sweetness of
flowers, that rich jewelry with which heaven has adorned
the bosom of our mother earth, without feelings of elevating and refining delight.  To him  who observes, not
with his eyes only, but with his mind intent, his heart
alive, there is no resisting their unconscious unfolding,
their peaceful, childlike life, their gentle, resigned and
hopeful drooping.  Who has not in his life also some
days of gay and sunny spring, when he loved to look
upon flowers as dear to him, full of hope and love, when
he felt for them and with them, as they would ever look
fondly upward to the clear, blue heaven above, smiling
on the sun that cheered them, rising lightly from refreshing
rain, never folding up their beauty and sweet fragrance,




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              217
save to give it forth again as day would once more
brightly rise. Oh, well has it been said that each cup
of a flower is a pulpit, and each leaf a book from which
we may learn the wisdom, goodness and power of Him
who has so lavishly scattered his handiwork over the face
of the earth.  Few, also, can look up to a stately tree,
reared in its colossal leafy grandeur, its head in the clouds,
its roots in the firm earth, so full of life and vigor, without feeling himself lifted up with its gigantic branches
to higher thoughts and purer feelings. We all can feel
with the exiled Syrian, who went to the Jardin des Plantes
and there " clasped his country's tree and wept." And
as the scalding tears trickled down the rugged cheek, he
was once more a wanderer in the desert, and once more
he breathed, across the dreary sand, the perfume from the
thicket bordering on his promised land; again he saw,
afar off, the palm-tree, cresting over the lonely, still waters, and heard the pleasant tinkle of the distant camel's
bell-until his tears were dried, hope again revived, and
fresh and glad emotions rose within his swelling breast.
Oh, there are wondrous lessons in plants!  Eloquently
quotes a modern writer thus of the words that trees speak
to us: " Do not trees talk with their leafy lungs? Do
they not at sunrise, when the wind is low and the birds
are carolling their songs, play sweet music?  Who has
ever heard the soft whisper of young leaves in spring,
on a sunny morning, that did not feel as if rainbow beams
of gladness were running through his heart 2 and then,
when the morning glory, like a nun before God's holy
altar, discloses her beauteous face and the moss-roses open
10




218       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
their crimson lips, sparkling with nectar that fell from
heaven, who does not bless his Maker?-and when autumn
comes, the season of the sere and yellow leaf, when wheat
is in its golden prime, and the corn waves its silken tassels
in the charmed air, who is not reminded of the reaper
death?"
As every season has its own tone and lesson, so every
flora and every variety has its peculiar echo in the heart
of man. Harmonizing, like music, with all the various
trains of thought and images of fancy, with every conceivable state of mind, plants and groups of plants ever
awaken kindred feelings.  There is a mysterious affinity
between human consciousness and outward nature, but still
more mysterious is the varied manner in which this relation is modified by individual feeling. The waving cornfield has its beauties, and so have long avenues of poplars,
with vines hanging in rich festoons from!tree to tree.
Plains covered with orange groves and chequered with
fertile slopes and vineyards, dense forests of gigantic and
primeval growth swarming with every variety of animal
and vegetable life, these and countless other scenes find
each its response in some train of human emotions and
affections, which, like the lyre of Timotheus, they by turns
excite and soothe. Each tree that we know has its own
expression; it has witnessed our joy or our grief, and
wherever it meets our eye, it seems to murmur responses.
So it is with larger groups. Here we see vast prairies
with gently waving floods of verdure, full of grace and
cheerfulness, there long sombre porticoes of gnarled old
stems, standing, as the cedars of Lebanon, massive pillars,




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.              219
supporting their ponderous domes.  Beautiful roses, with
their short-lived flowers and hidden but permanent thorns,
remind us of earthly pleasures-a forest, with its silent
temple of foliage, raised  through centuries on gigantic
trunks, high above man and full of peace and majesty,
fills us with religious awe, and makes us bow low and
reverently before these visible tokens of the Creator's
sublime power. Even the humblest of flowers bring with
their sweet perfume rich blessings to the heart of him
whose hand tends them with care. Where a flower opens
its quiet, child-like eyes upon us, our passions fly like
evil spirits, and he who delights in the still, humble growth
of delicate plants, is not apt to harbor coarse thoughts
or fierce feelings. In the house around which we see a
tidy, well-kept garden, order and peace are apt to prevail,
and where there is a flower-stand outside, there is almost
always a book-shelf within.
In his joy and in his sorrow, therefore, man loves to
surround himself with plants and flowers. He crowns the
bride with sweet myrtle or the pure orange blossom; the
laurel speaks to him of glory and renown, the palm-branch
of glorious hopes for the future.  And when the loved
one departs, he turns again to the flowers of the earth
and the trees of the forest, that they may grieve with
him and give expression. to his sorrow. From the South
Sea to the icy north, from east to west, grief finds the
same  simple  but touching  expression.  The mourning
peasant of Normandy burns the lowly straw bed, on wvhich
his friend expired, before his hut, and the round black
spot, as it contrasts with the green turf by its side, re



220       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
mains long an humble but eloquent epitaph of him who
left no other record behind. In peaceful villages we see
neither gorgeous monuments, nor lofty trees rising in honor
of the dead-and, we fear, as frequently in praise of the
living-but, sweeter far, the graves are covered with green
sod or humble flowers. "We adorn graves," says gentle
Evelyn, "with flowers and redolent plants, just emblems
of the life of man, which has been compared in Holy
Scripture to those fading beauties, whose roots being
buried in dishonor, rise again in glory."
The Japanese deck with flowers their "eternal mansion,"
and the Turks perforate the monumental slabs spread on
those who shall be seen no more, in order that a natural
growth of bloom may spring up through the apertures,
and that the buds, so nourished by the grave, and set free
to the winds of heaven, may shed their fragrance and
strew  their petals around the "city of silence."  The
western traveller gazes with deep sympathy upon the
grave of the Chinese; it is a simple, conical mound of
earth, but over it spread and twine wild roses and cover
it with a mass of pure white blossoms, or it is crowned,
in simple majesty, with a tall tuft of waving grass. Our
cities, also, now love to bury their dead where woods unfold their massive foliage and breathe an air of heaven;
their better taste has made the green grove and the velvet
lawn sacred to the memory of those that are gone to
the realms of peace.
And what eloquent mourners are not trees! The dense
cone of the cypress overshadows mournfully the Moslem's
tomb, with its sculptured turban, and the terebinth keeps




LATER YEARS OF A PLANT.                 221
watch by the Armenian's grave.  Some nations love to
weep with the weeping birch, that most beautiful of forest
trees, the lady of the woods, with "boughs so pendulous
and fair," or with the willow of Babylon, on whose branches
the captive Israelites hung up their harps. They love to
look upon their long, thin leaves and branches, as they
hang languidly down to the ground, or trail listlessly on
the dark waters, now waving full of sadness in the sighing breeze, and now floating in abandoned despair on the
silent waves.  Their whole dishevelled and disheartened
aspect seems to deplore some great misfortune, and we
can fancy poor Desdemona singing how
"The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow,
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
The fresh streams ran by her and murmured her moans,
Her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones,
Sing all a green willow must be my garland,"
for Desdemona also had a song of a willow, and she died
singing the song of the willow.
Other nations again love not trees that seem to unite
in sorrow with the earth, and to carry our regrets to the
dust, but rather cherish such as seem to lift up our hearts
in their branches, and to raise our hopes to heaven. Such
are the mountain cypress, the lofty poplar and the sombre
pine of the north. The latter, especially, with their dark
but evergreen foliage, their balsamic fragrance, the strange
sad sighs that are ever heard in their long boughs, and
their lofty crowns, reaching to the very clouds, which suc



222       LEAVES FROM THE BOox OF NATURE.
cessive seasons find unchanged and nothing but death
causes to vary, remind us of the only source from whence
comfort comes for our wounded hearts, and lift up our
eye and our heart to that God who gives death and gives
life again to those that fear him.




PLANT-MUMMIES.                  223
VII.
Ianit- )Imm ts
"He spoke of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stone, or spirit in the air."
TENNYsON.
THE  Psalmist says:-" Thou madest man to have dominion over the works of thy hand; thou hast put
all things under his feet."  And truly, man is the master
of the world.
There comes a joyous breeze in freedom through the
air, and sings its merry songs in rush and reed, or plays
sportively with branch and briar.  But see, man stands
upon the breezy hill, and catches the light-footed wanderer
above; he stops him on his fruitless errand and makes
him  a servant, a slave. The wind can no longer roam  at
will over hill and dale;' he must turn, in restless haste,
the huge wings of a mill, or he is bound in towering
sails, and has to drive mighty ships through the impeding
waves.




224       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
There rushes a bright, cheerful spring from its cold
mountain home down into the plain, and as it leaps over
rock and root, it dashes its snow-white foam into the dazzling sunshine, and raises its little anthem of thanks and
praise at every fall, in every valley. But here, also, the
master stands in its way and compels it, a child yet, to
turn the mill-wheel; or he loads the well-grown river
with heavily-laden barges, that it must carry from land
to land to the mighty ocean.
The fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and every living
thing that moveth upon the earth, the trees and the herbs,
the stones and the metals-they are all slaves and serfs
of man. Even the lowest, made in the image -of God,
is still master of all the powers of Nature. The South
Sea islander makes plants support him, and beasts serve
him; they build his hut on land, and carry him in boats
over the seas.  Savage and inhospitable winter fashions
the water into clear blocks of ice to build the Esquimaux'
house; the seal furnishes oil for his lamp, the whale gives
him ribs for his boat, and heads for his arrows.
But it is not the strong arm and the skilful hand of
man that makes him thus master of Creation. His mind
is the ruler of the world, the true Lord of Nature. It
makes the sea and the mountain his slaves, so that the
ice of the pole, and the heat of the tropics must serve him
as he wills. And when he has mastered all that eye can
see, and hand can grasp, when the present has nothing
more to give him, and the future seems to elude his grasp,
he descends into the past, and raises even the spirits of
the departed to serve him.




PLANT-MUMMIES.                 225
Man had exhausted the resources which the vegetable
world of our day afforded him; every herb bearing seed,
and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree, had been
to him for meat. But he desired more, and his restless,
insatiable mind longed for new realms and new powers.
So he went back into distant ages and exhumed the bodies
of ancient generations. For animals and plants both, are
made faithfully to. return, to their common mother earth,
whatever they have taken from  her.  The beast of the
field, and even proud man die, and dust returns to dust.
Plants, also, the first-born children of the earth, must die,
and return to the bosom of their great mother. But they
sink only to rise again, or if buried beneath the ruins of
ages, they preserve, even there, in eternal night, a breath
of their former vitality, and centuries after, their dead
bodies become, in the hands of man, once more a source
of light and life.
From  the western coast of France, vast desert plains
stretch far east, through northern Germany and Russia,
until they are lost in distant and unknown Siberia. The
traveller shudders, he knows not why, as the boundless
expanse first strikes his eye. There is no fresh waving
tree to whisper words of good cheer and pleasant welcome;
there is not a hill, "which God delighted to dwell in."
All is level, covered with brownish-red heather, with the
golden blossom of the broom and thorny juniper-bushes.
Only now and then a green marsh relieves the oppressive
monotony, and grazing herds of cattle give life to the
scene; but soon again the desolate moor spreads far beyond the horizon in dark, dreary dullness. The air hangs
10*




226       LEAVES FROM THE BOOr OF NATURE.
in gloom over the lifeless swamp; even the moor fowl
cries as in agony, and the swift swallow, chasing lightwinged dragon-flies over the rushes, twitters in an undertone, and utters mournful complaints.  Poverty alone
dwells on the borders of these desolate plains; low huts
scarcely venture to raise their turf-roofs a few feet above
the ground, and the dwellers on marsh and moor show
in their pale, downcast features, that the clear air of heaven
but rarely greets them, and that the pure water of highland springs is a luxury unknown.
Yet, these moors are a world of their own, peopled by
races of beings, found nowhere else, and furnished with
plants unknown to other lands. They have their history
as well as the lofty mountain and the rich valley; they
are born, they grow and prosper, they decay and vanish.
On many a plain, on lofty table-lands, or close to the
ocean's restless pulse, wherever water gathers, from a
thousand invisible sources, little pools and miniature lakes
are formed, which the clayey ground or solid rock beneath
prevents from reaching their great home in the sea. Upon
these waters little tiny plants appear, hardly visible confervae; they come, man knows not whence, but they multiply in amazing haste and soon cover the stagnant pool
with living green. Of a sudden, however, they are gone;
they have sunk down to the bottom.  There they form
layer upon layer; slowly, indeed, for the naked  eye
measures them  only by hundreds of generations; but as
particles of sand and stone gather in their hidden folds,
and as the bodies and shells of countless minute animals,
who found a home in the waters above, are buried amidst




PLANT-MUMMIES.                  227
them, they rise year after year. Gradually they afford a
footing and food for numerous water-worts, in whose mouldering remains mosses and rushes begin to settle. These
bind their roots firmly, they join hand in hand, and arm
in arm, until at last they form a soft green cover of peaty
mould, far and near, over the dark, mysterious waters.
The older the moor, the firmer and stronger is, of
course, this turf cover over the brownish pool, that gives
out a faint but piercing fragrance.  Near the sea-shore,
and in rainy regions, larger quantities of water frequently
remain between the firm ground and the felt-like cover,
so that the surface breathes and heaves like the waves
of the great ocean.  In drier countries, heath, hair-grass,
and even bilberry bushes grow in the treacherous mould.
But the moisture beneath gnaws constantly at their roots,
so that they die off, whilst the herb above clings pertinaciously to life, and sends out ever-new shoots —a faint,
false semblance of life, like the turf on the moor itself,
in its restless, unstable suspension above the dark-brown
water beneath.
This turf-cover, consisting of countless partly decayed
plants and their closely interwoven roots, is our peat;
those vegetable masses that have accumulated at the bottom of the moor are bog-earth, and below them, as the
oldest layer of all, lies the so-called black peat. As early,
even, as the thirteenth century, these remnants of minute
mosses were used as fuel; but it was not until the sixteenth century that the Dutch especially, who know no
other kind of fuel, devised a systematic mode of making
these treasures permanently available.  Now, the upper turf




228       LEAVES FROM THE BbOK OF NATURE.
is, during the dry season; cut out into large square pieces,
that serve mainly to cover the lowly huts, which the
dwellers in those regions bury half under ground, and then
raise a few feet by loosely arranged stones. There they
live, the most miserable of men upon earth, dark gloom
all around them, and deeper gloom yet within their cheerless, unlighted hovels.
If the moor is deeper, ditches are dug to carry off the
dismal water, and then the lower peat is carried away
in large pieces to serve as fuel.  Often, when it is too
moist, it has to be kneaded, pressed into form, and then
carefully to be arranged in large, well-aired sheds, to dry
and to settle.  If water be allowed to stand on the excavated moor, the peat is renewed in a few years, and
may be cut again, though the period varies from  twenty
to two hundred years in different portions of Europe.
Vast regions of our globe are covered with these remnnants of once bright, blooming flowers.  The table-lands
of the Cordilleras in South America, the boundless plains
of Siberia, one-tenth of all Ireland, a large portion of Germany, part of Scotland, Jutland, and Norway —even the
sides and valleys of the Alps abound with such moors.
The polar circles are not free from them; there, also,
mosses and algae still grow, and so closely and thickly
that they form, as it were, but one great mass of woody
fibre. Their growth is peculiar; they add every year new
shoots to the upper extremities, whilst the lower as constantly die and change, when dry, into rich humus, but,
when kept moist, into peat.  Thus the famous Tundra,
the giant-morass of Siberia, is an almost inexhaustible




PLANT-MUMMIES.                  229
storehouse of this most valuable material.  In our own
United States, it is well known, swamps of enormous extent
abound in the south, overgrown mostly with cypresses, and
containing large peat-bogs, into which man can only venture at the peril of his life.
Almost inaccessible in days of yore, haunted by ghastly
spectres, and illumined only by the treacherous light of
will-o'the-wisps, these dreary but valuable regions are now
cut through by railways and canals. For miles and miles
the traveller in Europe passes through the midst of count.
less gigantic heaps of peat. HIere and there, miserable
huts are half hidden; stunted, squalid children, play around
them in dogged silence; in the distance a cross, formed
of white birch poles, rises high in the air, and before it,
lies prostrate their mother, buried in anxious prayer. Beyond it, you see long rows of laborers, strong, swarthy
men, breast high in the swamp, digging with eager haste,
whilst others carry huge masses, well-balanced on their
heads, to the drying-house.
Here, also, the power of the small in the great household of Nature is strikingly illustrated.  Tiny confervea
and barely-visible swamp-mosses form vast moors, the fuel
of nations, giving bread to thousands, regions full of wonders and mysterious charms.  A  diminutive water-lentil
(Lenna trisulca) is the main laborer in this unknown and
unseen process. With its little, dark-green leaves, it lives
entirely under water; only when about to blossom, it
rises for awhile into the air, and then sinks forever to the
bottom, there to be changed into peat. It forms closelywoven, thick layers, filled with sand and snails, and even




230       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
trees. When confervm alone are at work, the peat lies
in the shape of thin, paper-like leaves, as if year after
year a new generation had lain down to rest on the corpses
of the preceding season. Small streams of water, flowing
under ground, complete the decay of the vegetable matter,
and consolidate the whole, till it becomes blended in one
confused mass.
Dark and dismal the green turf stretches far away, as
far as eye can reach. It knows neither spring nor summer.  Below is the dark, unfathomed abyss.  Here and
there fierce gusts of wind, or strange powers from below,
have torn the gloomy shroud asunder, and the dark, black
waters stare at you, like the despairing eye of the dying
sinner.  Even the bright sun of heaven cannot light up
the haunted mirror-its golden flee looks pale and leaden.
No fish swims in the inhospitable water; no boat passes
swiftly from shore to shore. Whatever has life and dreads
death, flees the treacherous moor. Woe to the unfortunate
man who misses the narrow path! A single step amiss,
and he sinks into the gulf; the green turf closes over
him and drowns the gurgling of the waters and the anxious
cry of the victim.
Far, far down in the depths of the moor there lies
many a secret of olden times.  Below the grim, ghastly
surface, below the waters, below the black remnants of
countless plants, lie the sad memorials of ages unknown
to the history of man.  Huge trees stand upright, and
their gigantic roots rest upon the crowns of still older
forest-giants!  In the inverted oaks of Murten Moor, in
Switzerland, many see the famous oak-woods that Charle



PLANT-MUMMIES.                 231
magne caused to be cut down, now, more than a thousand years ago.  For centuries the moors have hid in
their silent bosom the gigantic works of ancient Rome,
and posterity has gazed with awe and wonder at the masterly roads and massive bridges, like those built of perishable wood by Germanicus when he passed from Holland
into the valley of the Weser. Far, in the deep, lie buried
the stone hatchets and flint arrow-heads of Frisians and
Cheruski, by the side of the copper kettle and the iron
helmet of the Roman soldier.  A  Pheenician skiff was
found of late, and alongside of it a boat laden with bricks.
The skeletons of antediluvian animals rest there peaceably
by the corpses of ancient races with sandals on their feet
and the skins of animals around their naked bodies. I-iundreds of brave English horsemen, who sought an honorable
death in the battle of Solway, were swallowed up, horse
and men, by the insatiable moor. And in years bygone,
a Danish King Harold, called the Blue Tooth, allured with
foul treachery a fair princess of Norway, Gunhilde, to Jutland. She came, and she vanished from the memory of
man. History had forgotten her, tradition even began to
fade; but a peat-bog opened its long-closed lips, and accused, late but loud, the bloody king of his wicked deed.
The poor princess was found, far below the peat, strangled
and tied to a post, where her merciless foe had buried
her, as he thought, forever, in the abyss.
It is a strange and most melancholy charm which these
low  chambers of death have for the careful observer.
Where once gigantic animals dwelt, and tropical plants
flourished in splendor, where broad roads passed through




232       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the land, or forests stood in ancient pride; where trade
and commerce prospered, and richly laden vessels sailed
from port to port-there now the dead moor covers all
life and spreads its dread winding-sheet alike over the
deepest sea and the richest valley.
Even in our day, moors grasp with their death-hand
at living nature around them.  Here and there a lofty
tree still rises from the dismal depth; in mountain valleys
even groves and forests sometimes break the sad monotony.
But in the unequal struggle the moor is sure to win the
battle. Like foul disease, the hungry moor-water gnaws
at the roots of noble trees.  It softens the ground, it
changes it into morass, and the proud giants of the forest
fall one by one, before the dark, invisible foe beneath
them. They resist long and bravely; but their roots are
drowned with the abominable liquid, their hold is loosened,
their leaves turn yellow and crisp; the wintry storm
comes in fury, and the noble trees sink powerless inte
the grave at their feet.  The struggle may be marked,
even now, in all its stages.  Thus, in the famous Black
Forest of Germany, there rise on many a breezy hill
glorious old fir-trees and graceful, silvery birches.  Only
a few  yards beyond, however, the eye meets but with
sorry, stunted dwarfs, trees crippled before they reached
their height, old before their time, and weak already, in
the days of their youth. Their crowns are withered, their
branches hung with weird, weeping mosses. Then the trees
become still fewer and smaller; low, deformed trunks, with
twisted branches alone survive.  At last, these also disappear, and the dead quiet of the moor, with its humble




PLANT-MUMMIES.                 233
heath, broken only here and there by a dying bush, or
a lowly hillock, reigns alone and triumphant.
Even the sea has its moors and its bogs. When the
tide recedes from the coasts of France and England, vast
hidden morasses become visible.  For miles and miles
they stretch into the sea, these wide oceanic meadows.
Engulfed plains, sunken marshes, where thousands of years
ago a joyous world lived and loved, are now the home
of fishes and muscles. Often a tempest brings large tracts
of this watery peat to the shore, or a fisherman drags
huge pieces of bog from the deep.
Stranger still is it, when the air enclosed in the fine, firm,
texture of matted roots and fibres, buoys a bog and raises
it high up into the air. Then large pieces are torn from
their ancient resting places, and are carried about like
floating islands, at the mercy of winds, until the waves
rend them into fragments, or the water they imbibe makes
them too heavy, so that they sink once more down to
their-proper home. Such islands of peat have been found
large enough to afford pasture for a hundred head of
cattle; but a few years destroy their form, and they disappear without leaving a trace behind them.  Near St.
Omer, in France, these islands are left to roam freely,
during summer wherever they list, but in winter they are
tied fast to the shore. Still others bear trees, even on
their surface; and both Russia and Chili have such strange
vagrants, formed of sea-grass, even in clear, transparent
water.
Rarely only, the moor despises the slow progress of undermining and silently engulfing living nature, and breaks,




234       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
in wild fury, through its long quiet. The putrefying waters
and the fermenting masses of decayed vegetation, beneath
the closely woven turf, develop gases which then raise the
plain into hills and change the whole aspect of the landscape. When this force is very great, or when rocks and
masses of earth impede its convulsive movement, the swollen bog suddenly opens with hoarse thunder, and a black
torrent of foul, hideous mire pours forth with overwhelming violence.  Thus it happened in 1821, at Tullamore,
Ireland, when a huge bog, several acres in extent, broke
loose, and travelled for nine miles, over a broken country.
It laid waste everything it met with in its course. Houses
were levelled with the ground at its touch; trees torn up
by the roots; the fields were covered and the valleys
filled with bog. Thousands of men were summoned to
arrest its destructive march; dams were built, and walls
were erected, but all in vain. The torrent rested not in
its fatal course, until its fury was exhausted, and silence
once more brooded on the black moor.
Far in the deepest deep of our mother earth lie still
older mummies of plants, that flourished and withered long
before the gates of heaven were opened and God's bow
was set in the cloud. They date back to the mysterious
days when the hardly formed globe, still incandescent, was
but loosely held together by a thin crust of primary rocks.
Below them the pent up fires of the vasty deep glowed
and raged in untamed fury; above them hung a hot, stifling
air, and huge masses of heavily laden clouds. Rain, fierce,
incessant rain, poured down upon the chaotic scene; here
and there the slight cover burst, volcanoes rose, continents




PLANT-MUMMIES.                 235
greeted first the light of heaven, and islands sank, to be
seen no more. All the powers of nature were unchained;
the earth was one vast battle field, on which the elements
fought for the empire of the world. It was in those hours
of gigantic strife, and, amidst the thousand thunders of
a quaking earth and a threatening heaven, that huge forests
were buried in the bosom of the earth, to wait in patience
for the day of their resurrection.
Upon the first islands that rose out of the gurgling,
struggling waters, when land and water were parted by
the Most High, there grew forests of gigantic forms, of
horse-tails and club-mosses, full of beauty and luxuriant
vigor, but they bloomed and blossomed not. Sigillaria
gently waved their lofty crowns on their slender curiously
marked trunks. In the pride of their grandeur, rising high
above the lowly bushes around them, they ranged themselves in copses and forests. Parasite ferns fluttered in
the restless winds, like green pennants, from column-shaped,
gigantic canes, whilst gentler breezes whispered sweet secrets to the graceful rushes along the banks of interminable marshes, and stigmarias painted the quiet surface of
peaceful inlets, with the beauteous image of their graceful
foliage. Algee and mosses grew in pleasing forms on rock
and stone, and struck their tiny roots deep into cleft and
fissure.
Where now  Spitzbergen and Greenland, Melville and
Bear Islands rise in the splendor of eternal snow and ice,
tall grasses were then rocking and dreaming of the wondrous time that would come when Man should be born
after the image of God. Trees, high and strong, bushes




236       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of strange, fantastic shapes, unbounded forests of colossal
reeds and flags, overshadowed the shores of the dark ocean,
encircled with dense night, large, ever-silent marshes, and
crowned in graceful groups the table-lands of these islands.
But silence brooded over them all. As no flower ever
graced their lofty columns, so no bird ever sang in their
branches, no deer ever rested in peace under their shadow.
The sea alone, the great sea, had its life. Here the huge,
flat head of a monstrous lizard rose heavily from under
the roots of a mighty fern; there a shark of unmeasured
dimensions shot, like a flash of lightning, through the
turbid flood; polypi, snails of quaint shape, and muscles
resplendent in brightest colors, crowded the shallow estuaries. A thousand curious forms, no longer found upon
earth, peopled the silent waters, and generation after generation passed away, unseen by man and unknown for
countless ages to come.
They rose, they lived, and they died in utter silence and
darkness. They returned dust to dust, or they sank into
the bottomless ocean.  Now the fury of fiery volcanoes
would bury whole forests under masses of burning porphyry and basalt-then the sea itself would rise in solemn
majesty, and, racing upwards, fall upon ancient woods,
breaking down young and old, high and low, and leaving
behind it but one vast mass of sand and stone, under
which it had hid all their glorious beauty. Where neither
fire nor water came, with giants' power, to destroy, the
huge ferns died a slow and silent death.  One by one
they would sink, weary of life and worn out by the fierce
storm  all around them, until gentle rains came, and with




PLANT-MUMMIES.                 237
tender sympathy, spread a pall of white sand and bright
colored stones over their buried bodies.  A  new race
sprang up from the exuberant bosom of nature; it also
was laid low, and buried under massive rocks and green
turf, and a new forest rose, phoenix like, from its ashes.
And again and again the furious tempest swept along.
and covered them with dense layers of sand, or heaped
rocks over their grave, as if he would fain have silenced
forever the revengeful whisper of antediluvian forests.
There are places on earth, where one hundred and fifty
of such successive generations may distinctly be counted!
But tenderly as nature had covered their dead bodies,
still their race was not yet run, their purpose but half
fulfilled. Tree by tree, and herb by herb, they lay peacefully in their grave. The storm sighed no longer in their
branches, the upheaving earth shook not their lofty trunks.
Warmly imbedded they slept in their quiet chambers.
Thousands of years passed, and their rest was unbroken,
their very existence unknown. No human eye had seen
them in their prime; they had died and sunk into their
grave long before man dwelt in the world. But now,
after centuries, man came and made his way through vast
layers of clay and firm strata of rock; he descended into
the deep of the earth, to exhume the huge forests that
had lain there buried since the days of creation.  He
brought them forth, the corpses of long forgotten plants,
to the light of a sun they had never seen before; he
made their remains to work for him-his busiest servants,
his most efficient slaves. It was thus that the ruins of




238      CLEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the past became the masters of the present. These flowerless firstlings of creation were made to rule and control, at the bidding of the children of this day, wind and
water, space and time.  The light of earliest ages, safely
buried in the bosom  of our mother earth, was called to
life once more, and made to shine bright and brilliant
over land and sea.
In the lofty mountains of Peru, man found the black,
shining mummies; far from under the ocean's bed, he
brought to light the same mysterious plants, the same
gigantic fern-trees. A new book was opened to him; the
coal-fields of the earth became chronicles of ages unknown
to history or tradition. Leaf after leaf was unfolded, and
not a letter was found to be effaced.  Whatever had had
life upon land or in water, was carefully preserved, in
image or substance, in the long hidden treasury.  Not a
plant was missing, not a leaf was wanting to rebuild the
wondrous world of earliest ages. The dark night of deep
mines unfolded an incredible richness and splendor of vegetable forms. As if with gorgeous tapestry, their walls
and ceiling were found covered with graceful garlands of
unknown creepers. The rich tracery of delicate leaves and
tendrils is marked in deep black on the lighter surface
of the surrounding rock. Lofty trees stand, as they stood
countless ages ago, in all the luxury of their massive
trunks, their wide spreading branches and beautiful foliage.
Fossil trunks have been found, whose year-rings told of
an age of more than eight centuries! Palms and tropical
trees alternate with the pines and poplars of northern




PLANT-MUMMIES.                  239
regions; and there, too, sleeps the animal world of those
days. H-ere is the big lizard, not one of her tiny scales
wanting; there is the colossal shark, in all his huge dimensions. They are all there, every plant and every animal,
uninjured by the unsparing tooth of time.  Not a line
is effaced, not a letter is illegible in this great book of
nature.
Man soon determined to employ the new power thus
granted him; but, although Marco Polo tells us that the
Chinese used coals as far back as his own time (1270)
Europe did not employ them until about a hundred years
ago.  Then, however, began the reign of the new agent
in man's rule over the earth, and the strange spectacle
is presented in some places, that the mummies of longforgotten trees, reared in regions once tropical, but now
ice-bound, must serve to warm the houses of men and
to force tropical fruits in northern climates.  Now, coal
as fuel, drives the railway train and the steamer; it works
in every factory, it burns on every hearth; it is to England more precious than gold and costly jewels.
Its gases, the terror of the poor miner who but too
often falls a victim of the terrible "fire-damps," have been
changed fronn a death-bringing enemy into a imost useful
servant. To drive them out from the mines, they were
at first conveyed in tubes to the outer air.  By accident
it was found that they could ignite, and from this simple
attempt to effect an escape for a nuisance, man derived
the light which now rivals the noonday-brightness, and gives
peace and security even to overgrown cities.




240       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
All this, and much more, we owe to the long buried
mummies of plants that lived, we know not how many
ages ago.  Truly, we see, as yet, but "as if in a glass,
darkly," and His wondrous works are hidden to our dim
eyes.




UNKNOwN TONGUES.                 241
VIII.
&IR.knolnx 2rntm
"All the earth shall sing unto Thee; they shall sing to Thy name."
IT was a dark and dismal night when the brave Alrneida's
ship stood off and on the coast of the fragrant island
of Ceylon. With a stout heart and a bold hand he had
sailed into seas unknown.  Day after day, the smooth,
glassy surface had shown him only his own vessel's
graceful rigging and quietly rocking hulk, until famine
began to shed pallor on the face of the bravest of his followers; and his own proud Portuguese soul felt terrors
creeping over it, and despair even menaced life. So they
prayed to their saints and their God, and He heard them.
The waves curled in silvery crests, the huge sails hailed
the coming breeze, and at last the sweetest of sweet sounds
on the wide ocean, the gentle wash of the waters
up the ship's bow, greeted the ear of the anxious
mariner, At night dark mountains rose on the falr horizon, and "Land!" shouted the exulting watch from  the
11




21{-f2     LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
mast-head. And, as dusky shadows covered the sea, fresh,
sweet odors came from  the distant island.  Bright firesoh, how welcome a sight!-were seen rising; and even the
voices of men were heard in strange, unintelligible accents.
But what was that voice, which, all of a sudden, swelled
on the air, and like magic filled their minds with unutterable sorrow2?  Now it seemed to rise from the dark depth
by their side, and now it came far and faint as from a
distant world.  At one moment, it broke in fierce, fearful
cries, and then again it sank to such melancholy complaining that anguish seized on their souls, and tears trickled
down their rugged and weather-beaten faces. They crossed
themselves; they fell on their knees; and even their fearless
leader implored the Lord on high, to spare their lives and to
guard their souls against the power of Satan!
Often were those deep, mournful sounds heard in those
distant waters, and many were the accounts that science
and superstition gave of the fearful "Voice of the Devil."
Or was it, as some fondly believed, even in our own age,
the mysterious utterance of the Spirit of Nature, dwelling
in our globe and in all the vast realms of creation?  Later
days brought other explanations.  There were enormous
gullies there, it was said, and narrow passes cut through the
gigantic mountains, so that the rushing of winds and the
roaring of waters, played on as an zEolian harp of colossal
size.
Our day has, at last, torn the veil of superstition and fancy,
and replaced a tale of impossible wonders by facts of even
more marvellous beauty. There lives, near the shores of
Ceylon, a large and most gorgeous shellfish.  And when the




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                 243
light of the moon rests dreaming on the bosom of the ocean,
and gentle breezes, laden with fragrance, come cooling and
calming from distant homes, it opens its bright-colored lips,
and pours forth its nAild, melancholy music, that the breakers
on shore are heard no longer, and the heart of man is
moved.
It was surely not said in vain, nor was it a mere figure of
speech, when the Psalmist exclaimed: "All thy works
praise thee, oh Lord!"  For all creation unites in the vast
hymn of praise that daily rises to His throne on high. The
morning stars ever sing in the heavens, the mountains echo
back the voice of thunders: the earthquake replies to the
roar of the tempest; and even the tiny insect, in its mazy
dance, adds a feeble note that is heard by Him.
Thus we have a thousand voices around us, sending up
their great, never-ceasing anthem. But proud man has little
heeded, heretofore, the countless accents of nature. Infant
nations hear them  and comprehend them  not; the higher
races listen to their own words only, and their ear is closed
to the humbler voices around them. Thus they are truly
Unknown Tongues.  Quite recent researches, however, have
thrown some faint light on this strange and attractive province
of knowledge.
As the unfortunate child, that is born deaf, can neither
hear the sweet voice of its mother, nor learn the mystery of
language, so animals also cannot have speech unless they
have hearing. For ages, all the lower tribes were curtly
classed among dumb creation. Mollusks, it was said, had
neither eyes nor ears, the cuttlefish only excepted; their life
was a mere dream; they were doomed to eternal silence.




244       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
Now, we have learned to admire the beautiful structure of
their eyes; now we know that they hear, and with an ear
not only open to sounds, but able to distinguish the depth
and volume of voices. In some shellfish, the ear is a marvel
of beauty; and even the lowest have at least one or more
tiny chambers, in which to catch the faintest sound, and
a special nerve to carry it to their imperfect mind. A
thunder-clap frightens the lobster to death; and the pirates
of the north used to threaten the fishermen with the firing
of a gun, which would kill their rich freight in a moment
and render it unfit for market.
Locusts hear each other, for their strange call invites the
female, and is always accepted. Ants, also, are not devoid
of such a sense. When the termites are busy building their
gigantic houses, watchmen are seen to stand from distance to
distance. Every two minutes, with truly marvellous appreciation of time, they strike their tiny tongue against the
hollow wall. Instantly a loud hissing is heard, uttered by
the laborers all over the vast building; and, with double
zeal and renewed vigor, they work in passage and chamber.
The proud soldier-sentinel looks carefully around, to see
that all are duly employed, waits his appointed time, and
then repeats the curious warning.  Bees are lovers of
music, and know the voice of man. Huber, who, though
blind, knew the strange people better than we who have
eyes, tells us how they listen to the command of the "beefather," and follow  him  wherever he calls them.  This
fact is well known in the East, where the owner draws
them thus from their hives into the fields, and leads them
back again by a hiss or a whistle. Hence, "it shall come




UNK:NOWN TONGUES.               245
to pass, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly and for the bee
that is in the land of Assyria."
How easily spiders are made to know the voice of their
master, is familiar to all, from many a sad prisoner's tale.
When the great and brilliant Lauzun was held in captivity,
his only joy and comfort was a friendly spider. She came
at his call; she took her food from his finger, and well understood his word of command.  In vain did jailors and
soldiers try to deceive his tiny companion. She would not
obey their.voices, and refused the tempting bait from their
hand. Here, then, was an ear not only, but a keen power
of distinction. The despised little animal listened with
sweet affection, and knew how to discriminate between not
unsimilar tones! So it was with the friend of the patriot, Quatremere d'Ijonville, who paid, with captivity, for
the too ardent love of his country. He also had tamed
spiders, and taught them to come at his call. But the
little creatures were not only useful to him, but to the
nation to which he belonged.  For, when the French
invaded Holland, the prisoner managed to send them a
message that the inundated and now impassable country
would soon be frozen over so that they would be able
to march over the ice-bridged swamps and lakes, though
spiders, true barometers as they are, had taught him to
read, in their queer habits, the signs of approaching
weather. The frost came, and with it'the French; Holland was taken and the lucky prophet set free. The
spiders, alas! were forgotten.
Even the "'hateful toad" has.been the captive's friend
and companion, and shown itself endowed with a fine ear




246       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
and  remarkable talents.  They come out of the dark
night of their holes, when their self-chosen master's voice
is heard. They take flies from his hand; but, what is
the strangest of all, they actually learn to measure time;
for more than one well-authenticated instance speaks of
their having appeared only at stated times, when the
jailor was absent and all was safe.
Vile, venomous serpents and their kin have an ear as
subtle as their tongue, -and show a curious love of sweet
melodies and  gentle words of affection.  The hooded
snake, as many of us have seen in the East Indies, is
fierce and furious, when first captured. But the so-called
conjuror rouses her wrath still more by blows and threats;
the next moment, however, the blandest words woo and
win her heart, and weave a charm which even the crafty
snake cannot resist. Anon he raises his hand as if to
strike; she follows it with wistful eye and playing tongue.
It is a sight of strange, irresistible beauty, this combat
between man and serpent.  Each watches with  intense
attention-the dusky Indian ready to strike with brutal
force, the cunning reptile waving in graceful curves, raising the strange spectacle-mark that surrounds her glittering eyes, and gathering venom for the fatal bite. But
man remains the master. Now with soothing words, and
now with soft caresses, he tames her fierce temper. Then
he calls in the aid of music, and soon the animal raises
her head as if in a rapture of enjoyment, and in a short
timne learns to weave quick mazes in the air, to twist
and twine in most beauteous lines, and follow the master's
hand wherever it bids her. Pliny tells us of sons of the




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                247
African desert, who, with their eyes' glances alone, could
rule over serpents. That race of men is lost; but many
a Nubian may be seen at the upper falls of the Nile, who
can imitate, with surprising precision, the call of the reptiles, and tempt them to come forth from every corner
and crevice.
Vipers, also, and adders, are neither deaf nor dumb,
and cannot help listening to the voice of temptation.
They were, it is well known, formerly much used in medicine; and the precious theriak, known even at the time
of Nero, and still manufactured in Venice, Holland, and
France, consists mainly of the flesh of vipers. So, poor,
persecuted animals, they are caught in all countries, andwho would have thought it? —almost always by means
of their acute hearing. In Italy, grim, swarthy men, of
gipsy cast, are seen to stand in the centre of large hoops,
and then to indulge in strange, fanciful whistlings. After
a while, an adder is seen gently to glide up; another,
and still another, appears, no one knows whence; and all
gazing with glittering eye at the quaint musician, raise
their spotted bodies up against the magic hoop. The deceiver takes them, one by one, with a pair of tongs, and
thrusts them into a bag that hangs on his shoulder. The
poor, deluded vipers are then carried to town, and kept
by druggist and doctor, or sent in boxes, filled with saw
dust, alive all over the world. The French, of all nations
on earth the most cruel to animals, have a still more
wicked way of catching adders. They take the first they
obtain, or any other snake they can seize upon, and,
throwing it into a kettle of boiling oil, there roast it




i248      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
alive. The fearful hissing of the tortured creature is
heard by its kindred; they come from under sunny banks,
from the low furze and scrubby bramble bushes, and as
they approach they are eagerly seized with hands defended
by leather gloves. Some have said-men of Maine, we
surmise-that it serves them right, because they are very
intemperate reptiles. Naturalists-wine-bibbers themselves
-have placed vessels filled with wine under hedges and
near piles of stones; the thirsty vipers come from all
sides, and, soon getting drunk, fall into the hands of their
captors.
Fish have no visible ear, it is said, and no external
avenue for sounds from a distance. Still, they hear with
great acuteness. On the continent of Europe, few castles
and villas are without the favorite pond, and its broadbacked carp and speckled trout. They all learn to obey
the ringing of a bell, and come in eager haste to seize
the morsels that young and old are fond of seeing them
catch. Lacepede even speaks of some carps of venerable
age that were kept in the gardens of the Tuileries for
more than a hundred years. They would come not only
at the usual signal, but actually knew the names that
were given them, and rose to the surface as they were
called. They were, however, haughty and proud, for they
listened only to those they loved, and in vain were sweet
words, in vain even tempting morsels, offered by strangers. The royal pensioners disdained to receive alms;
they took only the crumbs that fell from the table of
their master, the monarch. But even plebeians among
fishes hear; and it is not the fastidious carp only that




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                 249
cannot bear the grating sound of sawmills, and has his
nerves shaken by the firing of guns. Sturgeons also are
frightened by loud cries, and thus driven into the fisherman's net; and the bleak-fish detests a drum  so that he
rather surrenders than endure its abominable rolling.
An Italian has, of late, proved in a brilliant manner, that
fishes can not only hear, but actually obey and execute
orders, that, in fact, they show much higher endowments
than they have heretofore been thought to possess. He
has tamed a variety of fishes, from the humble tentch to
the gorgeous goldfish of China, and as he bids them, they
come and go, they rise or sink, and display their rich,
ever-changing colors. Nay, they perform a miniature drama: a pike seizes a trout, and lets it go or brings it up
to the surface, as the master commands with his voice.
It needs no proof to establish the hearing of higher aninmals; but even the lowest among them, and those that
are almost mute, show their appreciation of sounds when
carefully watched. The shapeless hedgehog, when tamed,
will uncoil at the word of his owner, and the grotesque
seal raises its uncouth head, with such beautiful eyes, high
out of the water, to listen to music on shore. It loves
to hear gentle voices, and is grateful for kind words. Of
all things else, they bind it firmest to its master, and call
forth its warmest affections. The tiny mouse, that finds a
home in the hut of the Alpine herdsman, becomes there
so tame, that it points its silky ears and approaches at
the whistle of the Senner, when at night he returns to
his meal and his rest. Even with us, it has been known
to come timidly out of its corner, to listen to a song.
17*




250       LEAVES FROM THE BooR oF NATURE.
The ancients say much of the delight with which the
grazing herd listens to the flute of the shepherd. The
Swiss, on his meadows and Alps, also knows full well how
exquisite is the ear of his magnificent cattle. There, in
far greater freedom than in the narrow valley below, in
the pure, bracing air of lofty mountains, with a clear,
blue sky above, and rich, fragrant pasture around them,
all their senses are sharper, all their instincts more fully
developed. The leading cow, with the largest of bells,
is not unconscious of her honor and station. She shows
it in her more stately gait, she affects a proud and haughty
carriage. Woe to the bold intruder who should dare to
precede her! But woe also to the wanderer from another
herd! She knows, and they all know, in an instant, the
tone of a bell that belongs not to their set; and, with
eager curiosity, often with savage hatred, they run to
meet the stranger, and show her no mercy. But oh! the
grief, when the bell is taken from her!  As upon leaving the stable of her home, or her own favorite pasture
high on the mountain, so when she has to part with her
love and her pride, she will weep bitter tears; and many
are the instances of cows that have died when deprived
of their harmonious ornament.
Some animals, on the other hand, detest certain sounds.
The Sophist Acteon, in his seventeen books on the nature
of animals, speaks of the strong aversion Greek wolves
had to the flute, and tells the oft-repeated story of Phytochares, the musician, who saved his life from  the fangs
of a hungry pack by playing, with heroic perseverance,
on that instrument.  The Far West of our own day has




UNEKNOWN TONGUES.                 251
the same account, only, here it is a modern "fiddle," and
the poor owner is caught in a cabin surrounded by fierce
wolves, mad from  starvation.  He plays, and they listen
with horror; he rests for a moment, and they are ready
to rush upon him. High on a rafter, at last, sits the sufferer, playing through the dark hours of night.  String
after string has broken, his arm is tired, his hands are
benumbed. But, just as the last string snaps, as his hand
sinks powerless at his side, and, with exulting yells and
glaring eyes, tihe blood-thirsty host leap upwards, the bright
light of day breaks through the forest, and the wolves,
true children of the night, flee in terror. Even the fierce
lion, it is said, cannot bear the cock's crowing, and, like
the great Wallenstein, dreads it more than all things
earthly.  Of the horse, we are taught that
"At the shrill trumpet's sound he pricks his ear,"
and
"At the clash of arms, his ear afar
Drinks the deep sound and vibrates to the war."
Who does not know the account of the Libyan mares,
that could only be milked when tamed by soft music,
and of the horses of the Sybarites, that had been taught to
dance after pleasing melodies, and then, when bearing
their masters into battle, suddenly heard, in the enemy's
ranks, the well-remembered sounds, and instantly set to
dancing instead  of fighting?  The same  love of music
has been more harmlessly employed in comparatively
modern times. The eccentric Lord Holland, of the reign
of William III., used to give his horses a weekly concert
in a covered gallery, specially erected for the purpose.




'52       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
He maintained that it cheered their hearts and improved
their temper, and an eye-witness says that they seemed
to be greatly delighted therewith.
In the elephant and the camel, this sense is, probably
most strikingly developed. Whole books have been written on the marvellous talents of the former, and wonders
have been told of the great effect that music has on-his
temper.  Sweet, gentle melodies move him  to caresses;
loud, powerful strains rouse his passions even to uncontrollable fury. The camel has been less fortunate. Still,
it is never beaten by its owner, whether it toils panting
through the deep, hot sand of the desert, or shivers,
sewed up in blankets, in the icy regions of Siberia. At
home it is, at worst, only scolded; on the journey, it is
controlled by words, to which the pressure of the foot
on the neck, or a gentle touch with a rod, only serve as
accent or emphasis. The Arab, a true lover of animal
creation-the  pig  excepted-entertains  his  camel with
music, with songs, and with fairy tales.  Often and often
they may be seen, travelling in the dead of night, gliding
along like spectres in the moonlight, or bearing torches
on their packs, which cast strange flickering lights on
the dismal waste. Their heads on high, their long necks
balancing slowly to and fro, they move carefully and yet
swiftly, sometimes thousands in number. Nothing is heard
but the faint rustling of the sand, as it grates under their
soft feet, and the plaintive sound of the Arab's voice. He
is overpowered by weariness, or dreams of his home near
bright waters, where the palm-tree casts a cooling shadow.
The camel lags and lingers-it stops. Then the roused




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                253
Bedouin draws his reed-pipe from the folds of his turban,
and, sharp and shrill, its notes are heard far into the solitude; while the camel raises its ungainly head, and, with
enlivened step and rapid motion, moves forward through
the desert.
Birds alone, and especially singing birds, have a genuine ear for music. As the eye may see, and yet not
be able to distinguish colors, so the ear of most animals
hears, but cannot discern the depth and volume of tone.
But birds are the true musicians of the animal kingdom.
They have, what many men lack, a genuine talent to learn
and appreciate musical notes and melodies.  You sing,
and they will repeat, bar after bar; others listen with
eager attention to a hand-organ, and, little by little, learn
whole tunes; the ablest of all even imitate the songs and
voices of others.
Not all animals, however, that have an ear, can speak.
Language, even in its humblest form, is a gift vouchsafed
to the few and the privileged. Still, animals are dumb
only in a general way; they all have, at least, a language
of instinct.  By this they can make themselves understood by their own race and by their enemies.  Even
the lowest among them, that have not a trace of lungs,
must have some gesture to convey their friendly or hostile meaning. Poor as it is, no doubt, and entirely as it
escapes our eye, this language suffices. Animals endowed
with horns, teeth, feet, or antennae, speak by these means;
how eloquent is the dog when he shows his teeth, and
how sure of being understood the ox, when he lowers his
formidable horns.




254       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
Clearer far, though still only in gesture, is the language
of others.  Their eye speaks to the careful observer, as
clearly as the eye of man, of their innermost feelings;
their whole carriage, the play of their features, the gestures of their limbs, are full of unmistakable expression.
Here, as in man, we observe a beautiful harmony between the bodily frame, and the spirit that dwells in it.
This they read, unconscious but unerring, in others also.
The dog, taught by his constant intercourse with us, sees
in our mien and gesture, at once, whether he pleases or
not; the horse, also, can learn to appreciate a frowning
brow or a kindly face. They are infallible in this, perfect as in all that comes from nature directly. Their instinct never errs, as the infant's pure mind judges far
more correctly than the troubled mind of the old and
experienced. Even the wildest of carnivorous beasts perceive, by these means, in man a higher spiritual power.
The lion reads in his eye the consciousness of his superiority, and shrinks fromn it with shy submission. But woe
to that man whose heart should fail him, who but for a
moment forgets that he is master of all things living on
earth!  The lion, at once, feels himself the better and
stronger of the two, and his blood-thirsty instinct regains
its supremacy. And as they read the mysterious language
of features, so they express it.  There is no hypocrisy
in the animal's face.  It would be a sad error, indeed,
to fancy that there was nothing to read in look, mien and
gesture of animals, simply because, to us, it is an unknown
tongue.  We cannot even distinguish individuals of our
own kind. To the white man of Europe, all blacks look




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                 255
alike, and, at first sight, nothing strikes the inexperienced
traveller so much as the apparent similarity of eastern
nations. Who of us can read temper or health in the
faces of a thousand sheep'? and, yet, the shepherd knows
every one by unfailing signs, and is struck, at a glance,
by a change of expression. We are apt to forget, besides,
that there is among animals no disguise of features. We
all know, in an instant, an intelligent dog by his eye and
his gestures. Then, our face is smooth and tender beyond
all parts of the body, that of animals is covered with hair,
and, although we may see a dog move his lips to a smile,
and his eye most plainly shed tears, but little can be read
in his dark, hairy countenance.  The blood may come
and go as quickly as the crimson blush on our cheek;
he may "turn up his nose," and "frown with indignation" without our seeing any trace of it.
Man's superiority in this language is great, but it is
artificial. He is independent of the body, which the animal is not.  Hunger may sorely try him, and anger
devour his heart: yet he can suppress every sign of his
want and his passion. On the other hand, he can exhibit
feelings which are not there; the actor expresses a feigned
condition of soul; the courtier, even, represents feelings the
very opposite of those that actually move him.
Still, animals even may develop this humblest and simplest language. They resemble the infant, that, in early
days, learns to understand the mother's loving look, that
cries for food, and soon smiles, in return for caresses, or
laughs in its child-like enjoyment.  There is little but
fierce temper in the mustang's hairy face-there is a world




256       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
of feeling in the thorough-bred's well-cut countenance. The
cur of the Turk shrinks, howling, from the stern glance
of man, and snarls and snaps at his enemy-the intelli.
gent spaniel has an eye beaming with affection, and speaks
a language of gestures as clear and distinct as that of
actors in pantomime. Who has ever forgotten the touching tribute paid by blind Homer to the faithful dog of
Ulysses? [Forgotten by all that loved and served him,
disguised by the great Athene herself, he returns to his
home, and wanders, unknown, among his friends and his
kindred. But, as he speaks in the yard to Eumaeus, the
lame and emaciated friend of his youth, his own beloved
Argus hears the voice of his master.  He would fain
rise and greet him, as of old, with fondling caresses and
eager barking.  But he is old and crippled, he can but
wag his tail, and tenderly lick the hand that he alone has
recognized. And as his master, brushing away a furtive
tear, enters the hall, where abundance reigns and joyous
voices are heard, poor Argus lays himself down and dies
of immoderate joy.
Far clearer, of course, and more familiar to all, is the
language of animals uttered in sounds. Yet this, also, is,
as yet, but a tribe of unknown tongues. We are so apt
to watch only for sounds that resemble the human voice.
We look for a phonetic language, which, of course, is
not taught among animals in primary schools by means
of primers and readers, but by their only mother, nature.
We forget, that when first we enter an asylum for deaf
mutes, we hardly observe the imperceptible signs that pass,
with amazing rapidity, from hand to hand. We forget the




UNBKNOWN TONGUES.               257
terror with which early travellers spoke of the wondrous
gestures used among eastern nations, where the feasted
guest from the west was often startled to find that a
wave of the hand, which had passed unnoticed before his
eyes, had been an order to behead an offender. And yet
we ought, in our day, to have learned to think most humbly, indeed, of our own imperfect senses. Who guessed
that there was a world of suns and stars in the heavens
before the telescope unfolded its wonders?  Were we not
all startled with the Brahmin, whose laws forbid him to
eat animal food, and to whom the merciless microscope
revealed in his cup of pure water a host of living beings?  If we had instruments for the ear, as we have
for the eye, who knows what we might hear, though we
should never reach the fabled power of the Eastern
magician, who saw "the grass grow and heard the fleas
coughing."  But we might surely expect to learn some
of these now utterly unknown tongues, and to discover
for instance, the mysterious language which ants and bees
speak to each other with their antennae. Observations and
study would soon add largely to our stock of knowledge.
We have all noticed how still and silent nature appears,
at sultry noon, when a feeling akin to awe creeps over us,
and a magic slumber seems to seize and enchain whatever
is living. But, even then, there remains an all-pervading
sound, a restless humming and fluttering, close to the
ground. In every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, and in
the earth, undermined by insects, life is still audible; voices
are still heard, low and faint, perceived only by the watchful
ear and the reverent mind of the true votary of nature.




28.5      LEAVES FROM THE BOOx OF NATURE.
All language of animals must, of course, be limited in
a two-fold direction. They cannot express more than they
feel or think; hence their wants only, their emotions of
joy and suffering, are thus communicated to others. They
have language, but not speech.  That is man's high and
heaven-born endowment. Then, reptiles, birds and mammalia, alone, have the power of vocal utterance, insects
and others are mere instrumental performers. Of the vocalists, again, reptiles produce sounds with the palate only,
snakes excepted; mammalia with their lips, as children
do when they begin to lisp; birds alone speak with their
tongue also, and, thus enjoying double organs of utterance,
possess the most perfect of unknown tongues.
The language which animals speak, by means of friction,
or concussion, is, naturally, the least known of all. We
see the eager ant rushing homeward to tell the news of
an invasion; she meets a friend, their antennae touch and
play with each other, in rapid succession. The messenger
returns, the latter conveys the news by the same means
to others, until the whole army is informed.  Here we
see, not an instinctive feeling of dread, but a clear, undoubted communication of facts.  So among bees: the
instant the queen dies, the sad event is made known
throughout the hive.  No sound, perceptible to human
ear, is heard, but the antennae move with surprising effect,
and as the result of a clear act of volition. It is not a
sensation, merely, nor an instinctive action, but it has
all the signs of special purpose.  How  they speak, we
know not; this, only, is certain, that their language is




UNKNOWN ToNGUEs.                  259
not like that of the deaf and dumb, with whom signs
represent letters or words.
The cricket, even, is not without its note of utterance,
and, although a purely mechanical sound, it has its
sweetness and charm, so that Milton could speak of
being
"Far from all resort of mirth
Save the cricket on the hearth."
It produces a loud, clear sound, by a quick vibration of
the elastic skin between its wings; and from the time
when the Athenians wore the golden cicada in their hair,
to our days, when the cricket on the hearth is the proverbial image of home comfort, its simple note has been
dear to the heart of man.  The true cricket, however,
speaks only in the sunny time of love. The male begins, in his hermit-cell, as May approaches, to produce
a low, inward note of longing. As the sun rises higher,
and summer advances, his shrill song becomes louder,
until he finds the desired companion.  Then he returns
to his solitary life once more, and his voice dies away
by degrees.  Dean  Swift has left us a humorous description of the curious note of the death-watch beetle.
The little fellow, in his narrow  cell, falls in love; immediately, he begins to thump his head against the
ground, and uses such energy in his demonstration that
he leaves deep marks in the softer kinds of wood.
The powerful stroke produces a loud sound, the infallible presage of death to superstitious man, the soft music of love to the female beetle.  If other males are
within hearing, they all join in the concert with furious




260       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
knocking, and such  is their jealousy or their zeal to
answer, that even the ticking of an innocent watch excites their wrath and their loudest notes.
The bright troops of virgin-moths and fresh-born butterflies, seem to speak by the brilliancy of their colors
only, and thus to appeal through the eye to the heart
of their beloved. Darwin tells us, however, of some in
South America, who, when a pair are chasing each other,
make a clicking noise that is heard at considerable distance.  That charming traveller found they had a kind
of drum near the first pair of wings, by which they
produced this noise to attract the female.  The spinax,
(atropos,) clad in sad colors, and quaintly marked, actually utters a low whine, when caught, and thus presents the lowest voice of suffering known in the animal
kingdom.
The craw-fish, also, has but a single note of pain;
when drawn on shore, it utters a low, angry sound, that
seems to rise from the innermost parts of its curious
body. Naturalists speak, besides, of a gentle, humming
noise, resembling that of beetles, which it makes when
enjoying the sun and its genial warmth; it ceases, however, the instant any other noise is heard, and has thus
been but rarely observed.
"The voice of the turtle is heard in the land," but
it has little to please the ear or to attract attention.
Nor are fishes better endowed in point of language.
They have a thick, immovable tongue, adhering firmly
to the lower jaw. A voice would, however, be of small
avail to them in an element so little sonorous as wa



UNKNOWN TONGUES.                261
ter. A German enthusiast tells us, it is true, that they
speak in light, scarcely perceptible breathings; but no
one else ever heard them. Still, some of them actually
do utter noises of various and seldom agreeable nature.
Tenches have a croaking sound, which is heard when
they are caught, and as long as they are living. The
armado, of South America, has a harsh, grating noise,
which it utters even beneath the water, and others pipe
and whistle or growl and grunt, as the grunter and seascorpion. The drum-fish, of our waters, has his name
from the skill with which he drums on his own inflated
body. It is heard best when he passes under a vessel,
and poetical mariners have compared it to the bass notes
of an organ, the ringing of a deep-toned bell, or the
melancholy sounds of an _Eolian harp. The dolphins, the
great favorites of antiquity, were said to love music even
more than human beings, and to cry in pain and anguish. Aristotle tells us that one of this race, caught
and wounded near Icaria, cried so loud and bitterly, that
thousands came swimming into the quiet harbor. The
fishermen gave the wounded one its liberty, and then
they all left, expressing their joy in graceful gambols and
endless gyrations.
Frogs are veritable artists and masters in one of the
unknown tongues. They have a true voice-not the result of mere mechanical action, but proceeding from the
lungs, and expressive of deep feeling. So, at least, think
the Mahometans, to whom they are sacred, because they
proclaim to the world the praises of Allah-and even
more so, because of their marvellous piety.  For, when




262       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
the Chaldeans had captured the great patriarch, and
thrown him into the fire, to be burnt unto death, hosts
of indignant and sympathizing frogs appeared from all
sides, and, pouring water on the flames, rescued the Holy
Father.  Horace detested them, in common with Italy's
own peculiar plague; they disturbed his sleep on the
famous journey to Brindisi. The peasants of France, too,
pursued them, at one time, with almost intense hatred.
No wonder-for they were, by law, compelled to beat,
night after night, the water in moats and ditches around
the nobleman's castles, that the croaking of frogs might
not disturb his lordship's slumbers! Their song, we fear,
is not much more appreciated. in our day.  In vain do
we associate it with the return of spring, the sense of
genial warmth and the renewal of fuller life and vigor.
They have but a single sound, the U, and this they utter
through the whole diapason, in all possible height and
depth, from spring until autumn. They are a merry set
of summer beings. Buried in deep slumber during winter, the first rays of the spring sun awake them to life.
At first lazy and silent, they revive as earth and water
grow warmer. Beautifully dressed in green hunter's garb,
their bright, lively eyes set in golden frames, they squat
gravely down on a sunny bank, and, opening wide their
huge mouths, they look the very picture of homely comfort and broad humor. They have no lips, and have the
appearance of being doomed to eternal silence. But they
know, very soon, how to swell their wide throats, that
shine in dark nights, and to puff out the huge cheeks
with their enormous air-bladders inside. How lustily the




UNKNOWN TONGUES.                 263
males call out their classic Brekekekex, co-ax, co-ax! whilst
the females only hum in low, humble tones. First, the
leader's loud, coarse voice breaks forth in solemn intonation; then the others, sitting in a wide circle around
him, follow in long responses; and at last, from far and
near, from every pond and every puddle, their deep-toned
voices are heard in one mighty chorus.  It is the mere
outbreak of joy and delight; they know neither melody
nor order. Each sings as he likes best, at his own time
and in his own particular key.  They are, apparently,
vastly amused at their own great talkative powers; for,
every now and then, they break out in the happiest laughter known in animal creation. Its gusts are so sudden.
its tones so boisterous and loud —s if they would burst
with sheer happiness and joy. When they assemble in
large numbers, as the tree-frogs love to do in Paramaibo,
and the countless hosts of common frogs on the banks
of the Wolga and the Caspian Sea, they absolutely drown
every other noise.  There millions join in the fearfully
monotonous concerts, until the earth trembles, and for
miles no sound is heard but their own hoarse croaking.
Although they all have one voice for the concert and
another for family matters, their note is nearly the same
all over the world-only in South America, we are told,
a tinier frog will sit on a blade of grass, a little above
the surface of the water, and utter a pleasing chirp, which
joined by others, has the effect of a harmony of different
notes. The bullfrog's deep, disproportionate voice has
frightened many an innocent wanderer from Europe; he
seems to enjoy the sport, too, for he grows the louder




264       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the surer he is of attention. After a short, happy summer, their voices gradually weaken; they strip off their
delicate dress, which is so thin that it looks upon paper
like a faint pencil-drawing; they eat it with apparent delight, and soon after vanish from the sight of man. Silent and benumbed, they sink again into the ground, to
pass the cold season in quiet, unbroken slumber.




A  TRIP TO THE MOON.                      265
IX.
3  brig ta tat  0014
The moon shines white and silent on the mist,
On the mist, which like a tide
Of some enchanted ocean
O'er the wide marsh doth glide,
Spreading its ghostlike billows
Silently far and wide.
A vague and starry mystic
Makes all things mysteries,
And moves the earth's dumb spirit
Up to the longing skies.
J. R. LOWELL.
THE huge bell of the cathedral rang out midnight.
Like clear crystal drops fell the transparent notes
from the bright sky, as if they were echoes of angels'
voices. Behind the dusky mountains rose the full orb of
the moon in golden splendor, and poured its fairy light
over the vast plain. Faint hazy mists swept across the
valley, and slowly the pale gossamer light sank deeper
into the dark narrow streets of the city. A gigantic
churchyard the silent town lay at the feet of the rrys12




266       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
terious globe in the high heavens-each house a coffin in
which slept a thousand joys or sorrows. Only through
one low window shone the feeble glimmer of a nightlamp. A mother was watching her sickly babe; fierce
fever glared in its glowing face and burning eyes, and
restlessly the poor child tossed from  side to side.  At
last it grew quiet, and seemed to slumber. The mother
stepped to the window, and looked with tearful eye up
to the moon. A feeling of deepest loneliness chilled her
sinking heart; all around her slept ten thousands in happy
peace; the wicked had ceased from troubling and the
weary were at rest; she alone was in sorrow and watched
with anguish the flickering life of her beloved.
"'Oh," she sighed, "how peaceful and happy it must be
up there in the silvery light of the moon!  There is
peace in-her pale even light, quiet happiness in her calm,
unbroken pilgrimage through the dark blue heavens!"
And she wished she could wander in her sweet meadows
and rest by her still waters. She prayed, half dreaming,
half awake, that her soul might, hereafter, be allowed to
rest from the pain and sorrow of earthly life, in the calm
sweet light of the moon, praising God and enjoying the
peace that knows no end.
For so we dream, even in our day, of paradisiacal
peace and mysterious charms in the moon; as thousands
of years ago, the nations of the earth revered in her a
godlike being, who lighted up the long, s'ad nights with
her sweet silvery light, and in chaste beauty, wove strange
spells over the hearts of men.  They built temples iu
honor of the goddess, priests sang her praises in mighty




A TRIP TO THE MoON.               267
anthems, sacrifices won her favor and disarmed her just
wrath. Lofty were her thrones in the far East; Asia
and the world worshipped her, and great was the Diana
of the Ephesians!
This faith, like alas! many a better faith, is found no
longer among men.  Superstition, alone, has remained.
The Chinese beats his drums and gongs to keep the great
dragon from swallowing up his moon at the time of an
eclipse, and the Wallachian peasant sees in her pale, faint
glimmer how the vampire rises from his brother's grave.
With us the telescope has stripped the moon of her divine attributes, and dry, sober calculations have torn all
strange fancies and gay charms from  the humble satellite of the earth.
Now the moon is simply a little globe, not much lar
ger than America, so that the longest journey, that could
ble undertaken there, would explore Asia from end to end.
We can easily get there, for she is only about two hun,
dred and forty thousand miles from us, a mere trifle in
co-mparison with the distance of the nearest star.  mWill
you accompany us? There is no luggage required, for
there are plenty of castles in the air, and as for provisions,
have not our very first lessons taught us the precious substance of which the moon is made?  Passengers are not
expected to travel with a huge telescope under the arm,
and a book of logarithms in their hand. We leave that to
the munificent Earl of Rosse, who compels the chaste goddess to come down within the familiar distance of three
hundred miles, even to bold Ireland! We have, besides,
cunning astronomers, who marshal with ease millions of




268       LEAvEs FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
numbers, and command the poor planets to appear in
given places, threatening to deny their identity, if they
are not there within the minute. We are simple travellers, and, I fear, would not disdain the aid of a beanstalk,
if we thought it the shortest road to heaven.
Once on the moon, however, we are immediately struck
with awe and wonder at the strange landscapes that we
suspected already from below. even with unarmed eyes,
in the dark and light spots on the moon's disc. Now
the gray portions become plains, the light ones mountains.
That these brilliant spots are mountains, we know from
their shadows, which always fall on the side opposite the
sun, and which lengthen in precise proportion as the sun
sinks lower. The most dazzling points, however, are not
mountains but towering precipices, whose steep, smooth
sides reflect the light with greatest force.
But how entirely different is this mountain scenery from
that of the Alps or the Andes!  Here we see no lofty,
snow-covered peaks, no long, pleasing ridges and lovely
valleys; not even the proud domes of the Cordilleras
with their steep terraces are here represented. The whole
surface of the moon is covered with circular walls, inclosing deep, dark caverns, into which whole territories have
sunk with their hills and mountains. Some of these huge
abysses are more than fifty miles in diameter, others
spread still wider, but all are engirt at the top by great
walls of rock, which are serrated and often crowned by
lofty peaks.  The smallest and most regular are called
craters, from their resemblance to the craters of the earth,
but the form is all that they have in common. Volca.




A TRIP TO THE MOON.                269
noes the moon does not know, and the shining points on
her night side, which Herschel loved so much to observe,
are only the highest points of lofty mountains, resplendent
in brilliant sunshine.
On the southwestern part of the disc we see one of
those gigantic, elevated tablelands, with which the moon
abounds. They are evidently the oldest formations, fearfully torn and tarnished in every direction, full of craters,
fissures and fractures, and traversed by long furrow-like
valleys; but in their midst we see, invariably, a most
beautiful variety of landscapes, such as our earth boasts
of: groups of mountains, broad, vast plains, gently swelling ridges, and fair valleys, dotted with numerous, wellrounded hills.
By their side we notice one of those regular, and therefore probably more recent, circular mountains, of which
more than one thousand five hundred are already known,
and which, in some parts of the moon, stand so closely
packed together, as to give to these regions the appearance of a honeycomb. Their walls are nearly all
around of the same height; within, their straight, steep
sides sink suddenly into the abyss; without they fall off
more gradually in terraces, and send occasional spurs
into the surrounding country.  In the centre there rises
commonly an isolated peak, sometimes merely a humble hill, at other times a lofty mountain or even a
small cluster of conical eminences.  These central heights
never rise to a level with the circular ranges; some
are nearly five thousand feet high, but then the impassable wall, that surrounds them without breach or pass,




270       LEAVES FROM TImE BOOK OF NATURE.
and shuts them off from the rest of the universe, towers
aloft to the amazing height of seventeen thousand feet!
If the number of these circular mountains is so great,
that of small, burnt-out craters is still Tr.ore astounding;
even a moderately powerful telescope shors us some twenty thousand. Inside they often sink to an incredible depth,
into which their walls cast a deep, ev,.rlasting shadow;
here there reigns entire gloom, which the l'ght of the sun,
even at its highest, never reaches.  Thlir tops,, however,
when fully lighted up at the time of fail moon, shine in
glorious splendor, reflecting the sun's rays with dazzling
lustre.  Others show only their margin illunminated, like
a delicate ring of light, forming a magic circle around
the dark, yawning crater.  Now and then we see two or
more strung together like rows of pearls, connected with
each other by canals, or even two at a time surrounded
by a common wall and combining their desolate horrors.
Continued chains of mountains, like the Alps and Andes
of our mother earth, are rare in the moon, and even
when met with, only short and without spurs or valleys.
The longest ridge extends about four hundred and fifty
miles, but its peaks rise to the prodigious height of
seventeen thousand feet.  On the other hand, the moon
abounds in countless, isolated  cones, which in the northern  half group  themselves  into  long, broad  belts.
Like the thorns of a chestnut, thousands of these mountains rise suddenly from the plain, and are seen to
stretch their long, gaunt arms from the outline of the
rtoorn's disc into the dark sky.  Even  the vast plains
of our little neighbor are covered with long, curiously




A TRIP TO THE MOON.                271
fornned ranges of low hills, which, though often a mile
wide, never rise beyond a thousand feet, and therefore
show us their shadow only when the sun is extremely
low.
Much as these strange forms differ from all we see on
earth, we are still more struck with the quaint, mysterious
fissures, narrow but deep, which pass in almost straight
lines, like railways, right through plain and mountain, cut
even craters in two, and often end themselves in craters.
At full moon they appear to us as lines of brilliant light,
at other times as black threads, and must, therefore, have
a width of at least a thousand feet. We have, on earth,
nothing to compare with them; for even the terrible gul
lies which cross the prairies of Texas, dwindle into utter
nothingness by the side of these gigantic rents. As long
as men saw every day new surprising analogies between
the moon and the earth, and the gray spots were oceans,
the light ones continents, these inexplicable lines also appeared now as rivers and now as canals, or even as beautifully Macadamized turnpikes! The citizens of the moon
can, however, hardly yet afford building roads of such
gigantic width, by water or by land, nor will the fact,
that these deep furrows cut through craters and lofty
mountains, and invariably preserve the same level, admit
of such an interpretation. At all events those only can
see canals and roads on the moon, who have already found
there cities and fortified places.
What gigantic and astounding revolutions must have
passed over the moon, to produce these colossal mountains, rising not unfrequently to a height of twenty-six




272       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
thousand feet, these peculiar, massive rings, these enormous
cliffs and furrows! How insignificant appear, in comparison, the greatest events of that kind, on our earth, where
even proud.Etna hardly rivals the smallest of the moon's
craters!  Their universal tendency to round forms has
led to the idea that all these elevations and indentations
are the effect of one and the same mysterious power.
Everything favors the presumption, that the moon was
originally a liquid mass, and that, whilst it became solid,
new forces were unloosened in the interior, causing gigantic
eruptions, as when the pent-up air bubbles up from a mass
of molten metal.  Some of these bubbles would upon
bursting, naturally leave behind a circular ridge and a
slight rise in the centre of the cavity. These forces seem
to have been most active near the poles, whose desolate
regions are dotted over with countless hills and mountains; near the equator vast plains stretch out, broken
only here and there by a lofty peak or solitary crater.
Thus man, pigmy man, ventures already to read the riddles of mysterious events that happened in the earliest
times of the history of a great world, which his foot has
never yet trodden! He has, however, not only measured
the mountains of the moon, and laid out maps and charts
of her surface, but he has given names to mountains and
islands. Formerly the most renowned philosophers were
thus immortalized, we trust without any insidious comparison between philosophy and moonshine. Of late, however, dead or living astronomers, who often enjoyed little
enough of this world's goods, have been presented with
large estates in the moon. Thus Kepler, whom the great




A TRIP TO THE MOON.                273
emperor and the empire of Germany suffered to star ve,
obtained one of the most brilliant mountains for his
share; and Tycho, Copernicus, Hipparchus and Albategnius are his neighbors in those regions, though tolerably
far apart on earth, in point of time, country, and religion. Even Humboldt has already his possessions in the
moon.
Nothing strikes the general observer so much, when his
eye rambles inquiringly over the surface of the moon,
as the incredible variety of light in different parts. Some
have sought the cause of this striking phenomenon in the
diversity of the soil, ascribing to the darker portions a
looser earth, and perceiving in the greenish sheen of some
plains even traces of vegetation.  Doubtful as it must
needs be, whether any color could be distinguished at such
a distance, this is certain, that the lighter portions repre.
sent rigid masses and reflecting elevations. A most strange
sensation is produced by the long beams of dazzling light,
resembling liquid  silver, which, now  isolated  and now
united together into broad bands of rays, pass in countless hosts over whole, large regions.  They often centre
in some peculiarly brilliant, circular mountain, and the
gigantic Tycho sends his rays of surpassing splendor over
more than one-fourth of the whole orb, over hill and dale,
valley and mountain. At other places they form broad
masses of mystic light, often twenty miles square. Mountain ridges or lava streams they are not, though formerly
the world believed them such, because they pass over the
very tops of mountains.  Can they be glassy or crystallized masses of volcanic material, which, suddenly cooled,
12*




t274      LEAVES FROM THE BOOK or NATURE.
now stand in rigid pallor and reflect light. with an intensity
unknown to us on earth?
As yet we have met with no trace of life on the moon.
Are there no inhabitants on our strange satellite? In our
day, when the plurality of worlds threatens to become
the war-cry of sects and schools, the question is but natural, and many an eager inquirer has no doubt asked
himself: what may life be on the moon?  Have they
built cities and founded empires there like the men of
the earth? Does a blue sky smile upon them, and do
merry springs leap down the green slopes of their mountains?
Nor is the question altogether of recent date. While
Sir John Herschel explored the wonders of the southern
heaven on the Cape of Good Hope, there appeared unexpectedly a little pamphlet, which created no small sensation even among the learned. It purported to be his first
account of new discoveries in the moon, and contained
marvellous reports of sheep of strange shape, of men
with the wings of bats, of cities and fortified towns. The
world, however, soon found that this was an ingenious
hoax from the pen of an American, who had thus practically tested the credulity of his contemporaries.  The
credit which the clever imposture found, even among the
well-informed, is an ample apology for the sanguine expectations of those who still hope, by the aid of improved
instruments, to discover the man in the moon; or, like
good old Bishop Wilkins, to pay him a neighborly visit,
for which, in sober earnest, most ingenious plans have
been devised. Distinguished astronomers insist upon hav



A TRIP TO TRIE MOON.               -275
ing seen large.buildings in the moon; Gruithuisen tells
us of an edifice near the equator, in its most fertile regions, of twenty-five miles diameter and surrounded with
large walls, which face, with astounding accuracy, the four
quarters of the compass. As it is only le premier pas
Tui coiite, Schwabe, in Germany, soon discovered on the
outside some smaller buildings, and even earth-works!
One point, above all, is apparently altogether lost sight
of, by those who cherish such sanguine hopes.  If we
could distinguish a man, or any other object at the dis
tance of five miles, it would still require an instrument,
which would magnify objects fifty thousand times, to see
anything of that size on the moon.  But if the far-distant
future should ever produce such an improvement in telescopes, that would only increase, and in alarming proportion, the difficulties arising from the density of our
atmosphere anid the daily movement of the earth. Even
with our present instruments, far as they are yet from
the desired power, these impediments are so great as seriously to impair their usefulness. All that has as yet
been accomplished is to see objects of the extent of one
hundred yards; perhaps we may, ere long, succeed in distinguishing works of the size of our pyramids and largest
cathedrals; but at best they will only appear as minute
points, far too small to exhibit form  or shape.
The eye, then, is utterly incapable of discovering lifeendowed beings in the moon. This would, of course, in
itself not preclude the existence of inhabitants in that
globe. Every argument, on the contrary, leads rather to
the conclusion, that the life of other worlds is, on the




276       LEAVES FROM THE Book OF NATURE.
whole, governed by the same laws as that of our earth.
The same infinite variety which astounds the eye and the
mind of man, when he studies our animal creation here
below, and the exquisite adaptation of these countless forms
to their precise purpose, must needs continue throughout
creation. God is not only great, but also consistent in
his greatness, and the eternal laws of nature, which are,
after all, but an expression of His will, must apply to
other worlds also. The inquiring mind will, therefore, not
without benefit try to derive additional knowledge even
from the scanty facts with which we are as yet only
acquainted.
We know tolerably well the soil, the climate and the
surface of the moon. What, then, do they teach us as
to life on that globe? The first circumstance that strikes
the traveller on the moon, is the wonderful facility of
motion. Gravity is in the moon six times less than on
the earth, so that the same power with which we here
lift eighteen pounds would there raise a hundred weight.
The arm that can throw a stone on earth ten feet high,
would on the moon throw it up to sixty feet.  The inequalities of the soil there would, to an earth-born man,
be no difficulties; he would glide over hills and mountains, which here below require gigantic structures, with
the ease of the winged birds of heaven.  This must at
once produce a radical difference between life on earth
and life on the moon.
If we look next for the two great elements of earthly
life, air and water, we find that the moon is but ill provided for in that respect. With all sympathy for great




A TRIP TO THE MOON.               277
discoverers and sanguine optimists, we are compelled to
deny the existence of either water or air, such as we
have them on earth, in our satellite. We know the presence of air by the fact that all air breaks and weakens
rays of light, which pass through it. The atmosphere of
the moon shows no such effects. Her landscapes appear
as clear and distinct on the margin as in the centre of
the orb, and when stars pass over the latter, they show
no diminution of light at the time of their entrance into
the luminous circle, no increase of light when they leave
it again.  The evaporation  of water also, would  be
betrayed by the same breaking of rays, if that element
were mixed up with the air, as it is in our own atmosphere, or if it covered any part of the moon's surface.
Unwilling as we are to banish her inhabitants exclusively
to that side of the moon, which human eye has never
yet beheld, because it is constantly turned away from
the earth, and there, at fancy's bid to revel in a paradise
with purling brooks and balmy zephyrs, nothing is left
but to assume that the air is too thin and the water too
ethereal to be perceived by the instruments now at our
command. The careful calculations of the great astronomer Bessel resulted in the bare possibility of an atmosphere, a thousand times thinner than our own, showing
conclusively how little we can expect to find life on the
moon to resemble in any way life on earth. The inhabitants of that world, if there be any, must have other
bodies than ours, other blood must run through their
veins, and other lungs breathe their air-we could never
live in such a world.




278       LEAVES FROM THE BooK oF NATURE.
And what a curious almanac these good people in the
moon would have! There, days are as long as years, and
day and year are equal to our months: twenty-nine days,
twelve hours, and forty-five minutes. The seasons differ but
very little from each other. On the equator there reigns
eternal summer, for the sun is ever in the zenith; the
poles are buried in eternal winter.  The days are of
equal length throughout the year; all days equally light,
all nights equally dark. The absence of an atmosphere
deprives the moon of the sweet charms of a twilight, and
glaring day would follow gloomy night with the rapidity
of lightning, if the slow rising and setting of the sun
did not slightly break the suddenness of the transition.
Human eyes, however, could not bear the fierce contrasts
of light and shadow; they would long in vain for the
soft intervals between the two extremes, the other colors, which beautify our world with their joyous variety,
and soft harmony. The sky is there not blue, but even
in daytime black, and by the side of the dazzling sun the
stars claim their place and shed their light in the heavens.
Near the poles the mountain tops shine in unbroken
splendor year after year, but the valleys know neither
day nor night, for they are ever but scantily lighted by
the faint glimmer reflected from the walls that surround
them.
That side of the moon which is turned away from
us, has a night of nearly fifteen days; the stars only, and
planets, shine on its ever dark sky. The side we see,
on the contrary, knows no night; the earth lights it up
with never ceasing earth-shine, a light fourteen times




A TRIP TO THE MOON.               279
stronger than that which we receive from the moon. We
recognize our own light, lent to our friend, in the faint,
grayish glimmer of that portion of the moon which before and after the new moon receives no light from
the sun, but only from  the earth, and reflects it back
again upon us. Mornings in fall show it more brilliant
than evenings in spring, because in autumn the continents of the earth with their stronger light illumine the
moon, while in spring she only receives a fainter light
from our oceans. Our orb appears to the man in the
moon as changeable as his home to us, and he may quite
as correctly speak of the first or last quarter of the earth,
of new earth and full earth. The whole heaven moves before him once in twenty-nine days around its axis; the
sun and stars rise and set regularly once in the long
day; but the vast orb of our earth is nearly immovable. All around is in slow, unceasing motion: the mild
face of the earth alone, a gorgeous moon of immense
magnitude, never sets nor rises, but remains ever fixed
in his zenith. It there appears sixteen times larger than
the moon to us, and daily exhibits its vast panorama of
oceans, continents and islands. Bright lights and dark
shadows are seen in ever varied change, as land or
water, clearings or forests appear, new with every cloud,
and different at different seasons.  The man in the moon
has thus not only his watch and his almanac daily before him in the ever-changing face of the earth, but he
may, for all we know, have maps of our globe which
many a geographer would envy on account of their fullness and accuracy.  Long before Columbus discovered




280       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
America, and Cook New Holland, our lunar neighbor
knew most correctly the form and the outlines of the new
continents.  There was no New  World for him, and
there is none left. He could tell us the secrets of the
interior of Africa, and reveal to us the fearful mysteries
of the polar seas. But how he on his side must marvel
at our vast fields of snow, our volcanoes and tropical
storms and tempests-he who knows neither fire, nor
snow, nor clouds! What strange fables he may have
invented to explain the shadows of our clouds as they
chase each other over sea and land, and hide from him
in an instant the sunlit landscape! And stranger still,
on the side of the moon which is turned from the earth,
he knows nothing at all about us, unless news reach him
from the happier side. Or he may undertake-the great
event in his life-a long and painful journey to the
bright half of his globe, to stare at the wondrously brilliant earth-star, with its unread mysteries and marvellous
changes of flitting lights and shadows. Who knows what
earnest prayers may rise from the moon also, full of thanks
for the floods of light and heat we pour upon them,
or of ardent wishes that their souls might hereafter be
allowed to dwell in the bright homes of the beauteous
earth-star?
Only in one point has the dark side of the moon a
rare advantage.  With its dark, unbroken night, a true
and literal "fortnight," it is the observatory of the moon,
and the best in the whole planetary system. There no
light from the earth, no twilight, hinders the most deli



A TRIP TO THE MOON.               281
cate observations, and neither clouds nor fogs ever step
between the telescope and the heavenly bodies.
It is a cold world, however, all over that pale, lifeless globe. The rays of the sun can hardly warm  that
thin, imperceptible atmosphere, and on the plains near
the equator, a fortnight of scorching sun and burning
heat, which parches and withers all life, is instantaneously followed by another fortnight of fearful cold. Human eyes could not bear this ever cloudless, colorless
horizon. Over the mournful scene that looks like one
vast ruin of nature, broods eternal silence. The thin air
cannot carry the waves of sound.  Not a word, not a
song is ever heard amid those desolate mountains; no
voice ever passes over the sunken plains.  Pain  and
joy are equally silent. A rock may glide from its ancient resting-place, a mountain may fall from its eternal
foundation —no thunder is heard, no echo awakened.
Grim silence reigns supreme. No rainbow is set in the
clouds as a token from on high; storm and tempest
give not way to the merry song of birds and the breath
of gentle, balmy winds. There we look in vain for
green forests with their cool shade, for playful fountains
to cheer and to refresh us. Far as eye can reach we
see nothing but bare mountains, desolate masses of rock,
countless stones amidst huge boulders of glassy fabric.
Human bodies could not endure these long days and
endless nights; human souls could not bear that silent,
lifeless world of desolation.
Even this universal devastation, however, does not
absolutely preclude the existence of created beings on




282       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK oF NATURE.
the moon. We can think as little of a noble tree without leaves, flowers and fruits, as of an orb, rolling in
silent, serene majesty through the midnight firmament,
without organic life and intelligence. The earth teaches
us the same lesson by simple logic. The earth also, once
incandescent and scarcely cooled, has been the theatre
of fearfill convulsions; gigantic forces have torn her interior, and  deeply  furrowed her surface.  But hardly
was apparent peace restored upon the still unshapen
globe when it produced, at the word of the Almighty,
a creation full of fresh life, at first rude, raw and imperfect, like nature itself, but daily growing nobler, more
varied, more spiritual. We know this, for each varied
organization of such life, as it perished, has left its epitaph written upon imperishable monuments. May we
then not believe, that, like the earth, the moon also has
had her first period of storm  and strife?  Of this her
vast plains, her rugged craters and mysterious furrows
give proof in abundance. The present seems to be her
period of rest, during which nature gains strength to produce a life-endowed creation. This we conclude from her
unchanging face, and her clear, imperceptible atmosphere. If this be so, then there must come a time for
the moon as for the earth, though perhaps after thousands of years only, when thinking, intelligent beings
will rise from her dust. The whole universe has some
elements in common. The great cosmic powers, light
and heat, are the same first conditions of organic life
throughout the vast creation; they send their waves
through the wide ocean of the world, and play against




A TRIP TO THE MOON.                283
the shores of all of its gigantic islands. There is, no
doubt, vital power in them, and at the proper time, at
His bidding, life will spring forth and order will reign,
where now destruction and chaos alone seem to rule
supreme.
The moon is one of the great heavenly bodies, all of
which work together in beautiful harmony to the glory
of God. They all move, like loving sisters, hand in hand
through  the great universe.  As they  live with  each
other, so they evidently live for each other. Superstition, ignorance, and even wilful exaggeration have much
obscured the effects of this mutual influence. The moon
especially has been treated as if she existed for the benefit of the earth only. From  the times of antiquity the
world has been filled with fanciful stories of her influence on our weather, our vegetation, our health, and
even the state of our mind. Many have believed in a
daily direct communication between the two great bodies;
they looked upon meteoric stones as coming to us directly from the craters of the moon's volcanoes, and the
fertile imagination of happy dreamers reduced a crude
mass of half-true, half-fabulous details into a regular system, long before the moon itself was even but tolerably well known to us. It is notorious that men of such
rank as Piazzi and Sir William  Herschel considered certain light appearances in the moon as volcanic eruptions,
whilst a German astronomer of great merit, Schroeter,
saw in them enormous fires raging in some of the cap.
itals of our satellite! Meteoric stones are, in our day,
fortunately better explained.  Unless the volcanoes on




284       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the moon had a force thirty times greater than our own,
they could not project masses far enough to come within
reach of our atmosphere. Such gigantic and continued
eruptions could, moreover, not fail to cause some permanent change in the surface of the moon, of which no
trace has as yet been perceived.
Great heavenly bodies commune not, like men, by
throwing bombshells at each other; their influence is
felt through the ageney of light, heat and attraction.
The light of the moon, it is true, is ninety thousand times
weaker than sunlight, and that its rays warm not, is a
popular assertion. But people are not always right, with
due deference be it said, even in matters of science. They
used to say that moonlight nights were colder than others. So they are; but the moon is not to be blamed
for it. She shines brighter when the sky is not obscured; but when that is the case, the earth also grows
colder, because radiation is increased. Thus the two facts
are perfectly true, only there is no connection of cause
and effect between them.  Melloni's experiments, made
in 1846, prove even that the rays of the moon have a
certain amount of heat, though so little, that the most
powerful lenses fail to make it perceptible on the thermometer.
The old Phoenicians already knew the moon well as
their faithful companion and guide on their long, bold
sea voyages; they knew that the gigantic breathing of
the ocean, its ebb and tide, were her work. Antiquity
looked with awe and wonder upon this supernatural
power of the great pale orb.  Modern science sees in




A TRIP TO THE MOON.                28.S
it one of the most glorious effects of that great and mysterious power of attraction, which binds and holds the
universe together.  The moon, though  so near to us,
cannot move the firm continent, but she allures the
elastic waters of the earth, until they raise huge foamcovered masses up towards the distant charmer. In one
great, unbroken wave of vast dimensions they follow the
receding moon with eager haste, and in the short space
of twenty-four hours rush round our globe, until continent and island break their imposing power. Twice
in the day and twice at night does this immense giantsnake, wound round our globe, breathe; for six hours it
swells and rises high into the pure air of the atmos.
phere; *for six hours afterwards it sinks and vanishes,
falling back into its eternal limits. Although the mysterious sympathies of the great worlds of the universe
are all alike, and sun and moon work jointly in this
great movement, the power of the latter far exceeds, in
this respect, by its greater vicinity to the earth, that of
the sun. Hence the tides follow closely the magic course
of the moon in the heavens, and recur regularly once in
every twelve hours, twenty-five minutes, as far as they
are not retarded by the resistance of the water itself, by
coasts and winds, or by opposing currents. When sun
and moon happen both to attract at the same time, the
effect is, of course, incredibly heightened; so-called springtides rise at the period of full or new moon, rush with
irresistible power high over cliffs and chalky ramparts,
their gigantic arms long stretched out towards the moon,
and fall upon the peaceful plain and the fertile fields of




286       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
the terrified husbandman. Still, man can  conquer even
the great magician in the heavens. He knows the hour
when the wild army is approaching, he flees from the
rage of the threatening tide waves, or he builds gigantic
walls, against which they dash hissing and roaring; they
tremble for an instant, as if drawing a last, full breath,
and then break their iron front into harmless clouds of
spray and foam.
As all attraction is mutual, the earth also causes an
enormous tide on the moon; its power is eighty-one
times stronger than that which produces our tides. The
moon, we have seen, turns constantly only one side towards us; it is, therefore, but natural to conclude that
so immense a power must have produced vast changes
in her surface. Some believe, on this account, that, to
restore the balance, the sea and the atmosphere of the
moon have fled to the opposite side. So much is certain, that, thanks to the loving attraction of our mother
earth, the side turned towards us rises at least a thousand
feet above the regular form of a globe.
But the great ocean does not alone show the attraction of the moon in its tides; the huge mass of air, the
atmosphere, that surrounds the earth, is likewise exposed
to these forces. Ebb and tide on this vast, unmeasured
ocean, are, of course, not perceptible far down in its
depth, where we poor men breathe painfully; but only
on the surface, to which even the boldest balloon sailor
has never yet risen, and perhaps in the very delicate
changes of susceptible barometers. The latter are, however, extremely minute; only from  time to time some




A TRIP TO THE MOON.               ~27
great current in the atmosphere  iushes down into the
deep of the transparent ocean, and tells us in a roaring
tornado, or the destructive violence of a fearful hurricane, of the mysterious movements in the airy waves,
that were charmed by the magic power of the moon, and
tried to leave their mother earth to hasten to the bewitching island in the blue, starry heavens.
But there is another strong, binding tie between moon
and earth, that makes us thankful for the precious things
put forth by the former.  She has been the oldest and
safest teacher, to whom mankind ever listened. Even the
old Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians, and Greeks, whilst
they worshipped her as a goddess, failed not carefully to
observe the changes in her pale face and by them to
measure their time.  Like a faithful porter, she has ever
stood at the gates of the great heavens with their countless stars, and taught us how to find times and distances.
In the upper rooms of the eighth story of the lofty towers
of Babylon, in the dark  halls of the vast temples of
Egypt, sat the hoary priests of antiquity, and watched the
wanderings of the great star of the night, thus to order
the times of the year and the labors of man. The moon
has taught us the secrets of arithmetic and geometry;
she was the first mathematician, she aided agriculture and
navigation; she taught historians the order of great events,
and gave to the priests of mankind their lofty positions
by confiding to them the secret of her constant changes.
Now, our astronomers make her the mirror on which the
earth throws her image, when the sun is behind both,
and thus prove on the moon's quiet surface, the round




288       LEAVES FROM THE BooK OF NATURE.
form of our globe. The faint uncertain light, which at the
time of the first quarter fills up the rest of the round orb,
serves them to measure the intensity of the light which the
earth diffuses. The perturbations in her motions teach them
the respective powers of attraction of sun and earth, make
known their form and reveal even the internal structure
of the latter.  Eclipses must serve as means to measure
the height of lunar mountains, and to investigate more
closely the secrets of the sun itself, and when the moon
covers fixed stars, they learn by this the velocity of light,
the distance of those stars and the density of our own
atmosphere.
From a consideration of such signal services rendered
to grateful mankind, we might well grant the moon a
word now and then to the clerk of the weather.  But
the faith of our forefathers in this respect has been almost entirely destroyed. Neither the barometer itself, nor
the most careful observations made during the space of
twenty-eight years in the north, during fifty years in the
tropics, show any reliable influence of the moon on our
weather. Still the world adheres with a constancy, worthy
of a better cause, to the ancient belief. The faithful prefer
their own observations to those of abstract science, as
they call it, and insist upon it that a change in the moon
produces a change in the weather; what their grandparents taught them, they faithfully hand down to grandchildren. We all have a tendency to explain mysteries
by new mysteries, and as no science has yet been able
to enter into the great laboratory where rain and sunshine are manufactured, the world finds it easy and con



A TRIP TO THE MOON.               289
venient to lay that duty upon the broad shoulders of the
good old moon, and to make her, in a new sense, "a
faithful witness in heaven."
But as among the chaff, many a plump good grain may
be found, so the vast mass of superstitions about the influence of the moon on life on earth also contains, every
now and then, a particle of truth. It is not denied that
wood cut at the time of an increasing moon is more
perishable than that cut at other periods, for repeated
and careful observations made in the West Indies confirm the long-cherished opinion. Many farmers, also, firmly believe that all grain sown under an increasing moon
prospers better on that account.  That the light of the
moon must have some little influence on vegetation, has
been satisfactorily proved by the fact that plants, which
had been bleached in darkness, recovered their green
color by exposure to moonlight only.
The sick know the influence of the moon unfortunately
but too well. Goitres are said to swell periodically with
the full moon; liver-complaints to become worse at the
same time, and the insane to suffer of more violent attacks of rage. Death itself, it is well known, frequently
waits for the tide, that is, for the moon. It is much to
be regretted  that science, with haughty disregard, has
thrown these popular notions aside without an attempt
to sift them, a proceeding which cannot fail to deprive
us of much that might otherwise become not only interesting, but even valuable. Since we have entered deeper
into the secrets of life; since we know how incredibly
delicate are the functions of our nerves; since we can
13




290       LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE.
no longer deny the mysterious effects of magnetism, even
though we may look upon them  only as symptoms of
disease and self-illusion; since we have to admit the efficacy of light, long after human eyes perceive it no longer
-it is surely high time that we should try to find the
grain of truth which is in every fable, and probably in
these superstitions also. We are aware that men of science are sedulously employed in this noble undertaking,
and that, for instance, in medicine very remarkable results have already been obtained.
This practical tendency need not destroy the sweet,
magic charm, which the moon now, as of old, exercises over
the soul of man.  The poet tells us to-day, as he did
yesterday, how the mountains kneel before God in silent
prayer, when the peace of the sabbath reigns all around,
how the host of stars light up the gigantic temple, and
"the moon hangs, as the ever-burning lamp of man's
worship, high above the eternal altar of nature."  The
painter studies the quaint, fairy lights of the pale orb,
as it pours its mild radiance over field and town.  The
lover communes with the tender amber round which the
moon spreads about her, moving through a fleecy night,
and the pained heart finds sweet comfort in her peaceful silver light. The arctic traveller blesses her as she
lights up with her faint but ever welcome favor, the long,
cold polar night; and the people at large, look up to
her for mysterious blessings. For many are the charms
of' the pale light of the moon, not known to the man
of science. How peacefully and kindly she smiles through
the window upon the little bed of the infant, and wakes




A TRIP TO THE MOON.               291
in its childish mind a thousand strange and fanciful notions, until gentle slumber closes those pure innocent eyes!
Teasing and playing, she will come between that loving
couple in the dark bower, and break in upon their sweet,
silent communion.  Beautiful as some fair saint, serenely
moving on her way in hours of trial and distress, she
watches like a mild, faithful companion by the side of
the sick-bed; with peace and heavenly comfort in her
sweet, pale face, she soothes the weary eye and shortens
the long, painful night. Inspiration itself has asked, "Who
is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the
mold?" At last her gentle pilgrimage is ended; sinking silently she drops down behind the sky, a faithful
witness of the brighter light that is to follow after this
faint moonlight life, and a gladsome prophet of the abundance of peace which the Almighty has promised "as
long as the moon endureth."
THE END.








All the Books on thls Catalogue sent by mail, U any par, of the Unionz,fru
of postage, upon receipt of Price.
CATALOGUSE OF BOOKS
ON
AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE,
PUBLISHED BY
A. O. MOORE,
(LATE C. x. SAXTON & COMPANY,)
No. 140 FULTON STREET, NEW YORK,
SUITABLE FOR
SCHOOL, TOWN, AGRICULTURAL, AND PRIVATE LIBRARIES.
THE AMERICAN FARMER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA, -                   -     -       4 00
EMBRACING ALL THE RECENT DISCOVERIES IN AGRIULTURAL CHEMistry, and the use of Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Manures, with Descriptions and
Figures of American Insects injurious to Vegetation. Being a Complete Guide for the
cultivation of every variety of Garden and Field Crops. Illustrated by numerous Engravings of Grasses, Grains, Animals, Implements, Insects, &c, By GovvxlrxavU
EaraRos, of Pennsylvania, upon the basis of Johnson's Farmer's Encyclopedia.
DOWNING'S (A. J.) LANDSCAPE GARDENING,                                3 50
A TREATISE ON THE THEORY AND PRACTICF  " ANDSCAPE GARdening. Adapted to North America, with a view to the improvement of Country
Residences; comprising Historical Notices and General Principles of the Art, directions for Laying out Grounds and Arranging Plantations, the Description and Cultiva.
tion of Hardy Trees, Decorative Accompaniments to the House and Grounds, the
Formation of Pieces of Artificial Waters, Flower Gardens, &c., with Remarks on
Rural Architecture. Elegantly Illustrated, with a Portrait of the Author. By A. J.
DOWNNG.
DOWNING'S (A. J.) RURAL ESSAYS,             -    -    -       -      3 00
ON HORTICULTURE, LANDSCAPE GARDENING, RURAL ARCHITECTURE,
Trees, Agriculture, Fruit, with his Letters from England. Edited, with a Memoir of
the Author, by GEORGE WM. CuRTIS, and a letter to his friends, by FREDERSA BmIUEIL, and an elegant steel Portrait of the Author.
DADD'S ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HORSE, Plain,  2 00
Do.          Do.             Do.             Do.   Colored Plates, 4 00
WITH ANATOMICAL AND QUESTIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS; Containing,
also, a Series of Examinations on Equine Anatomy and Philosophy, with Instructions
in reference to Dissection, and the mode of making Anatomical Preparations; to which
is added a Glossary of Veterinary Technicalities, Toxicological Chart, and Dictionary
of Veterinary Science.
OADD'S MODERN HORSE DOCTOR...              100
CONTAINING  PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE CAUSES, NATURE
and Treatment of Disease and Lameness of Horses, embracing the most recent and approved methods, according to an enlightened system of veterinary therapeutic, for
the preservation and restoration c, health. With Illurt




2             Books Published by A. O. MOORE.
DADD'S (CEO. H.) AMERICAN CATTLE DOCTOR,    -                   -      1 00
CONTAtNING THE NECESSARY  INFORMATION FOR PRESERVING THE
Health and Curing the Diseases of Oxen, Cows, Sheep, and Swine, with a great variety
of Original Recipes and Valuable Information in reference to Farm and Dairy manage.
ment, whereby every man can be his own Cattle Doctor. The principles taught in
this work are, that all Medication shall be subservient to Nature-that all Medicines
must be sanative in their operation, and administered with a view of aiding the vital
powers, instead of depressing, as heretofore, with the lancet or by pclson. By G HL
DADD, M. D., Veterinary Practitioner.
THE DOG AND GUN, -                                                       50
A FEW LOOSE CHAPTERS ON SHOOTING, among which will be found
some Anecdotes and Incidents; also, instructions for Dog Breaking, and interesting letters from Sportsmen. By A BAD SniOT.
MORGAN  HORSES,...                               1 00
A PREMIUM ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND CHARACTERISTICS
of this remarkable American Breed of Horses; tracing the Pedigree from the original
Justin Morgan, through the most noted of his progeny, down to the present time.
With numerous portraits. To which are added hints for Breeding, Breaking, and
General Uso and Management of Horses, with practical Directions for training them for
exhibition at Agricultural Fairs. By D. C. LINSLzY.
SORGHO AND IMPHEE, THE CHINESE AND AFRICAN SUGAR
CANES,    -                                                     1 00
A  COMPLETE TREATISE UPON THEIR ORIGIN AND XVARIETIES, CULTURE
and Uses, their value as a Forage Crop, and directions for making Sugar, Molasses,
Alcohol, Sparkling and Still Wines, Beer, Cider, Vinegar, Paper, Starch, and Dye
Stuffs. Fully Illustrated with Drawings of Approved Machinery; With an Appendix
by LEONARD WRAY, of Caffraria, and a description of his patented process of crystallizing the juice of the Imphee; with the latest American experiments, including those of
1857, in the South. By HENRY S. OLCOTT. To which are added translations of valuable French Pamphlets, received from the Hon. Jonx Y. MABON, American Minister
at Paris.
THE STABLE BOOK,    -           -      -     -     -     -     -       1 00
A  TREATISE ON THE MANAGEMENT OF HORSES, IN RELATION TO
Stabling, Groomirn  eding, Wateringand Working, Construction of Stables, Ventilation, Appendages o rstables, Management of the Feet, and of Diseased and Defective
Horses. By JOHN STEWART, Veterinary Surgeon. With Notes and Additions, adapting it to American Food and Climate. By A. B. ALLEN, Editor of the American
Agriculturist.
THE HORSE'S FOOT, AND HOW  TO KEEP IT SOUND,                   -         50
WITHI CUTS, ILLUSTRATING THE ANATOMY OF THE FOOT, and containtug valuable Hints on Shoeing and Stable Management, in Health and in Disease. By
WILLU M    MnB.
HE FRUIT GARDEN,                              -..                    1 25
A TREATISE, INTENDED TO EXPLAIN AND ILLUSTRATE THE PHYSIology of Fruit Trees, the Theory and Practice of all Operations connected with the
Propagation, Transplanting, Pruning and Training of Orchard and Garden Trees, as
Standards, Dwarfs, Pyramids, Espalier, &c. The Laying out and Arranging different
kinds of Orchards and Gardens, the selection of suitable varieties for different purposes
and localities, Gathering and Preserving Fruits, Treatment of Diseases, Destruction of
Insects, Description and Uses of Implements, &c. Illustrated with upwards of 150
Figures, representing Different Parts of Trees, all Practical Operations, forms of Trees,
Designs for Plantations, Implements, &c. By P. BarREY, of the Mount Hope Nurseries,
Rochester, N. Y.
FIELD'S PEAR CULTURE,            -     _     _                           75
THE PEAR GARDEN; or, a Treatise on the Propagation and
Cultivation of the Pear Tree, with Instruotions for its Management from the Seedling
to the Bearing Tree. By THoxas W. FIzELD




Books Published  by A. 0. MOORE. 
BRIDGEMXIAN'S (THOS.) YOUNG GARDENER'S ASSISTANT,                  $1 50
iN THREE PARTS, Containing Catalogues of Garden and Flower
Seed, with Practical Directions under each head for the Cultivation of Culinary Vege.
tables and Flowers. Also directions for Cultivating Fruit Trees, the Grape Vine, &c.,
to which is added, a Calendar to each part, showing the work necessary to be done in
the various departments each month ofgthe year. One volume octavo.
BRIDGEMAN'S KITCHEN GARDENER'S INSTRUCTOR,   i Cloth,    50
6"           "   *         " "I                      Cloth,    60
BBIDGEMAN'S FLORIST'S GUIDE,..           Cloth,    50
i"    "                "                              Cloth,    60
BRIDGEMAN'S FRUIT CULTIVATOR'S M                AI,.     Cloth,    50
64  i- 6           4.    Cloth,    60
COLE'S AMERICAN FRUIT BOOK,  -..               50
CONTAINING DIRECTIONS FOR RAISING, PROPAGATING AND MANAGing Fruit Trees, Shrubs and Plants; with a description of the Best Varieties of Fruit
including New and Valuable Kinds.
COLE'S AMERICAN VETERINARIAN,    -    -    -    -                      50
CONTAINING  DISEASES  OF  DOMESTIC  ANIMALS, THEIR  CAUSES,
Symptoms and Remedies; with Rules for Restoring and Preserving Health by good
management; also for Training and Breeding.
8CHENCK'S GARDENER'S TEXT BOOK,   -    -    -    -                     50
CONTAINING DIRECTIONS FOR THE FORMATION AND  MANAGEMENT
of the Kitchen Garden, the Culture and Use of Vegetables, Fruits and Medicinal Herbs.
AMERICAN ARCHITECT,             -    -    -    -       -    -       6 00
THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT, Comprising original Designs of Cheap
Country and Village Residences, with Details, Specifications, Plans and Directions,
and an Estimate of the Cost of Each Design. By JOHN W. RITCH, Architect. First
and Second Series, 4to, bound in 1 vol.
BUIST'S (ROBERT) AMERICAN FLOWER GARDEN DIRECTORY,  125
CONTAINING PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE CULTURE OF PLANTS,
in the Flower-Garden, Hot-House, Green-House, Rooms or Parlor Windows, for every
Month in the Year; with a Description of the Plants most desirable in each, the nature
of the Soil and Situation best adapted to their Growth, the Proper Season for Transplanting, &c.; with Instructions for Erecting a Hot-House, Green-House, and Laying
out a Flower Garden; the whole adapted to either Large or Small Gardens, with Instructions for Preparing the Soil, Propagating, Planting, Pruning, Training and Fruiting the Grape Vine.
THE AMERICAN BIRD FANCIER,
CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE BREEDING, REARING, FEEDing, Management and Peculiarities of Cage and House Birds. Illustrated with Engravings. By D. JAY BROWNE.
&FEEMELIN'S (CHAS.) VINE DRESSER'S MANUAL,                           650
AN  ILLUSTRATED  TREATISE ON VINEYARDS AND  WINE-MAKING,
containing Full Instructions as to Location and Soil, Preparation of Ground, Selection
and Propagation of Vines, the Treatment of Young Vineyards, Trimming and Training
the Vines, Manures, and the Making of Wine.
DANA'S MUCK MANUAL, FOR THE USE OF FARMERS,  -                       1 00
A  TREATISE ON THE PHYSICAL AND  CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF
Soils and Chemistry of Manures; including, also, the subject of Composts, Artificial
Manures and Irrigation. A new edition, with a Chapter on Bones and Superphosphates.
CHEMICAL FIELD LECTURES FOR AGRICULTURISTS,                          1 00
By Dr. JULIUS ADOLPHUS STOCKHARDT, Professor in the Royal
Academy of Agriculture at Tharant. Translated from the German. Edited, with
hotaas by Ji' as E. TgEMNAMMa.




4             Books Published  by  A. O. MOORA.
BUIST'S] (RBOERT) FAMILY KITCHEN GARDENER,.    0 75
CONTAINING PLAIN AND ACCURATE DESCRIPTIONS OF.S  TrE DIFferent Species and Varieties of Culinary Vegetables, with their Botanical, English,
French and German names, alphabetically arranged, with the Best Mode of 0ultivating
them in the Garden or under Glass; also Descriptions and Character of the most select
Fruits, their Management, Propagation, ac.. By ROBEBT Bui8T, author of the "American Flower Garden Directory," &c.
DOMESTIC AND ORNAMENTAL POULTRY, Plain Plates,.                  1 O0
Do.               Do.             Do.    Colored Plates,.       2 00
A TREATISE ON THE HISTORY AND MANGEMENT OF ORNAMENTAL
and Domestic Poultry. By Rev. EDMUND SAuL DixoN, A.M., with large additions by
J. J. 1Kzs, M.D. Illustrated with sixty-five Original Portraits, engraved expresly fot
this work. Fourth edition revised.
HOW  TO BUILD AND VENTILATE HOT-HOUSES,   -    -                     1:2A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  THE  CONSTRUCTION, HEATING AND
Ventilation of Hot-Houses, including Conservatories, Green-Houses, Graperies and
other kinds of Horticultural Structures, with Practical Directions for their Manage
ment, in regard to Light, Heat and Air. Illustrated with numerous engravings. By
P. B. L caads, Garden Architect.
CHO0LTON'S GRAPE-GROWER'S GUIDE,...           60
INTENDED ESPECIALLY FOR THE AMERICAN CLIMATE. Being- a
Practcal Treatise on the Cultivation of the Grape Vine in each department of Hot
House, Cold Grapery, Retarding House and Out-door Culture. With Plans for tb*
Construction of the Requisite Buildings, and giving the best methods for Heating the
same. Every department being fully illustrated. By WirtTAu CHOBLTON.
gORTON'S (JOHN P.) ELEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE,   60
OR, THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE ART OF PRACTICAL
Farming. Prize Essay of the New York State Agricultural Society. By JOHN P.
NORTON, M.A, Professor of Scientific Agriculture in Yale College. Adapted to the
use of Schools.
JOHNSTON'S (J. F. W.) CATECHISM OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY,              -.    -.              25
BY JAMES F. W. JOHNSTON. M.A., F.R.SS.L. and E., Honorary
Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and author of "Lectures on
Agricultural Chemistry and Geology." With an Introduction by JomE PITrIN NOaTON, M.A., late Professor of Scientific Agriculture in Yale College. With notes and
additions by the author, prepared expressly for this edition, and an Appendix compiled
by the Superintendent of Education in Nova Scotia. Adapted to the use of Schools.
JOHNSTON'S (J. F. W.) ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY,                                          1 00
With  a  Complete Analytical and Alphabetical Index and an
American Preface. By Hon. SIMON BROWN, Editor of the "New England Farmer.'
JOHNSTON'S (JAMES F. W.) AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY,                     1 25
LECTURES ON THE APPLICATION OF CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY TO
Agriculture. New edition, with an Appendix, containing the Author's Experiments
in Practical Agriculture.
THE: COMPLETE FARXER AND AMERICAN GARDENER,                          1 25
RURAL ECONOMIST AND NEW  AMERICAN GARDENER; Containing
a Compendious Epitome of the most Important Branches of Agriculture and Rural
Economy; with Practical Directions on the Cultivation of Fruits and Vegetables, including Landscape and Ornamental Gardening. By THOMAa  G. FERssBNDr. 2 vols.
in one.
rESSENDEN'S (T. G.) AMERICAN KITCHEN GARDENER, -                      50
CONTAINING DIRECTIONS FOR THE CULTIVATION OF VEGETABLES ANB
arden fruits. Clotl




Books Published by A. O. MOORE.                           5
NASH'S (J. A.) PROGRESSIVE FARMER,               -     -           $0 60
A SCIENTIFIC TREATISE ON AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY, THE GEology of Agriculture, on Plants and Animals, Manures and Soils, applied to Practical
Agriculture; with a Catechism of Scientific and Practical Agriculture. By J. A. NAsH,
BRECK'S BOOK OF FLOWERS,  a-                     -      -       -  1 00
IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED ALL THE VARIOUS H:ARDY HERBACEOUS
Perennials, Annuals, Shrubs, Plants and Evergreen Trees, with Directions for their
Cultivation..,,
IMITH'S (C. H. J.) LANDSCAPE GARDENING, PARKS AND PLEASURE
GROUNDS,. -.. 1 25
WITH PRACTICAL NOTES ON COUNTRY RESIDENCES, VILLAS, PUBLIC
Parks and Gardens. By CHARLES H. J. SmITa, Landscape Gardener and Garden
Architect, &c. With Notes and Additions by LEWIS  F. ALLEN, author of "Rural
Architecture."
fIE COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL,               -..       1 00
BEING A COMPILATION OF FACTS FROM THE BEST AUTHORITIES ON
the Culture of Cotton, its Natural History, Chemical Analysis, Trade and Consumption,
and embracing a History of Cotton and the Cotton Gin. By J. A. TUBRER.
COBBETT'S AMERICAN GARDENER,               -    -    -    -            50
A TREATISE ON THE SITUATION, SOIL, AND LAYING-OUT OF GARDENS,
and the making and managing of Hot-Beds and Green-Houses, and on the Propagation
and Cultivation of the several sorts of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits and Flowers.
ALLEN (J. FISK) ON THE CULTURE OF THE GRAPE,   -                     I 00
A  PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE CULTURE AND TREATMENT OF THE
Grape Vine, embracing its History, with Directions for its Treatment in the United
States of America, in the Open Air and under Glass Structures, with and without
Artificial Heat. By J. FIsr AxLau.
ALLEN'S (R. L.) DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS,                -         75
BEING A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE HORSE, MULE, CATTLE,
Sheep, Swine, Poultry, and Farm Dogs, with Directions for their Management, Breed.
ing, Crossing, Rearing, Feeding, and Preparation for a Profitable Market; also, their
Diseases and Remedies, together with full Directions for the Management of the Dairy,
and the comparative Economy and Advantages of Working Animals, the Horse, Mule,
Oxen, &e. By R. L, ALLEN.
ALLEN'S (R. L.) AMERICAN FARM  BOOK,    -1 00
THE AMERICAN FARM BOOK; or, a Compend of American Agriculture, being a Practical Treatise on Soils, Manures, Draining, Irrigation, Grasses, Grain,
Roots, Fruits, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar Cane, Rice, and every Staple Product of the
United States; with the Best Methods of Planting, Cultivating and Preparation for
Market. Illustrated with more than 100 engravings. By R. L ALLN.
ALLEN'S (L. F.) RURAL ARCHITECTURE;                 -    -           1 25
BEING A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF FARM HOUSES, COTTAGES, AND
Out Buildings, comprising Wood Houses, Workshops, Tool Houses, Carriage and
Wagon Houses, Stables, Smoke and Ash Houses, Ice Houses, Apiaries or Bee Houses,
Poultry Houses, Rabbitry, Dovecote, Piggery, Barns, and Sheds for Cattle, &c., &c,
together with Lawns, Pleasure Grounds, and Parks; the Flower, Fruit, and Vege.
table Garden; also useful and ornamental domestic Animals for the Country Resident,
&c., &;. Also, the best method of conducting water into Cattle Yards and Houses
Beautifully illustrated.
WARING'S ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE;                                      75
A  BooK FOR YoUNG FARMERS, wITH QUESTIONS FOR THE USE OW
Scehool.




6             Books Published by A. O. MOORE.
PARDEE (R. G.) ON STRAWBERRY CULTURE;                    -            $0 60
A  COMPLETE MANUAL FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE STRAWBERRY;
with a description of the best varieties.
Also, notices of the Raspberry, Blackberry, Currant, Gooseberry, and Grape; with
directions for their cultivation, and the selection of the best varieties. "Every process
here recommended has been proved, the plans of others tried, and the result is here
given." With a valuable appendix, containing the observations and experience of
some of the most successful cultivators of these fruits in our country.
GUENON ON MILCH  COWS; -.                                                60
A  TREATISE ON MILCH COWS, whereby the Quality and Quantity of
Milk which any Cow will give may be accurately determined by observing Natura'
Marks or External Indications alone; the length of time she will continue to give
Milk, &c., &c. ByM. FRANCISu GUENON, of Libourne, France. Translated by NionoIzs P. TRIST, Esq.; with Introduction, Remarks, and Observations on the Cow and
the Dairy, by Josn S. SKINNr. Illustrated with numerous engravings. Neatly
done up in paper covers, 87 cts.
AMERICAN POULTRY YARD;.               1 00
COMPRISING THE ORIGIN, HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION of the different
Breeds of Domestic Poultry, with complete directions for their Breeding, Crossing,
Rearing, Fattening, and Preparation for Market; including specific directions for
Caponizing Fowls, and for the Treatment of the Principal Diseases to which they are
subject, drawn from authentic sources and personal observation. Illustrated wiih
numerous engravings. By D. J. BuowNE.
BROWNE'S (D. JAY) FIELD BOOK OF MANURES;    -                   -       1 25
OR, AMERICAN MUCK BOOK; Treating of the Nature, Properties,
Sources, History, and Operations of all the Principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with specific directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil
and to Crops; drawn from authentic sources, actual experience, and personal observation, as combined with the Leading Principles of Practical and Scientific AgricultureBy D. JAY BuOWNE.
RANDALL'S (H. S.) SHEEP HUSBANTDRY;                       -     -       125
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT BREEDS, and general directions in regard to Summer and Winter Management, Breeding, and the Treatment of
Diseases, with Portraits and other Engravings. By HENRY S. RANDALL.
THE SHEPHERD'S OWN B00K;..                                          2 00
VWITH AN ACCOUNT CF THE DIFFERENT BREEDS, DISEASES AND MANagement of Sheep, and General Directions in regard to Summer and Winter Man.
agement, Breeding, and the Treatment of Diseases; with Illustrative Engravings, by
YOUATT & RANDALL; embracing Skinner's Notes on the Breed and Management of
Sheep in the United states, and on the Culture of Fine Wool
YOUATT ON  SHEEP,    -                _                                  75
THEIR BREED, MANAGEMENT AND DISEASES, with Illustrative Engravings; to which are added Remarks on the Breeds and Management of Sheep In
the Unitel States, and on the Culture of Fine Wool in Silesia. By WILIAM YOUAT'r.
YOUATT AND MARTIN ON  CATTLE;    -                 -.       -       1 25
BEING A TREATISE ON THEIR BREEDS, MANAGEMENT, AND DISEASES,
comprising a full History of the Various Races; their Origin, Breeding, and Merits;
their capacity for Beef and Milk. By W. YOUATT and W. C. L. MARTN. The whole
forming a Complete Guide for the Farmer, the Amateur, and the Veterinary Surgeon,
with 100 Illustrations. Edited by AmBRosE Smvxzes.!OUATT ON THE HORSE;   -              -     -                         125
YOUATT ON THE STRUCTURE AND DISEASES OF THE HORSE, with
their Remedies. Also, Practical Rules for Buyers, Breeders, Smiths, &c. Edited by
W. C. SpoonER, M.R.C V S. With an account of the Breeds in the United States, by
HMHsT Si RANDAL1




Books Published by A. O. MOORE.                           7
YOUATT AND MARTIN ON THE HOG;.             $0 75
A. TREATISE ON THE BREEDS, MIA?{AGEMENT, AND MEDICAL TREATment of Swine, with Directions for Salting Pork, and Curing Bacon and Hams. By
WM. YOuATT, V.S, and W. C, L. MARTIN. Edited by AxBosE STEvNs. Illustrated
with Engravings drawn from life.
BLAKE'S (REV. JOHN L.) FARMER AT HOME;'       125
A  FAMILY TEXT BOOK FOR THE COUNTRY; being a Cyclopedia of
Agricultural Implements and Productions, and of the more important topics in Domestic Economy, science, and Literature, adapted to Rural Life. By Rev. JoRa L.
BLARE, D D.
MUNN'S (B.) PRACTICAL LAND DRAINER;    -                 -    -        50
BEING A TREATISE ON DRAINING LAND, in which the most approved
systems of Drainage are explained, and their differences and comparative merits discussed; with full Directions for the Cutting and Making of Drains, with Remarks upon
the various materials of which they may be constructed. With many illustrations. By
B. MUNN, Landscape Gardener.
ELLIOTT'S AMERICAN  FRUIT GROWER'S GUIDE IN  ORCHARD
AND GARDEN;....                  1 25
BEING A COMPEND OF THE HISTORY, MODES OF PROPAGATION, CULture, &E, of Fruit Trees and Shrubs, with descriptions of nearly all the varieties of
Fruits cultivated in this country; and Notes of their adaptation to localities, soils, and
a complete list of Fruits worthy of cultivation. By F. R. ELLIOTT, Pomologist.
PRACTICAL FRUIT, FLOWER, AND KITCHEN GARDENER'S COMPANION;                  -             -      -                  1 00
WITH A CALENDAR. BY PATRICK NEILL, LL.I)., F.R.S.E., Secre
tary of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society. Adapted to the United States
from the fourth edition, revised and improved by the author. Edited by G. EasmPsoN,
M D., Editor of "The American Farmer's Encyclopedia." With Notes and Additions
by R. G. PABDEE, author of " Manual of the Strawberry Culture." With illustrations
STEPHENS' (HENRY) BOOK OF THE FARM;                    -    -       4 00
A COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE FARMER, STEWARD, PLOWMAN, CATtleman, Shepherd, Field Worker, and Dairy Maid. By HErNRY STEPHENS. With Four
Hundred and Fifty Illustrations; to which are added Explanatory Notes, Remarks,
&c., by J. S. SKINNEB.' Really one of the best books a farWer can possess.
PEDDERS' (JAMES) FARMERS' LAND MEASURER; -                   -         50
OR, POCKET COMPANION; Showing at one view the Contents of any
Piece of Land from Dimensions taken in Yards. With a set of Useful Agricultura.
Tables.
WHITE'S (W. N.) GARDENING FOR THE SOUTH;   -                  -      125
OR, THE KITCHEN AND FRUIT GARDEN, with the best methods for
their Cultivation; together with hints upon Landscape and Flower Gardening; con.
taining modes of culture and descriptions of the species and varieties of the Culinary
Vegetables, Fruit Trees, and Fruits, and a select list of Ornamental Trees and Plants,
found bytrial adapted to the States of the Union south of Pennsylvania, with Garden.
ing Calendars for the same. By Was N. WrrTs, of Athens, Georgia.
EASTWOOD (B.) ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE CRANBERRY;                     50
WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE BEST VARIETIES.  BY B. EASTWOOD,
"Septimus" of the New York Tribune.
AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER'S MANUAL;.       1 00
BEING A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE HISTORY AND  DOMESTI(C
Economy of the Honey Bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with
the most approved methods of managing this Insect, through every branch of its
Culture; the result of many years' experience. Illustrated with many engravings.
By T. B. MAd'.




8             Books Published by A. O. MOORE.
THAER'S (ALBERT D.) AGRICULTURE                  -    -    -         2 CO
THE PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE, by ALBERT D. TIAER; translated by WIuAx SHAW and CUTIrBEET W. JOMBsoN, Esq., F.R.S. With a Memoir
of the Author. 1 vol. 8vo.
This work is regarded by those who are competent to Judge as one of the most
beautiful works that has ever appeared on the subject of Agriculture. At the same
time that it is eminently practical, it is philosophical, and, even to the general reader,
remarkably entertainmg.
BOUSSINGAULT'S (J. B.) RURAL ECONOMY,                   -    -       1 25
IN  ITS RELATIONS TO CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, AND METEOROLOGY:
or, Chemistry applied to Agriculture. By J. B. BouissnaALrT. Translated, with
notes, etc., by GEORGE LAw, Agriculturist.
" The work is the fruit of a long life of study and experiment, and its perusal will
aid the farmer greatly in obtaining a practical and scientific knowledge of his profes
slon."
MYSTERIES OF BEE-KEEPING EXPLAINED;  -    -    -                     1 00
BEING A COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF THE WHOLE SUBJECT, consisting
of the Natural History of Bees; Directions for obtaining the greatest amount of Pure
Surplus Honey with the least possible expense; Remedies for losses given, and the
Science of Luck fully Illustrated; the result of more than twenty years' experience in
extensive Apiaries. By M. QUInBY.
THE COTTAGE AND FARM BEE-KEEPER;                 -    -                50
A PRACTICAL WORK, by a Country Curate.
WEEKS (JOHN M.) ON BEES.-A MANUAL;                  - -    -           50
OR, AN EASY METHOD OF MANAGING BEES IN THE MOST PROFITABLE
manner to their owner  with infallible rules to prevent their destruction by the Moth.
With an appendix, by'WOOsTER A. FLANDERS.
THE ROSE;,,                           50
BEING A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE PROPAGATION, CULTIVATION,
and Management of the Rose in all Seasons; with a list of Choice and Approved Varieties, adapted to the Climate of the United States; to which is added full directions for
the Treatment of the Dahlia. Illustrated by Engravings.
HOORE'S RURAL HAND BOOKS,.                 1 25
FIRST SERIES, containing Treatises onTfE HOBRS,           THE PESTs OF TRI F AR,
THE HOG,             DOMESTIO Fowis, and
TaE HONEY BEE,       TaE Cow,
SECOND SERIES, containing-                                     1 25
EwRY L.ADY MEn owW FLOWE  GAuDWIa,   EssAY ON MANURES,
J-LEM ENTs OF AGRIJULTUBE,             aMERIcAN KlITHEN Gasiindx,
RIRD FANCIER,                          A.xoaio    RO8SE CULVruIST.
THIRD SERIES, containing —           - - -1 25
MrLEs ON THxI HoaSEz' FooT,    Vin  DRE8SER'8 MANUAL,
TaE  RABBrr FANoIER,           BEE-KEEPER's CHART,
WEEKS ON BEES,                 CaEMISTRY MADE EBSY.
FOURTH SERIES, containing-                                     1 25
PERSOZ ON THE VINE,            HOOPEB'S DOG AN GAur,
ImBIG s FAMLuI   LETTERS,       SEhiLLUL HousEwsA,
BROWNE's MEMoIRs OF INDIAN CORN.
RICHARDSON ON DOGS: THEIR ORIGIN AND VARIETIES.                       50
DIRECTIONS AS TO THEIR GENERAL MANAGEMENT.  With numerous
original anecdotes. Also. Complete Instructions as to Treatment under Disease. By
D,. RIcHARDSON. Illustrated with numerous wood engravings.
This is not only a cheap work, but one of the best ever #ublished on the Dog.