OUTDOORS 
 INDOORS 
 
 (^ AND UP ^ 
 
 THE CHIMNEY 
 
 CHARLES M^ILVAINE 
 
 lli^ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 °mmMmmmm'm^"'' "" '"* chimney, 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012241562 
 
OUTDOORS, INDOORS, AND UP 
 THE CHIMNEY 
 

 
 
 
 Outdoors, Indoors, 
 
 and 
 
 Up the Chimney 
 
 
 
 <By 
 
 
 
 Charles McIIvaine 
 
 Author of "looo American Fungi" 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 The Sunday School Times Company 
 
 xgo6 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright, 1906, 
 
 BY 
 
 The Sunday School Timbs Co. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 If I Came from the Moon 3 
 
 Why the Stove Smokes 11 
 
 What Dust Does for Us 21 
 
 Our Friends the Toadstools 31 
 
 Only a Lump of Coal 39 
 
 Our Indoor Neighbors, Mice 51 
 
 Only an Egg 59 
 
 On the Seashore 69 
 
 Under Creek Waters 81 
 
 Scares that are Useless 93 
 
 The Beginning of Plants 101 
 
 Plants that Poison 113 
 
 A Study of Flies 123 
 
 Fireflies 131 
 
 The Busiest of Insects 141 
 
 Jack Frost 151 
 
 In the Dark 163 
 
 Our Underground Neighbors 173 
 
IF I CAME FROM THE MOON 
 
IF I CAME FROM THE MOON 
 
 Our eyes can see a pin on the floor, and they 
 can see stars millions of miles away so long as 
 their light comes to them. Our eyes are won- 
 derful instruments. They do not have to be 
 pulled out and pushed in, like a pair of opera- 
 glasses, in order that we may make them long 
 or short enough to see things through. There 
 is a little arrangement back of each eye called 
 the retina which fixes itself instantly to see what 
 we want to see, be it near or far. 
 
 If we want to see the moon plainly, we use a 
 telescope to help our eyes. It appears to draw 
 the moon closer. If we want to see how the 
 foot of a fly is made, we use a microscope ; it 
 seems to make objects larger. 
 
 If we look at the moon through a spy-glass 
 or opera-glasses, its surface looks somewhat like 
 a kettle of boiling starch, except that there is 
 
 3 
 
4 If I Came from the Moon 
 
 no motion on the moon. It is brighter in some 
 places than others. These bright places are 
 high plains and mountain-tops upon which the 
 sunlight strikes. The darker places are the 
 shadows of the mountains and the bottoms of 
 the deep valleys, where the sun's rays are not 
 falling. If you look down upon a town from 
 the top of a church steeple when the sun is 
 shining, you will notice that the roof-tops, parts 
 of buildings higher than others, are bright, while 
 the lower buildings are darker; and down in the 
 streets and around among the houses it is very 
 much darker because the shadows are there. 
 Here you have at home the same effects that 
 you see upon the surface of the moon. The 
 spots that look like bursting bubbles of starch 
 are the cold openings, or craters, of volcanoes 
 whose fires have gone out. 
 
 The persons who make a study of the sun, 
 moon, and stars are called astronomers. They 
 know how to measure the distance these great 
 bodies are from the earth, how large they are, 
 how heavy, and what they are made of They 
 
If I Came from the Moon 5 
 
 have even measured the heights of the mountains 
 in the moon and the depth of the valleys. So, 
 if I read carefully what they say about the moon, 
 I can tell what I should have seen on the moon 
 if I came from there pretty nearly as well as if I 
 had been there. There are very good maps of 
 the face of the moon. 
 
 It is right for me to say that I never was on 
 the moon. If I had been, this is what I should 
 have seen and felt : 
 
 If I weighed one hundred and eighty pounds 
 at home, I should weigh but thirty pounds on 
 the moon. If I could jump two feet high on 
 earth, I could, with the same force, jump twelve 
 feet high there. The reason for this is that the 
 force which holds us on the earth, called gravi- 
 tation, is six times less on the moon. What a 
 place for leap-frog ! If I were six feet tall here, 
 I should be fully grown at eighteen inches if I 
 had been born on the moon. The man in the 
 moon that the stories tell of would not reach 
 the knee of our men. His dog would not be 
 bigger than a cricket. 
 
6 If I Came from the Moon 
 
 I should have with me my air to breathe, and 
 would have to move about in a case so that the air 
 would be inside of it ; for there is no air about 
 the moon. I should have to have all the water 
 with me that I required ; there is no water, or 
 clouds, or rain there. Everything to eat would 
 be taken along. The moon has nothing living 
 upon it, — at least nothing that breathes air, as 
 all living things on earth do. It is a dead 
 world. Absolute silence reigns there; no rip- 
 ple of stream, or song of bird, or even the roar 
 of thunder. 
 
 It is covered with vast ranges of mountains, 
 somewhat like our Rocky Mountain country. 
 These ranges have been made by the moon's 
 shrinking. If you look at a round squash that 
 has shrunk in drying, you will get a good idea 
 of how these mountains were made. 
 
 The surface of the moon is hard, dry, rough, 
 covered for the most part with lava. There is 
 nothing very interesting there. 
 
 The moon is 2,162 miles through. It would 
 lie on the earth between New York and Salt 
 
If I Came from the Moon 7 
 
 Lake City, and there would be over a hundred 
 miles to spare to walk around it in. The moon 
 is not as solid as the earth. If the moon was 
 squeezed as solid as the earth, it would take 
 eighty moons to make one earth. As it is now, 
 it takes only forty-nine. 
 
 We see but one side of the moon, because one 
 side of it is always turned away from us. There 
 is nothing to make us suspect that the side we 
 do not see is different from the one we do see. 
 It is intensely cold there ; so cold that the mer- 
 cury in the thermometer freezes. It freezes at 
 forty-two degrees below zero. The cold on the 
 moon reaches one hundred and forty degrees 
 below zero, nearly four times colder than any 
 place in America! So I will not stay there 
 long. There is nothing to make a fire of It is 
 the place to get chilblains and frosted noses. 
 
 As there is no air, the stars are much brighter 
 than we see them from the earth, and we should 
 see many more of them. As the moon nights 
 are over thirteen days long, there is plenty of 
 time both to sleep and go star-gazing. It takes 
 
8 If I Came from the Moon 
 
 the moon twenty-seven days, seven hours, and 
 forty-three minutes to turn around ; it takes our 
 big earth but twenty-four hours. The earth is 
 the best spinner. 
 
 If I had to walk home from the moon to the 
 earth, and the walking was good enough to 
 make twenty miles a day, I would have to pass 
 thirty birthdays on the road, for the distance is 
 nearly ten times around our earth, or 238,800 
 miles. I could not have a single birthday party. 
 It would take me sixty years to go and come. 
 I know I should be glad to get home ; for, of 
 all the worlds of God's make, this earth is to us 
 the most beautiful. 
 
WHY THE STOVE SMOKES 
 
WHY THE STOVE SMOKES 
 
 If you will take a piece of stove-pipe twelve 
 inches long and six or eight inches thick (eight 
 is better), cut four notches two inches deep in 
 one end, and the same number at the other, 
 then place it upright on the ground, you will 
 have the simplest form of stove that can be 
 made, and the very best for picnics, gunning 
 and fishing parties, and camping out, because, 
 by having several made, so that they will easily 
 slide into one another, several stoves^ can be car- 
 ried as one, take up but little room, and are 
 light. 
 
 When meal-time comes, make a fire in each 
 stove, place a tin plate on top, put in it whatever 
 you want to cook, cover it with another plate, 
 and soon the meal is ready. By having a sec- 
 tion of pipe without notches, and setting it on 
 the heated plate, covering it with another plate 
 
 II 
 
12 Why the Stove Smokes 
 
 full of sand, you have an oven in which you can 
 roast or bake as well as in a hundred-dollar range. 
 
 The air goes into the pipe at the bottom 
 notches, the heat from the lighted wood makes 
 the air above it lighter than the air below the 
 fire; the upper air rises, the lower air rushes 
 through the notches to take its place, and makes 
 what is called a draught. You will quickly no- 
 tice how the air rises from a fire by putting your 
 hand over it, or a small piece of paper. 
 
 Part of the air that goes in at the bottom is 
 used to make the wood burn. (This burning is 
 called combustion.) What is not used passes 
 through the fire, and in doing so mixes with 
 steam from the heated wood, and with the gases 
 and tiny particles of the partly burned wood 
 which are thrown off by the heat ; these color 
 the steamed air and the gases, and it goes on 
 upward and off as the smoke we see. If it was 
 not for these particles of unburned wood, we 
 could not see the smoke. 
 
 A stove of any make is nothing but a thing to 
 put something in that will burn, and so made 
 
Why the Stove Smokes 13 
 
 that it will give out all the heat possible from 
 what is burned in a way that is for our comfort 
 or for our use. All stoves have a place for the 
 air to enter, a place for the air to pass through 
 the wood or coal (fuel), and a place for the 
 smoke to pass off to where it will not make the 
 tears come to our eyes or sneezes to our noses. 
 
 The stove is simply the biggest part of an air 
 pipe with a fire in it. The straighter and longer 
 the pipe is the stronger the draught will be, be- 
 cause the more heated air there is above the fire, 
 confined to a pipe, the faster it will rise, and the 
 faster the air below will rush in to take its place. 
 
 If we shut the draught hole the fire will soon 
 go out. It can get no air. When we start a 
 fire in a stove we usually do it with something 
 that will burn quickly and make a great heat to 
 fire the heavier fuel. This quick fire makes a 
 great heat and a good deal of smoke. The 
 upper part of the stove, the pipe, the chimney, 
 are cold. The first heat with smoke with it has 
 to lift the heavy air above it. Until it does this, 
 and can get away, it has to get out somewhere 
 
14 Why the Stove Smokes 
 
 else. So the stove smokes. There are two 
 ways of preventing this : The first is to burn a 
 newspaper in the upper part of the stove. This 
 starts the air up the pipe. The next is: Do 
 not have the stove door open or the draught 
 hole open too wide. The smoke will not then 
 be made too fast to get away. Almost always, 
 when stoves smoke during the making of a fire, 
 it is because there is too much draught on. 
 Gas comes from a stove for the same causes. 
 
 Stoves often have dampers or valves in them 
 to pull out, push in, or turn. These are usually 
 to turn the heat, and the smoke with it, so that 
 they will not go straight up the stove-pipe, but 
 in a roundabout way through the stove, either 
 to heat the oven or make the stove throw out 
 more heat into the room. The heat from a 
 good fire can be turned in this way, but if the 
 fire is fresh the smoke from it will not go such a 
 crooked road ; it goes out into the room, — the 
 stove smokes. 
 
 If there is a pipe upon the stove, it, in time, 
 gets full of soot. This soot is made of the par- 
 
Why the Stove Smokes 15 
 
 tides that were in the smoke. As the smoke 
 cools while passing through the pipe the steam 
 in it condenses — changes back into water — and 
 carries with it to the inside of the pipe the parti- 
 cles which stick there. These will, if left in long 
 enough, fill up the pipe so much that smoke can- 
 not pass through it. As it must get out some- 
 where, being pushed by the rush of air behind it 
 and the swelling of the air inside the stove, it 
 slips through the cracks of the stove and often 
 out of the draught hole. This is one reason 
 why the stove smokes. To prevent it you must 
 keep the stove-pipe clear of soot. 
 
 If you want to be satisfied that heat swells air, 
 fill a bladder with cold air and hold it over the 
 stove. The bladder will probably burst. If it 
 does not, you can see that the bladder has 
 grown much larger and tighter. While swell- 
 ing, the air presses alike in all directions. This 
 is the reason smoke is often pressed out of the 
 draught hole. The pressure from within the 
 stove, if the pipe is stopped up, is very nearly 
 the same on the door as it is on the lids. 
 
1 6 Why the Stove Smokes 
 
 Sometimes the wind blows down the chimney 
 and pipe, the stove smokes — the draught is up- 
 side down. 
 
 If the stove-pipe goes into a chimney, which 
 is a tube or pipe made of bricks or stone to 
 make the stove-pipe longer and to carry ofiF the 
 smoke, the chimney may get filled with soot, or 
 dirty. Again the stove will smoke. The chim- 
 ney must be scraped or a brush run up and 
 down it, or a big fire made at the bottom of it, 
 big enough to set fire to the soot, and the chim- 
 ney burned out. If the soot was not made from 
 the unburned particles that were in the smoke, 
 it would not burn. 
 
 A valve or damper in the stove-pipe, above 
 the stove, is the very best thing from which 
 to learn how to manage a stove. Turning 
 it across makes the stove-pipe smaller. By it 
 the fire can be regulated, the draught can be 
 made full or nearly cut off. It keeps the heat 
 from being wasted by going out the pipe. Be- 
 fore you make a fire in the stove, be sure the 
 damper is turned straight up, or the stove will 
 
Why the Stove Smokes 17 
 
 smoke when you make the fire. When the fire 
 is started well, turn the damper as much across 
 as the stove will bear without smoking. 
 
 Nothing pays better than understanding the 
 way your stove is made, and why it is made the 
 way it is. It saves temper, fuel and comfort. 
 A stove must be kept clean in every part of the 
 inside. All neat persons will take care of the 
 outside. 
 
WHAT DUST DOES FOR US 
 
WHAT DUST DOES FOR US 
 
 Many of the readers of this book will wonder 
 what can be said about dust, except that it is 
 a great bother, which has to be fought off of 
 and out of everything we want to keep clean. 
 If I were to write all that is interesting about 
 dust, and make it as short as possible, half a 
 dozen 'tfntire chapters of this book would not 
 hold it. 
 
 Stranger yet: while dust contains many of our 
 mortal enemies, it is one of our very best friends, 
 and the finer it is the more we owe to it. If 
 there was no dust, the sky would not be blue, 
 there would be no raindrops, no snowflakes, no 
 hailstones, no clouds, no gorgeous sunsets, no 
 beautiful sunrises. The instant the sun passes 
 out of sight we should be in darkness. The 
 instant it rose it would be a sharp circle of light 
 in a black sky. There would be no evening 
 
 21 
 
22 What Dust Does for Us 
 
 glow to chat or think in, no lovely dawn with 
 bird song and cattle low at Nature's wakening. 
 The dome of the sky would be as dark as it is 
 on a bright moonlight night. The moon and 
 stars would shine by day in all their brightness. 
 The whole earth would be in a deep, dark 
 shadow, except where the sun's rays fall di- 
 rectly upon it in one great blinding circle. 
 The moon and stars would make even our 
 shadows.* 
 
 Rays of sunlight or any other kind of light 
 go straight through all kinds of gases, mo mat- 
 ter of what they are made. In passing through 
 them, if they contain no dust, the rays cannot 
 be seen, — they are invisible. You have often 
 seen sunlight enter a darkened room through 
 partly opened shutters, or a crack, or a knot- 
 hole. You have noticed that the rays were full 
 of dust moving about in every direction. The 
 air is made of gases, mixed. You did not see 
 the rays of light ; you saw the light in the sun 
 
 ' Most interesting, complete, authoritative, understandable ex- 
 planations of the effects of dust may be found in The Popular 
 Science Monthly, December, 1891 ; June, 1893 ; September, 1894. 
 
What Dust Does for Us 23 
 
 reflected by the particles of dust. Millions of 
 these particles were too small for you to see, 
 but not too small for such a searching thing as 
 light to miss. 
 
 The light we call daylight is the light of the 
 sun's rays reflected from the particles of dust in 
 the air about our earth. Moonlight is the light 
 of the sun reflected from the moon, which is a 
 great mass of particles compressed into a huge 
 ball. The earth is nothing more. If both of 
 them were ground fine and scattered they would 
 be but dust. 
 
 Cut an apple or a potato so as to give you a 
 piece that measures an inch each way, — high, 
 thick, broad. This piece will be exactly the size 
 of a cubic inch of air. Each cubic inch of air 
 contains an enormous number of dust particles. 
 The number is beyond our conception. 
 
 Mr. John Aitkin of Falkirk, Scotland, was the 
 first person to count these dust particles. He 
 counted them by a little machine he carried in his 
 pocket, and in a very simple way. He has been 
 able to count seven million and a half dust par- 
 
24 What Dust Does for Us 
 
 tides in a cubic inch of the ordinary air of Glas- 
 gow. The air of Pittsburg probably contains ten 
 times as many. After a meeting of members of 
 the Royal Society of Edinburgh in their hall, he 
 counted six million and a half to a cubic inch 
 near the floor, and fifty-seven million and a halt 
 to a cubic inch near the ceiling. The lowest 
 number he ever counted in a cubic inch of air 
 was thirty-four hundred. 
 
 The moisture (water) in the air must have 
 something to gather upon (condense) or it will 
 not gather. If dustless air, — air from which all 
 the dust has been sifted (filtered) by passing it 
 through a wad of cotton, — is let into a glass jar 
 from which the dusty air has been pumped, then 
 a jet of steam be let into it, the air will remain 
 clear. The water in the steam will settle (con- 
 dense) on the sides of the jar and trickle down. 
 But if air which is not filtered be allowed to 
 enter the jar, a cloud will be instantly seen. The 
 steam gathers upon the particles of dust in the 
 air. 
 
 So it is that the watery vapor which is con- 
 
What Dust Does for Us 25 
 
 stantly rising from the earth gathers on dust 
 particles, forms clouds, fogs. When the air gets 
 loaded with these water-covered particles, they 
 rush together, form drops or snow crystals, and 
 fall to the earth as rain or snowflakes. 
 
 The farther up we go in the air, the finer the dust 
 particles are, because the larger ones settle lower. 
 
 Several years ago (1883), for many evenings 
 the sky was of a singular, most beautiful color. 
 No one could explain it. It was soon discovered 
 that there had been a great volcanic eruption at 
 Krakatou in the Straits of Sunda, thousands of 
 miles from America. Reflections of the sun's 
 light from the dust thrown up by the volcano, 
 which had loaded the air all around the world, 
 caused the strange sight. 
 
 But we are very much interested in dust 
 nearer home. No doubt many of you have 
 wondered how dust gets into your clocks, your 
 watches, your closets, your cameras, and many 
 other places which are closed tightly. Dust is 
 a regular Paul Pry; it gets everywhere. We 
 notice it only where it is not wanted. 
 
26 What Dust Does for Us 
 
 This is how it gets there (I did not know until 
 recently, which shows me that I have a great 
 many things to learn yet, and that I learn some- 
 thing new every day. Some of you may be in 
 the same fix. If you are not, it would be well 
 to get there) : If you chose to put your watch 
 or clock in a pail of water, no matter how 
 tightly closed you might think it, you would, 
 after a time, find it filled with water. It 
 would get in through the very small openings. 
 Air will go wherever water does. We know 
 that air, when heated, expands, fills a greater 
 space. If you fill a toy balloon as full as you 
 can with cold air, and then bring it into a warm 
 room, it will swell, maybe burst. If (of course 
 before it bursts) you take it out into the cold 
 again, it will get smaller. Air contracts as it 
 gets cold. When the room in which your clock, 
 or camera, or closet stands is warm, the air 
 which is in any one of them is more or less ex- 
 panded — swollen. When the room gets cold, 
 the air in any one of them contracts, gets 
 smaller. The air from outside rushes in to help 
 
What Dust Does for Us 27 
 
 fill up to the same pressure that is outside. It 
 carries its dust particles with it. This change 
 from blowing out air to sucking it in occurs 
 whenever there is any change in the degree of 
 heat. These changes from heat to cold and cold 
 to heat are going on all the while. Dust, when 
 it gets in, usually stays, sticks, until there is 
 enough of it to be scolded at — and cleared out. 
 The only way to get rid of dust that settles is 
 to keep busier than the dust. 
 
OUR FRIENDS THE TOADSTOOLS 
 
OUR FRIENDS THE TOADSTOOLS 
 
 There are no plants more despised than the 
 toadstools. Nearly everybody is afraid of them, 
 nearly everybody has a kick for them, yet few 
 plants are more beautiful, and but few are more 
 useful. Not a single toadstool is in any way 
 harmful to the touch. Any one can handle 
 them with perfect safety. 
 
 When, in the spring, grass has changed from 
 brown sod to a rich green, let the readers look 
 among it. They will find many 
 toadstools growing singly, each 
 very independently, upon a thin 
 stem. Each stem is surrounded 
 by a cap about the size of a good- 
 
 Under the cap of a 
 
 sized marble, and looking much toadstool 
 like a marble cut in half After dew and rain, 
 the cap is sticky and shiny. Pull one. Turn it 
 upside down. There is no ruffle or plaited collar 
 
 31 
 
32 Our Friends the Toadstools 
 
 laid away for " best " that is half as pretty, regu- 
 lar, and neat, as the plaits or gills that the little 
 plant has modestly hidden under its brown cap. 
 These gills, running from the stem to the rim of 
 the cap, may be brown, or they may be black. 
 If they are black, they probably have so many 
 minute white specks upon them as to give them 
 a mottled appearance. All kinds of toadstools 
 having gills under the caps are called agarics. 
 By far the greater number of toadstools you will 
 find belong to this family. 
 
 These gills are wonderfully made. They are 
 composed of two thin plates made up of cells. 
 They are very much Uke a fan when nearly 
 closed. If these gills could be opened, — spread 
 out flat, — they would show, like an opened fan, 
 considerable surface. Strawberries bear their 
 seeds upon the outside, agarics bear their seeds 
 upon the outside of their gills. These seeds — 
 or spores, as they are called — are so smidl that 
 it takes over two thousand of them, placed end 
 to end, to make one inch. Each one of these 
 seeds, small as it is, contains a germ that will 
 
Our Friends the Toadstools 33 
 
 produce a toadstool. No matter how great or 
 how small, the work of the Creator is perfect. 
 The color of the gills is usually due to the color 
 of the seed. If the seeds are brown, the gills 
 are brown; if black, the seeds are black when 
 they are ripe and ready to fall. And they fall 
 in such great numbers that if you will place the 
 cap of a gilled toadstool, gills down, on a piece 
 of white paper, and place a tumbler over it, in a 
 few hours the fallen seeds will make an exact 
 print of the gills. These seeds are eaten by 
 insects which devour the substance of toad- 
 stools, and are carried off to their holes, or they 
 are wafted away by the winds and scattered far 
 and wide. When they reach a spot that suits 
 them, they grow. 
 
 Strawberry plants blossom before they fruit 
 as most other plants do. Toadstools do not. 
 They are flowerless plants, like the ferns, and 
 hence are called cryptogamic, from two Greek 
 words, meaning " hidden marriage." 
 
 Notwithstanding toadstools have so many 
 seeds, they have another way of growing. 
 
34 Our Friends the Toadstools 
 
 Grapevines, for instance, year after year, grow 
 from roots in the ground; they also grow 
 from grape seeds. When the seed of a toad- 
 stool grows, it does not 
 throw one shoot upward 
 to make a toadstool and 
 another down to make a 
 root. It throws out count- 
 less thread-like fibers, often 
 as fine as cobwebs, which 
 run through the earth or 
 leaves in every direction. 
 You have often seen these 
 among layers of rotting 
 leaves or stable manure, 
 and perhaps wrongly called them mold. This 
 thread-like, matted, cobwebby substance, usually 
 white, is the vine from which toadstools grow. 
 Toadstools are, therefore, a fruit growing directly 
 from a vine, but without a preceding blossom, 
 such as the grape has. This vine lives year 
 after year in its proper home, and each year 
 produces its crop. 
 
 A gronp of brownies 
 
Our Friends the Toadstools 35 
 
 When the common mushroom is grown in 
 cellars and houses built for the purpose, the 
 beds are made of manure. The dried vine is 
 bought in brick-shaped masses, and is called 
 " spawn." Pieces of this are buried in the bed, 
 where the heat and moisture revive the vine, 
 start it to growing again, and in time it bears 
 fruit. An old writer wrote, " Doubtless God 
 could have made a better fruit than the straw- 
 berry, but doubtless God never did." The same 
 can be said of mushrooms. A mushroom is a 
 t'Jtidstool. 
 
 Not only among the grass, peeping at one 
 another, and playing hide-and-seek like brown- 
 ies, are the early spring toadstools found, but at 
 the base of trees, along pavements, and in solid 
 clusters, with egg-shaped brown caps, delicate 
 and brittle, they- often grow in great quantity. 
 These caps frequently sparkle as if finely pow- 
 dered mica had been sifted upon them. These, 
 as well as the little fellows found in the grass, 
 are beautiful when dissected, and they excel all 
 flowers by being most luscious eating when 
 
36 Our Friends the Toadstools 
 
 stewed for a few minutes, and seasoned with 
 butter, pepper, and salt. 
 
 The puff-balls, so well known by the fine 
 powder (spores) which puffs from them when 
 squeezed, are handsome when they are quite 
 young. If you examine the quite small white 
 kinds found in pastures and along roadways, 
 you will be surprised to see how exquisitely 
 their surface is covered with pyramidal group- 
 ings. All puff-balls are fine eating (fried like 
 egg-plant, or stewed in milk) when they are 
 pure white inside. When they have the slight- 
 est tinge of yellow they are bitter, but not poi- 
 sonous. 
 
 Many of the wood-growing toadstools are 
 brightly colored. Arranged on plates of moss, 
 they make bouquets which every one will 
 admire. 
 
 Do not despise the toadstools, a study of them 
 is delightful. To know them assures one of 
 good company when walking through woods 
 and fields. 
 
ONLY A LUMP OF COAL 
 
ONLY A LUMP OF COAL 
 
 Before cold weather comes, the wise house- 
 keeper sees to it that there is either a pile of 
 wood or a heap of coal ready to do the house- 
 warming for the winter. She buys enough coal 
 or wood to make a comfortable temperature in 
 the house. In coal we have a portable climate, — 
 one that is brought from mines in the earth, car- 
 ried in cars to the coal-yards, and carted to our 
 cellar windows. We can carry our climate with 
 us wherever we go. Our stoves are our domesti- 
 cated suns, giving us warmth within the shadows 
 of our home walls and upon the darkest night. 
 Excepting when the coal rattles from the cart to 
 the cellar, or the fire gets low in the stove, or we 
 do not feel much like leaving a comfortable 
 chair to fill the coal-scuttle, or the coal bill has 
 to be paid, we do not think much about coal ; 
 we are so used to it. If a piece of either hard 
 
 39 
 
40 Only a Lump of Coal 
 
 or soft coal could tell its story we could spend 
 many an evening very pleasantly listening to it. 
 But as the coal cannot talk, persons, called 
 geologists, who have examined the countries and 
 
 layers of rock from 
 between which coal is 
 mined, and who have 
 carefully studied how 
 these rocks were 
 formed, tell us that 
 coal was made many 
 thousands of years 
 ago. They tell us, too, 
 how coal was made, 
 having collected from 
 the coal-mines hun- 
 dreds of proofs that 
 their story is true. 
 There are many kinds of coal, but the two prin- 
 cipal kinds are hard and, soft coal, — anthracite 
 (meaning a kind of precious stone) and bitumin- 
 ous, which means containing bitumen. In the 
 United States hard coal is found east of the AUe- 
 
 Lepidodendron eZegans. 
 
 Impression of coal-making fern ; 
 
 much reduced. 
 
Only a Lump of Coal 41 
 
 gheny Mountains only, excepting small deposits 
 in Colorado. Soft coal is found west of them. 
 The coal we burn in our stoves is hard coal; 
 that which is used in blacksmiths' fires and largely 
 under locomotive and other boilers is soft coal. 
 Hard coal makes very little smoke; soft coal 
 makes a great deal. In hard coal, between ninety 
 and ninety-five parts in one hundred are carbon, 
 — the same substance which makes up the dia- 
 mond and the lead in our lead-pencils; the same 
 substance which largely makes up charcoal. 
 
 Away back, long before man or any living 
 animal came upon the face of the earth, the air 
 about it was warm and full of moisture. Im- 
 mense sharks, lizards, and fishes lived in the 
 waters. If a boy could have hooked one of 
 them, the boy would have gone home with the 
 fish instead of the fish with the boy. Very much 
 like the old colored man who was pulled into 
 the water by a big catfish. He said : 
 
 " I couldn't help a-figgerin' 
 Whether dis niggah went catfishin' or de 
 catfish went a-niggerin'." 
 
42 
 
 Only a Lump of Coal 
 
 The plants which grew then were enormous. 
 Many of the ferns were as tall and thick as our 
 largest trees. The plants were principally of 
 the fern kind. They grew over broad sections 
 of our country (now called our coal fields), and 
 
 in great quantities. 
 There were extensive 
 forests of them. In 
 many places the club 
 mosses, — very like 
 those now growing, 
 — g r e w plentifully, 
 only much larger, 
 even to fifty feet high. 
 We know this, be- 
 cause where these 
 ferns and mosses fell upon the soft soil of the 
 mud and sand they made the impressions of 
 their trunks and branches. Many became hard- 
 ened, many in time became coal, and are found 
 as they stood or fell. A favorite fishing seat of 
 mine in the West Virginia mountains was upon 
 the trunk of one of these great ferns. It was 
 
 Impression from coal ; much 
 reduced. 
 
Only a Lump of Coal 43 
 
 two feet thick, and stuck out of the vein of coal 
 to which it belonged (it was beautiful coal itself) 
 for several feet. A thick shelf of sandstone 
 was above it; a slate floor was under it; a lovely- 
 pool was in front of it. From this I hooked 
 many a fine black bass. I could see the prints 
 of the leaf sockets and the grain of the wood. 
 And I used to try to picture how the giant fern 
 looked when it was alive and higher than any of 
 the oaks and sycamores about me! That is, 
 when the fish did not bite well. 
 
 For thousands of years these ferns and mosses 
 grew, fell, and made beds where they fell. 
 These in time were covered with mud and sand 
 carried over them by slow flowing water. Later 
 these layers were hardened by heat into slates, 
 shales, sandstones, making thick layers of rock 
 above and below the beds of vegetable matter. 
 And there they are to this day. The vegetable 
 matter, because of being pressed under such 
 enormous weight and heated to a high degree, 
 had the gases driven from it. By these and 
 such chemical changes as we often see in piles 
 
44 
 
 Only a Lump of Coal 
 
 of hay and straw, or weeds from the garden, it 
 was changed into coal. I owned a slab a foot 
 square which was taken from a coal-mine. It 
 had on one side a perfect impression of a fern- 
 leaf which had been changed into soft coal, and 
 on the other side a layer of charcoal half an inch 
 thick. Any one who will look over heaps of 
 soft coal in the lump wfU find plenty of fine im- 
 pressions and changed 
 plants. These are 
 not so often found in 
 hard coal. 
 
 Coal is then of 
 vegetable origin. Our 
 coal-oil — petroleum 
 — is from the same 
 source. Coal is still 
 being formed in the 
 great peat-beds of Ire- 
 land. What is called Irish bog-oak, from which 
 knife-handles, brooches, bracelets, and other orna- 
 ments are made, is wood partially changed to coal. 
 
 Coal is always found in beds or veins. Some- 
 
 Footprints of reptile on sandstone,- 
 coal-fields of Pennsylvania. 
 
Only a Lump of Coal 45 
 
 times they show on the mountainsides, far up 
 toward their tops. Streams of water have, in 
 long periods of time, washed courses among the 
 mountains, and left what were once hollows far 
 aloft. Coal-beds are frequently piled one upon 
 another. Often they are far down in the earth, 
 and are so broad and long that the places from 
 which the coal has been taken seem like coun- 
 tries under ground. Large shafts — like wells — 
 go down to them ; huge platforms, moved by 
 steam, go up and down, carrying the miners to 
 their work, powder for blasting, feed for the hun- 
 dreds of mules which live their whole lives in 
 underground stables. They bring up coal, 
 which is hauled to the hoist by mules attached 
 to cars through miles of narrow tunnels. 
 
 Fresh air for the miners to breathe is drawn 
 through the tunnels by fans, or by building great 
 fires in an upgoing shaft which makes a chimney 
 of it. The fire draws air down other shafts and 
 through the mines. Powerful engines pump up 
 the water that would flood the miners out if 
 left in the mines for a single day. 
 
46 Only a Lump of Coal 
 
 When the coal-laden cars reach the surface 
 they are pulled by steam cables up an incHne 
 track to the top of a high building called a 
 breaker. Here the cars are unloaded into strong 
 crushers, which mash the lumps. The crushed 
 coal falls upon slanting sieves with different 
 sized holes in them. The fine coal goes through 
 first. The sieve sorts the coal. Each size falls 
 upon a slanting chute, on which it slides down 
 to large bins, from which it is drawn into cars 
 standing on railroad tracks ready to be loaded. 
 When they are loaded, they are weighed and 
 started off for different parts of the country, to 
 whoever has ordered them. 
 
 There are many other things to tell about the 
 coal-mines and the handling of coal. Pieces of 
 slate which stick to the coal when mined are 
 knocked off with a hammer and thrown away. 
 Slate that is mixed with the fine coal is sorted 
 from it in a peculiar way. The fine coal runs 
 down a trough filled with water. On each side 
 of this trough are many wooden boxes, in each 
 one of which a boy sits. The coal and water 
 
Only a Lump of Coal 47 
 
 run into this box. Here it is thrown up by a 
 movable board and passes over another board 
 on which the water is shallow. Coal is lighter 
 than slate. The current of water carries the 
 coal on. The boys catch the slate and send it 
 off another way. 
 
 A great many boys are employed in coal- 
 mines as mule drivers and to open and close the 
 iron doors at every crossing or branching tunnel 
 when any one passes through. These doors 
 turn the air which is drawn through the mines 
 in the right direction, so that all the miners and 
 mules can have their share. If it were not for 
 these doors the fresh air would take the shortest 
 cut from where it gets in to where it is drawn 
 out, and miners in the tunnels not on this short 
 cut would not be able to work in air that had 
 been breathed over and over again. 
 
 Those who wish to know all about a lump of 
 coal should get a little book, A Story of a Piece 
 of Coal, by Edward A. Martin, in the " Library 
 of Useful Stories," thirty-five cents, D. Appleton 
 & Co., New York. 
 
OUR INDOOR NEIGHBORS, MICE 
 
OUR INDOOR NEIGHBORS, MICE 
 
 The smallest, neatest of animals is the mouse. 
 It is peaceable and quiet except when romping 
 with its playfellows. Mice never bite persons or 
 other animals unless they are caught and try to 
 defend themselves. An ordinary mouse weighs 
 about one ounce. A medium -sized woman 
 weighs 1,760 times as much. You can easily 
 see why (and should remember it) a woman has 
 never been eaten by a mouse, and that even a 
 baby is several times too big for a mouse with 
 the biggest sort of appetite to eat within a year 
 or so. It has not yet been discovered why most 
 women are afraid of mice, though it is well known 
 why mice are afraid of women. 
 
 Mice belong to the order Rodentia or Rodents, ' 
 meaning gnawers. To this order the gopher, 
 beaver, squirrel, porcupine, guinea-pig, prairie- 
 dog, hare, rabbit, and rat belong. 
 
 SI 
 
52 Our Indoor Neighbors, Mice 
 
 One third of all the mammalia or milk-giving 
 animals belong to the Rodentia. 
 
 Their two lower and two upper front teeth are 
 unlike those of any other animals ; they are hard 
 and sharp as chisels on the front edges and very 
 much softer back. As 
 they grow the soft backs 
 wear down, and the 
 chisel edges are kept 
 sharp for gnawing hard 
 nuts and other things 
 
 Skull of a rodent i i • 
 
 by whetting agamst 
 each other. The front teeth grow. If a front 
 tooth is pulled out, the one opposite, not 
 having anything to grind it off, will keep on 
 growing until the animal cannot shut its mouth 
 or eat. The teeth of all other animals, our own 
 great selves included, do not grow one particle 
 after they are first fully formed. This is the 
 reason our teeth gradually wear away. The 
 jaws of mice and other rodents move back and 
 forth to grind their food. Ours move from side 
 to side ; so do those of cows and horses. 
 
Our Indoor Neighbors, Micie 53 
 
 If any reader of this volume thinks it easy to 
 gnaw a hole in the floor or a board, try it. A 
 mouse has no trouble, because its teeth project, 
 are made for cutting, and its nose is not in the 
 way. When a mouse wants to go from one 
 room to another, or wants to get into a box 
 after good things, it gnaws a door for itself, and 
 never has the politeness to shut it. A very 
 good thing for nearly everybody to do is : 
 
 " Please keep this legend on your door, 
 As you are going through it : 
 To pull the door to after you 
 As far as you can do it.'' 
 
 The common house-mouse and brown rat, 
 which is nothing more than a big mouse, were 
 originally brought from Asia to America. The 
 house-mouse is a beautiful animal, sleek and 
 cleanly. It spends quite as much time over 
 its toilet as young ladies do. If mice had 
 looking-glasses, they would undoubtedly keep 
 them out of a great deal of mischief 
 
 When my office was in Philadelphia, I fell in 
 love with a pretty lady-mouse that used to visit 
 
54 Our Indoor Neighbors, Mice 
 
 me often. By kind treatment I made her gentle 
 and loving. I called her Mary. Each day I 
 gave her choice bits saved from my luncheon, or 
 carried to her from my home. She came to my 
 desk to eat them. If I did not feed her, she 
 searched my pockets. One day she brought 
 with her into the room eleven of her children. 
 I was in a fix. I did not care to run a mouse 
 boarding-house, or even a school for mice. Yet 
 they were Mary's children. Soon I had them 
 very tame. Then I made a calculation. Mice 
 have their first families when about four months 
 old, and have three and four families a year. In 
 a year Mary would probably expect me to edu- 
 cate and board forty-four of her children, and if 
 half of her children were daughters, about 1,500 
 grand- and great-grandchildren, provided they 
 all lived. I was scared at the prospect I put 
 Mary in a comfortable cage, and supported her 
 until she died. Her children — ^but my cat never 
 told me what became of the children. 
 
 Mice eat large quantities of insects which are 
 house pests. In doing this, and in cleaning up 
 
Our Indoor Neighbors, Mice s^ 
 
 things which would decay and be unhealthy, 
 they are useful ; but Mary convinced me that it 
 is better for us that mice should have as short 
 lives as possible. 
 
 There are many kinds of mice. All of the 
 kinds are interesting. The long-tailed mouse, 
 which lives in old trees and such retired places, 
 is the brightest, most fascinating animal I have 
 had to do with. I fed a family of them one 
 whole winter where they nested in the top of a 
 wooden gate-post. I would not have missed 
 their daily, bright-eyed welcome on any account. 
 In the spring they disappeared. Following a 
 long tunnel running from the bottom of the 
 post, I found a great store of what I had given 
 them, together with an ample supply of food 
 they had laid up in the autumn for themselves. 
 The little rascals had completely deceived me, 
 and no doubt laughed at my charity. But I had 
 my pleasure out of it. 
 
 Ground- or field-mice are exceedingly de- 
 structive to grass and grain crops. Their run- 
 ways cover the ground in most fields. They 
 
56 Our Indoor Neighbors, Mice 
 
 are dumpy, and have short tails. They too eat 
 insects, grubs, and worms. They have many 
 enemies, or they would get more of the crops 
 than the farmers do. In France, as many as 
 thirty thousand of them have been killed upon 
 one acre of ground. A new means has just 
 been discovered for destroying them. 
 
 We are apt to think that the little house- 
 mouse does the most damage, because it gets 
 the first bites of so many things we like, and 
 often spoils whole pans of milk by drowning in 
 them. 
 
 There is a good story told of two mice that 
 fell into a pot of neW milk. One gave up swim- 
 ming in despair, sank, and drowned. The other, 
 with more pluck, kept on swimming round and 
 round until it churned a lump of butter. On 
 this it crawled out and saved its life. "Never 
 despair " is a good motto. 
 
ONLY AN EGG 
 
ONLY AN EGG 
 
 If a hen's fresh egg is put into water heated 
 to the boiling point, which is 212 degrees of 
 heat by the thermometer, and allowed to remain 
 there for from three to five minutes, then taken 
 out and broken open, the contents of the shell 
 will be partially hardened (coagulated). Every- 
 body knows what a good breakfast is therein. 
 If this same egg had been placed in the same 
 boiler, without water, but with fresh air, and the 
 heat kept at 103 degrees all the time for twenty- 
 one days, a live chicken would have broken the 
 shell by its own force, and would very soon have 
 asked for a breakfast for itself Or, if the egg 
 had remained under the hen that laid it for 
 twenty-one days, the heat of her body (she 
 would have been feverish while sitting on it) 
 would have changed the clear, stringy fluid and 
 the yellow yolk into a chicken. The hen that 
 
 59 
 
6o Only an Egg 
 
 lays the egg is the mother of the chicken ; the 
 hen that hatches it is the nurse. 
 
 This wonderful change from the "white" and 
 "yolk " of an egg into a live chicken with blood, 
 bones, flesh, feathers, sight, hearing, and a voice 
 piping loudly for something to eat, is brought 
 about by a regular heat lasting through a certain 
 number of days. If the egg gets too hot or too 
 cold, or does not get moisture enough from the 
 air, the making of the chicken inside of the egg 
 will be stopped. The egg will be spoiled. A 
 spoiled egg is unfriendly. 
 
 An egg is very much like a seed, only that it 
 is made of animal matter instead of vegetable 
 matter, because it is intended to produce, or 
 grow into, an animal. Every plant begins from 
 a seed ; every animal, from the elephant to the 
 mouse, from the whale to the minnow, from the 
 ostrich to the gnat, begins with an egg. 
 
 A hen's egg is made up of several parts. The 
 shell is composed of lime. Through this, air 
 and water, in the shape of moisture, can pass in 
 slowly. Directly inside of the shell is a thin, 
 
Only an Egg 6i 
 
 tough skin (membrane). This prevents the 
 moisture in the egg from getting out through 
 the Hme shell. If there was nothing but the 
 shell, the egg would dry up. 
 
 The white of an egg, as it is called, is a sub- 
 stance called albumen (al-bu'men). It surrounds 
 the yellow yolk, which is also largely albumen. 
 On the outside of the yolk, fastened to it, you 
 will often notice a white jelly-like speck. This 
 contains the germ. The germ is so small that 
 it cannot be seen without the aid of a powerful 
 microscope. Until the hen sits upon the egg, 
 or it is placed in an incubator to hatch, the 
 white and yolk protect the germ — keep it float- 
 ing so that it will not be jarred or fastened to 
 the shell, or be injured in any way. The air 
 space at the large end of the egg acts as an air 
 cushion. An egg without a live germ in it will 
 not hatch. There would be nothing from which 
 the chicken could grow. Neither will a seed 
 grow if the germ is destroyed. 
 
 Albumen forms part of all blood, the juices of 
 flesh, the clear part of eyes. It also forms part 
 
62 Only an Egg 
 
 of all seeds and plants. There is very little 
 difference between animal and vegetable albu- 
 men. 
 
 The albumen from eggs is used to give the 
 gloss to photographs, and largely in the print- 
 ing of the colors and figures on calicoes. It 
 clears coffee by getting thick (coagulating) in 
 the hot water, sinking, and carrying down the 
 fine particles of coffee (grounds) with it. In 
 cakes — you know how it is used in cakes. 
 
 A sitting hen seems to us to be a disagreeable 
 old crosspatch. However much she snarls and 
 pecks, she is but doing her whole duty. She is 
 protecting her nest and the, to her, precious 
 eggs in it. She has her rights and sticks up for 
 them. After a hen has been sitting on a nest of 
 good eggs for five days, if you hold one of the 
 eggs up to a bright light (keeping light from 
 shining around it), by looking through it, you 
 will see a tiny speck with a hammer-shaped 
 head and a short, thin tail. If you had a proper 
 arrangement for magnifying it, you would see 
 that there was life in it. 
 
Only an Egg 63 
 
 By the tenth day veins full of blood can be 
 seen running and branching through the white 
 of the egg. In darker places the head and parts 
 of the body will be taking shape. Each day 
 will show a change. The air space at the large 
 end of the egg grows larger. By the eighteenth 
 day the chick is nearly finished. Between the 
 twenty-first and twenty-third day the chick 
 breaks a small hole in the shell. This is called 
 "pipping." The egg is said to be "pipped." 
 Through this hole, which is at the chick's beak, 
 it breathes. After practising for a while, it 
 kicks and struggles until it breaks the shell into 
 two halves, around its middle. Then it rolls out 
 — a weak, jerky, wet chick. Very soon it dries, 
 pokes its head out from under the hen's feathers, 
 and takes its first look at the world. The old 
 hen talks to it, — hen talk, — and no doubt tells 
 it about breakfast to be had — after a while, and 
 a much larger world, with worms, for it to look 
 at when she takes it oif the nest. 
 
 Think of it! In twenty-one days what would 
 have made good cake, or pudding, or omelette, 
 
64 Only an Egg 
 
 turns into a pretty, active, live chicken, with 
 ideas of its own; and heat brings about this 
 wonderful change. 
 
 Nowadays, hatching eggs under hens is too 
 slow work to satisfy many persons who raise 
 chickens. They buy incubators, which are 
 large, wooden boxes heated to a regular heat 
 by lamps. Inside this box from fifty to two 
 hundred and fifty eggs are placed at one time. 
 They hatch as well as if an old hen sat on them, 
 and in the same time. A hen cannot cover 
 more than fifteen eggs. The incubator forces 
 her out of the sitting business. All she has to 
 do now is to lay eggs. 
 
 The egg which hatches never makes a mis- 
 take. If it is a hen's egg, a chicken comes 
 forth; if a humming bird's, a humming bird is 
 hatched from it; if an ostrich's, an eagle's, a 
 duck's, it produces young after its kind. Even 
 the shape and color of the feathers are imitated. 
 
 A humming bird's egg is not much larger 
 than a filbert. An ostrich egg holds three pints. 
 The eggs of a shad are the size of a pin head. 
 
Only an Egg 65 
 
 The eggs of turtles and snakes are covered with 
 a tough skin. They do not have a hard shell. 
 The sun's heat hatches them. I often find turtle 
 and snake eggs in my potato patch, when the 
 ground is soft, and the rows stand where the sun 
 has a good chance at them. When the young 
 are hatched, they hide under stones and roots 
 until they get used to things. 
 
 Collections of birds' eggs for study are pleas- 
 ant and instructive. Taking birds' eggs for fun 
 is not funny at all when we come to think about 
 it. Every egg taken kills a bird. Is killing 
 fun? 
 
ON THE SEASHORE 
 
ON THE SEASHORE 
 
 When one stands on the shore at Atlantic City 
 or anywhere on the eastern shore of the United 
 States and looks east, toward where the sun 
 rises, no land is in sight; nothing can be seen 
 but water and waves, sea-birds and sailing or 
 steam driven vessels. From this grand body of 
 water things are constantly being thrown upon 
 the shore by the waves, and there are a great 
 many most interesting animals which live in the 
 sands of the beach and nowhere else. 
 
 The pebbles of all colors are pieces from rocks 
 under the sea or from those which have fallen 
 into it from the shore. These pieces have been 
 rolled about on the sea bottom, have been dashed 
 against each other and against the shore, until 
 their corners are ground off and they are round 
 and smooth. Many of the pieces are ground 
 into sand. The ocean's mill is a big one. 
 
 69 
 
70 On the Seashore 
 
 The shell-fish and sea snails live in the ocean 
 in countless numbers. Sometimes they are 
 thrown on the beach alive; oftener the shells 
 of those which have died are carried ashore by 
 the waves. Frequently these are broken and 
 the pieces are ground smooth. That part of 
 them which looks like pearl, and is pearl, being 
 hardest, is the last to be ground. This is why 
 nearly all beach shells have the pearl luster. 
 Many of them are bored full of little holes. 
 These are made, largely, by a snail which has a 
 long tongue, like a ribbon, set with fine teeth, 
 sometimes as many as 600 of them. This 
 toothed tongue cuts the shell, and the animal 
 that lives inside of it is eaten. 
 
 The sea has its own vegetable growths as well 
 as the land. They are often called seaweeds. 
 Most of them are mosses. One of the most 
 beautiful collections I have ever seen was of the 
 pressed and dried sea mosses found on the sea- 
 coast of California. No feathers or lace could 
 be more delicate. These growths are the Algae 
 (meaning seaweeds). They are found in both 
 
On the Seashore 
 
 71 
 
 salt and fresh water. They live by taking (ab- 
 sorbing) their food through their surfaces. Irish 
 moss is a sea delicacy which is made into candy. 
 Fine glue is made from the gelatine found in sev- 
 eral of the seaweeds. Iodine is made from others. 
 The animal life of the seashore is the most 
 interesting to a great number. Quite a com- 
 mon shell is the Pear conch. It is a snail. All 
 the conchs are 
 snails. When alive 
 they burrow in the 
 sand. Most of the 
 conch shells found 
 are six or seven 
 inches long. I have 
 one nearly two feet in length. 
 The egg cases of the Pear 
 conch are plentiful. They 
 are the queer looking strings 
 of odd-shaped parchment like plates found lying 
 on the sand. If one is carefully sliced open, the 
 very small young conchs may be found inside. 
 At the small end of the string a pebble or piece 
 
 Conch eggs 
 
 Pear conch 
 
72 
 
 On the Seashore 
 
 of shell is usually fixed. This is the anchor the 
 snail used to fasten its eggs to the sea bottom 
 or some other firm place. 
 
 The whelk belongs north of Boston, yet its 
 shells are frequently found farther down the 
 coast, but worn by being washed so far from 
 home. It, too, is a snail. 
 Codfish are fond of it. So 
 are the people of England. 
 They eat about one hun- 
 dred thousand dollars 
 worth of whelks each year. 
 Off from the seashore 
 where the tide pools lay, 
 several shells less than an 
 inch long are found. 
 Some of these are rela- 
 ted to the true whelk and are called dog- 
 whelks. They live on living and dead animal 
 matter, boring the shells of other animals to get 
 their food. Nearly every castaway shell of the 
 dog-whelk has a tenant. The hermit crab keeps 
 house in it and pays no rent. 
 
 The whelk 
 
On the Seashore 73 
 
 The little round-mouthed snail — the peri- 
 winkle — clings to the posts, seaweeds, marsh 
 grasses, just where salt water will wash and give 
 it drink, without taking away its breath by too 
 long a ducking. Periwinkles are good to eat 
 when picked out. When I was an army officer, 
 during the great Civil War, and was stationed 
 on our coast, I had many a good meal of them. 
 Most of the soldiers turned up their noses at the 
 idea of eating " snails," as they called them, which 
 was all the better for me. Over two thousand 
 bushels a week are sold in the English markets 
 during the height of the periwinkle season, from 
 March to August. The periwinkle is a vegeta- 
 ble eater. 
 
 I skip the common clam and oyster, though 
 they are interesting to know about. The soft- 
 shelled sand clam — the maninose — has a shell 
 so thin that it breaks unless handled very care- 
 fully. It looks a good deal like the common 
 fresh water mussel. Low down on the sand- 
 bars at the mouth of creeks and inlets, where 
 the water seldom leaves the sand long enough 
 
74 On the Seashore 
 
 for it to dry, lives the maninose — a foot under 
 ground. It has a long extension from the back 
 part of its body which it raises up to the surface 
 through a tube in the sand. This tube is made 
 by the slime off the clam's extension sticking 
 the grains of sand together. In this long exten- 
 
 Soft-shelled clam 
 
 sion are two tubes — siphons they are called. 
 The clam runs up its extension, draws the 
 water, which contains all the food it gets, down 
 one tube and forces it out the other. It has a 
 perpetual restaurant passing through its stomach 
 all the time. As you get near it, or when you 
 
On the Seashore 75 
 
 strike on the sand, it draws in its tube quickly. 
 This forces the water out of it, which makes the 
 squirt into the air, often seen. I often shoulder 
 a spade and go down on the fine beach in front 
 of where I live, and dig for maninose, when I see 
 that the tide is low enough. The maninose is 
 delicious. If you get a maninose, without break- 
 ing its shell, place it in a pan of salt water and 
 you will see it run out its long extension. 
 
 The oyster, clam, mussel, and maninose are 
 called bivalves — bi meaning two, because they 
 have a shell on each side, opening on a hinge. 
 The shells are called valves ; hence the name — 
 two valve. 
 
 Some of the shell animals are powerful borers. 
 They bore holes in the hardest rocks. 
 
 Pieces of wood, bored so as to leave the wood 
 looking like a sponge, are common on the beach. 
 This boring is done by the Toredo or ship-worm. 
 It is not a worm but a shell-fish. It destroys tim- 
 ber, which it can get at, in a very short time. It 
 has been known to bore through thick wharf 
 supports in less than eight weeks. 
 
76 
 
 On the Seashore 
 
 The scallop shell is very common. It looks 
 like a little spread fan, without a handle, ex- 
 cepting that it is scooped, and is scalloped 
 on the outside. When there are 
 small comb-like teeth on the 
 hinges, which lock the two shells 
 when closed, they belong to the 
 Arks. The long, narrow shell, 
 looking a little like a razor-blade, 
 belongs to the razor-fish. It lives 
 fi-om two to three feet under the 
 sand. Like the maninose, it has a 
 long siphon to get its food by. 
 Strange to say, it can see with 
 this siphon, which is in the place 
 for a tail. 
 
 The lumps of clear jelly — the 
 jelly-fish — which look as if they 
 ought to be eaten with a spoon, are 
 beautiful when floating about in the 
 water. The jelly-fish is a very sin- ^ 'P-worm 
 gular animal. It grows by budding. When in 
 bathing, if one is struck upon the body by the 
 
On the Seashore 77 
 
 jelly-fish, sharp stings are felt, which burn for a 
 long time. In August, when I look down from 
 my high bank into the clear Choptank waters, 
 and see hundreds of jelly-fish swinging their 
 long tassels beneath the waves, I do not go in 
 bathing. The little jelly-fish is my master. 
 
UNDER CREEK WATERS 
 
UNDER CREEK WATERS 
 
 The swirls, ripples, furrowed currents of the 
 tumbling creek water, make a curtain over the 
 pebbles, stones, gravel, and sands of creek beds, 
 through which we cannot well see the living 
 things which make their homes among them 
 and the curious life work which goes on there. 
 In the still pools, quietly moving eddies, and 
 shallow water along the banks, are the places to 
 make our calls and find the curious animals at 
 home. 
 
 Around the edges of stones small piles of 
 sand, gravel, pebbles, tell that the crawfish has 
 dug them out from underneath and left an 
 always open doorway for itself, and that it rests 
 under the solid roof ready to dart on any prey 
 venturing within reach. The crawfish is a water 
 highwayman. A scavenger, too; it eats dead 
 fish and other dead things which, if left to decay, 
 
 8i 
 
82 Under Creek Waters 
 
 would make creek water unpleasant and un- 
 healthy. 
 
 By the way, you will hear a great many per- 
 sons say " crick " instead of " creek." But you 
 will remember that creek 
 should no more be called 
 crick than Greek should 
 be called Grick or cheek 
 be called chick. 
 
 Crawfish can be caught 
 ater- oatman. ^^^.j^ ^ small dip net or with 
 
 the fingers. When catching them with the 
 fingers it is best to get the first hold. They 
 have ten legs, four small ones on each side, for 
 walking, and two large ones forward, having 
 immense powerful claws for holding their prey. 
 When a crawfish catches a finger it does not let 
 go when asked. 
 
 Each crawfish is born from an egg. As it 
 grows it changes its hard outer covering. One 
 cannot help wondering how it pulls its big claws 
 through a very narrow, hard-jointed wrist cover- 
 ing each time it changes its coat. It is very 
 
Under Creek Waters 83 
 
 like pulling a hand out of a tightly buttoned 
 glove. The difference is this: the flesh of the 
 claw has no bones in it, and the new covering 
 is softer than kid. The flesh and cover stretch. 
 The crawfish pulls. The claw comes through 
 the wrist like a string, then pulls itself into 
 shape. I have watched crabs pull themselves 
 out of their shells. Their claws are nearly the 
 same. 
 
 The crawfish darts through the water by using 
 quick strokes of its powerful tail. The flesh of 
 its claws and tail are much more tender eating 
 than that of a lobster. When they fight, which 
 they often do, they chase each other. The one 
 that succeeds in clipping off, with its claws, the 
 other's tail, wins the battle. When they lose 
 claws, legs, even eyes, others grow in their place- 
 Crutches or spectacles are of no use to crawfish. 
 They are closely related to insects. Though 
 they have true gills with which they breathe, 
 they have jointed bodies. 
 
 Where the water runs swiftly, the nymph of 
 the stone-fly, in great numbers, has its early home 
 
84 Under Creek Waters 
 
 under stones. It sticks so flat, and looks so 
 much like a part of the stone, that if it were not 
 for its six legs and bristle tail, few, excepting the 
 small boy after fish-bait, 
 would notice it. Fish 
 are fond of it. 
 
 Nymph is the name 
 given the young of in- 
 sects which do not live 
 for a while in the pupa 
 state as do moths, but- 
 terflies, and many others. 
 They do not pass through 
 all of the strange changes 
 from the egg to the full- 
 grown insect. When the ^ymph of stone-fly. 
 nymph of the stone-fly sheds its skin for the 
 last time, it leaves its water home and becomes 
 a greenish or gray fly with slender fore-wings 
 and with hind-wings of beautiful delicacy. 
 Sometimes you will find the flies upon the snow 
 in springtime. 
 
 Gray and black mottled bugs, called water- 
 
Under Creek Waters 85 
 
 boatmen, never over half an inch long, swim 
 through the water, glistening like silver spangles, 
 or cling to the bottom like sunken coins. They 
 carry their own air with them. They live in- 
 side a bubble, breathing the air 
 over and over again. The mov- 
 ing water cleanses the air and 
 supplies them with fresh par- 
 ticles as they swim through it 
 or move it about them by pad- 
 dling with their side legs. 
 
 Very much shaped like the 
 water-boatman is another bug 
 called the backswimmer. It 
 always swims on its boat- 
 shaped back, with a bubble of 
 air between its wings. When 
 
 The Dobson. . , n • 
 
 scared, it turns over and flies 
 away. How jolly! 
 
 Every fisher-boy and fisherman knows the 
 worth of the Dobson — crawler or hellgrammite 
 — as a bait for fish, especially the black bass. 
 The young or larvae live under stones where 
 
86 Under Creek Waters 
 
 the water runs fast. They feed on the stone-fly 
 and whatever other live things they can catch. 
 Their skin is so tough that fish do not easily get 
 it from the fisherman's hook. He can often 
 trade one Dobson for several fish, which is a 
 pretty good trade. The Dobson lives as a Dob- 
 son nearly three years. It then crawls to some 
 shelter out of the water, but near to it, builds a 
 cell, stays in it a month, then comes out as a 
 savage-looking insect with exquisitely veined 
 wings. It lays from two to three thousand eggs 
 where the young, when hatched, can easily get 
 into the creek and grow to be Dobsons. It then 
 dies. 
 
 In pools of the lively little streams coming 
 from springs, and in the quiet places in creeks, 
 live the caddice-worms or sand-toters, as I was 
 taught to know them. Lie down along the edge 
 of one of these pools and watch the bottom. 
 What seem to be fixed cribs of grass, or bun- 
 dles of sticks, or rollers of sand, or tubes of 
 silk, will come to life and move about in the 
 everlasting search for something to eat. A 
 
Under Creek Waters 
 
 87 
 
 closer look will tell that a larva (worm) has put 
 out the forepart of its body from within a silken 
 tube it has spun from its mouth, and is using its 
 legs as if used to it. 
 To protect itself, it 
 has gathered bits of 
 leaves or grass, built 
 them log-cabin wise 
 around its tube, and 
 fastened them to- 
 gether with silk; or 
 it has built up grains 
 of sand around its 
 tube like the stones ofsitss* 
 a well-wall, cemented 
 them with silk, and 
 lives comfortably safe 
 within. One species caddice-worms. 
 
 covers its case with snail shells. When the 
 snails are alive they haul the caddice-worm 
 about. There is style for you, — a worm with 
 its carriage and snails ! 
 
 Another species fastens pebbles to the under 
 
88 Under Creek Waters 
 
 side of stones with silken threads. Between them 
 it has its silken home. Near-by, between two 
 stones, often on the surface of rocks, it weaves a 
 funnel-shaped net with its open mouth to the 
 running water. Across it are meshes regular as 
 those of a spider's web. In these set-nets the 
 fisher-worm catches small fish and other swim- 
 mers of the creek, and lives off of them in grand 
 caddice-worm style. 
 
 Many kinds of leeches move slowly over the 
 stones and plants. They have suckers at both 
 ends of their bodies, but only one end bites. 
 Before I knew better, I once put several creek 
 leeches into one of my aquariums with beautiful 
 fish, which were favorites of mine. The next 
 morning all the fish were dead. The leeches had 
 fastened on to their gills and bled them to death. 
 
 Newts, often miscalled lizards, are plentiful 
 under stones at the water's edge. They are 
 hatched from eggs. When hatched they are 
 like tadpoles. In growing they keep their tails. 
 Newts have stubby, cushion-like toes without 
 nails. Lizards have claws. 
 
Under Creek Waters 89 
 
 There are hundreds of other curious things 
 under creek waters. The water world is a big 
 one. If we make acquaintances of the creek 
 people, we will find them pleasant companions 
 all our lives, and when we grow old, can lovingly 
 call them playmates. 
 
SCARES THAT ARE USELESS 
 
SCARES THAT ARE USELESS 
 
 I think it was King James II who said to one 
 of his soldiers when he was boasting that he did 
 not know what fear was, " Hech, mon ! then you 
 never snuffed a candle with your fingers." We 
 jerk our fingers away from anything hot because 
 we know they will get burned. This is a proper 
 scare. We are saving our personal property; 
 our fingers belong to us. It is always right, and 
 never cowardly, to keep ourselves and others 
 from being hurt. 
 
 It is a good thing to think about what we 
 would do in different kinds of danger ; because 
 if we should ever be in the kinds of danger we 
 have studied, we would know what to do, having 
 already made up our minds. 
 
 If we know what to do or say instantly, it is 
 called presence of mind. The English comic 
 paper, Punch, once said : " There is but one thing 
 
 93 
 
94 Scares That Are Useless 
 
 better than presence of mind, in danger; that is, 
 absence of body." This is true, but we do not 
 always know when to be absent. 
 
 A great many persons, young and old, think 
 they are in danger when they are not. They 
 get scared. These scares are useless. As they 
 are very uncomfortable to the persons getting 
 scared, and often frighten other persons, it is 
 well to know how to avoid them. 
 
 Mice come first as the makers of scares. 
 They are the smallest and prettiest animals we 
 have. They are shy, easily frightened, and 
 scamper to their holes on hearing the least 
 noise or seeing the least motion. A mouse 
 never hurt any one. If mice happen to be 
 white and have pink eyes, we make pets of 
 them. If their fur is brown, we prance about, 
 get on the piano, and scream. There is a con- 
 solation in all this, — the mouse is scared as 
 badly as we are. The best plan is to sit still, 
 make a little noise if the presence of the mouse 
 is unpleasant, and it will quickly disappear. 
 Exactly the same thing can be said of rats. 
 
Scares That Are Useless 95 
 
 excepting that as they are a few times larger 
 than mice, the scare is bigger. Another very 
 good plan to avoid these scares is to think for 
 five minutes how very uncomfortable it must 
 make the little animals to frighten them badly. 
 
 Next, spiders. How exquisite their webs are 
 when strung with dew beads, or when sparkling 
 with raindrops, or stretched as perfectly made 
 nets to catch their maker's food. Then, too, 
 how exquisitely decorated spiders are when ex- 
 amined under a magnifying glass ! How neatly 
 joined are their legs ! How delicate their spin- 
 ners ! How wonderful their eyes ! How indus- 
 triously they attend to their own business ! How 
 many flies, mosquitoes, gnats, bugs, they cap- 
 ture, and take from bothering us ! 
 
 Yet, oh horrors! Let one — even a timid 
 daddy-long-legs — come anywhere near, and 
 great big human bodies will jump, strike, shoo, 
 screech, grab the broom, and be in mortal 
 terror. A useless scare. Few spiders will bite 
 any one unless coaxed to do it. If, then, they 
 do bite, their bite is no more than that of a mos- 
 
96 Scares That Are Useless 
 
 quito or flea. There are but two spiders whose 
 bite is severely poisonous: that of the taran- 
 tula, a native of hot countries; and the female 
 of a pretty black, polished, red-spotted spider 
 which belongs to a family noted for staying at 
 home. There is no use in being frightened by 
 spiders. 
 
 There is nothing that will stir up more racket 
 and make the girls — ^young girls, old girls, and 
 grandmother girls — get their heads covered 
 quicker with newspapers, sewing aprons, even 
 coal-scuttles and dustpans, than a bat in a room. 
 
 The bat is not a bird ; it rears its little ones as 
 the cow does her calf There is a well-known 
 cow that is said to have jumped over the moon, 
 but she did not fly. The bat is the only four- 
 footed animal that flies. The flying-squirrel does 
 not fly ; it floats or sails from one tree to another. 
 It always lights lower down than the place it starts 
 from. The bat flies to catch insects. Attracted 
 by a light, it comes into a room. Then it flies 
 about wildly, trying to get out. The way to get 
 it out of a room is to take the light out ; the bat 
 
Scares That Are Useless 97 
 
 will follow the light. Really, now, who ever 
 knew of a bat getting in any one's hair ? And 
 if one did, did it carry the hair off? Bats do 
 not bite unless they are taken hold of. Their 
 ugly wrinkled faces are very much like those of 
 pug dogs. Yet who is afraid of pugs ? Brace 
 up, and keep braced up when a bat is about. 
 The bat should be honored; its squeak is the 
 highest sound we can hear. 
 
 The most of us do not like snakes. The rea- 
 son is that a snake which we have all read about 
 often and often, and which people have heard 
 about for several thousands of years, behaved 
 very badly in the Garden of Eden. So we have 
 been taught to dislike snakes. The dislike is 
 bred in us. We do not try to stop it. We 
 either scamper as fast as we can from a snake, 
 or kill the poor creature, and are frightened all 
 the time we are doing it. Stand still when you 
 see a snake ; it will slowly, bashfully, steal away. 
 It will live to do more good for the farmers than 
 any other wild creature. It eats mice and insects 
 that injure their crops, and it kills the insects in 
 
98 Scares That Are Useless 
 
 cellars, gardens, and about the milk-houses. 
 Very few snakes bite. Our common snakes 
 never do. Their tongues are soft, and can hurt 
 no one. The rattlesnake lives in wild places, 
 and it is polite enough to tell you to stand a 
 little farther off No snake in America will 
 chase you. The copperhead, viper, puff-adder, 
 are all cowards. 
 
 Not one of the beetles that comes buzzing into 
 the light at nights, and drops on the floor with a 
 bang and straddle, will bite. Pick it up fear- 
 lessly. When bees, wasps, hornets, come about, 
 keep perfectly still and they will not sting. 
 Make a quick motion, strike at them, and they 
 probably will. Almost every year I have two 
 or three pet hornets. I stroke them, and they 
 like it. They are very interesting. I would as 
 soon think of stepping on my watch as I would 
 of stepping on an insect ; it is so perfectly made, 
 such a fine piece of machinery. 
 
 Before you get scared by anything, always 
 think how much scared the other thing is. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PLANTS 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PLANTS 
 
 There are many seeds so small that we cannot 
 see them with the naked eye. The seeds of all 
 toadstools can only be seen by the help of a 
 powerful microscope. It takes from two to four 
 thousand toadstool seeds laid end to end to 
 reach one inch. The size of a seed does not 
 appear to make any difference in its life. It 
 contains the germ that, properly planted and 
 cared for, will swell, sprout, grow into the same 
 kind and sized plant that bore it. The seed of 
 the giant Sequoia of California, through the 
 largest of which a street-car can run or a load 
 of hay be drawn, is not as large as the seed of 
 the little parsley. The poet has written, " Mighty 
 oaks from little acorns grow." 
 
 Every plant grows from a seed. There are 
 many plants which grow from roots and cut- 
 tings, but the plants these roots and cuttings 
 
 lOI 
 
I02 The Beginning of Plants 
 
 are taken from began in seeds. Let us see 
 how: 
 
 When seeds are ripe, perfected, they usually 
 fall to the ground. They may be blown to a 
 distance by the wind, carried off by birds, or 
 scattered by their explosive seed pods. Some, 
 like the burdock and Spanish needle, have hooks, 
 which catch on one's clothes, the wool of sheep, 
 or hair of animals, and are carried away from 
 home to start new patches for themselves. Per- 
 fect seeds are alive. Many kinds sprout (germi- 
 nate) as soon as they strike the ground. Others 
 do not germinate until the next spring. Some 
 seeds, if not planted, die in a year or two. 
 Some — the seeds of the sensitive plant — keep 
 alive for as many as sixty years. The way to 
 tell whether or not seeds are alive is to place 
 them on wet cotton, in a warm place, under a 
 tumbler. If alive, they will sprout 
 
 A seed contains the germ of a new plant. 
 This germ is surrounded by more or less food 
 for the young plant. Over the whole is a skin 
 or hull. Soak a grain of com or a chestnut or a 
 
The Beginning of Plants 103 
 
 bean until it is soft ; then carefully split it across 
 its width. At the point you will find the germ 
 nicely folded up. All of the matter about it is food 
 stored for it to consume when it is ready for it. 
 
 When a seed strikes the ground, and is on a 
 spot which suits it (it may be in a crack of the 
 soil, or rain may splash dirt 
 over it, or a bird may scratch 
 earth to it), dampness, mois- 
 ture, warmth, passing in 
 through the hull, swell it, the 
 hull bursts, the germ unfolds. 
 The part of the germ stem 
 which first comes from the 
 hull turns downward, and 
 strikes for the ground be- 
 neath it. This is the root. It 
 then branches, grows in size 
 and length, branching all the 
 while as it has more work to do in passing up to 
 the branches and leaves above the food it collects. 
 The roots are not dumb-waiters, as we shall see. 
 The other end of the germ stem always turns 
 
 a. Germ in a grain of 
 
 corn. 
 6. Grain sprouting. 
 
I04 The Beginning of Plants 
 
 upward. The seed leaves (those which were 
 along with it in the seed), seek the light, air, and 
 sun warmth. The stem grows longer, the leaves 
 get above the ground, spread themselves out, 
 and begin their work of 
 changing, with the help, 
 of the light and air, the 
 food passed up by the 
 roots into new wood, new 
 leaves, and all that goes 
 to make a little plant 
 or a giant tree. Between 
 the two seed leaves a tiny 
 bud shows itself It swells 
 and opens into two leaves. 
 The stem under these 
 grows and hoists them 
 higher. This budding, stem 
 growing, branching, goes 
 on until the plant, or what- 
 ever it is, is finished far enough to bear blos- 
 soms and ripen its seeds. 
 
 The best way to learn and remember how a 
 
 This growing, branching, 
 goes on. 
 
The Beginning of Plants 105 
 
 plant begins is to lightly plant a lot of seeds — 
 clover, corn, wheat, or morning glory — in a 
 flower pot. After the seeds swell, each day take 
 one up and examine it closely. By doing this 
 you will make Nature tell you very pleasant 
 stories and show you a great deal that you ought 
 to know. 
 
 The food that is collected by the rootlets in 
 the ground, and is passed up by them, is not 
 ready for the use of the branches and leaves. 
 It all has to go to the leaves to be cooked, as it 
 were, by the light and air. It then returns 
 through the cells of the plant to make wood, 
 roots, even leaves. The extra matter which sur- 
 rounded the germ in the seed fed the very young 
 plant until it spread its seed-leaves, and could 
 begin business for itself. If you cover a thrifty 
 plant with anything that will keep out all the 
 light and air, the leaves will whiten, the plant 
 will die. The roots are busy edl the time, but 
 the food they pass up does not get properly 
 changed. It is not digestible by the plant. The 
 plant dies of starvation. 
 
io6 The Beginning of Plants 
 
 In the bean, which is a very interesting seed 
 to study while germinating (sprouting), the food 
 for the young plants is stored in the two thick 
 
 seed-leaves, which 
 are the two halves 
 of the bean. It is 
 these seed - leaves 
 which we eat, and 
 which are so 
 luscious in the lima 
 bean. Another 
 bean has drawn the 
 lattention of the 
 world to Boston. 
 Large beans sho uld 
 always be planted 
 with the stem side 
 down. The great 
 seed-leaves (halves 
 of each bean) will be set right to push up 
 through the earth. I know a gentleman who 
 left the city to try farming (of course, he be- 
 lieved he knew all about it), who, when his lima 
 
 Bean splitting, 6, Open, showing 
 sprout, c. Seed-leaves and 
 second leaves. 
 
The Beginning of Plants 107 
 
 beans came up, thought they were wrong-side 
 up. So he turned them all ! 
 
 The acorn swells, bursts the hull, and divides 
 like the bean. So does the chestnut. But the 
 two halves remain in the hull, and are not made 
 use of as first leaves. They furnish food for the 
 young plants. Acorns grow prettily when set in 
 a hole in a card over a glass of water. The 
 lower part of the acorn should always touch the 
 water. The growth of peas can be watched by 
 the same plan. Many of the plans of plant- 
 growth, with good plain descriptions and illus- 
 trations, can be found in "How Plants Grow: A 
 Botany for Young People," by Professor Asa 
 Gray. 
 
 A great number of plants and trees have the 
 power of starting new growths from their roots, 
 or cuttings of their branches. The locust and 
 ailanthus trees are well-known tree producers 
 from their roots. Yet they both grow plenty of 
 seeds. Potatoes are not the seed of the potato 
 plant. The seed grows on the top of the 
 potato vines. Yet pieces of potato, each having 
 
io8 The Beginning of Plants 
 
 one or two " eyes " (which are sprouts) upon it, 
 are always planted to grow the new crop from. 
 
 Strawberry plants, dewberry vines, wild rasp- 
 berries, run out arms or shoots along the ground. 
 At a joint, roots are thrown out, which grow 
 into new plants. Grape vines can be increased 
 in this way. 
 
 A common plan for getting the kind of fruit 
 wanted is to take a cutting from, say an apple- 
 tree, cut the lower end wedge shape, and insert 
 it in a split made in the stump, or in a branch of 
 another apple-tree. As many kinds of apples 
 can be grown on one tree as there are branches 
 to place cuttings in. This is called grafting. The 
 begonias, cacti, and several other plants can be 
 grown by planting in the earth the edges of 
 pieces of their leaves. 
 
 The grand purpose and work of every living 
 thing is to produce after its kind. The effort 
 of plants to do this in several ways is truly 
 wonderful. 
 
 But, after all, the little seed is the true begin- 
 ning. A good many habits, besides those of 
 
The Beginning of Plants 109 
 
 plants, grow from very small beginnings. In 
 starting a crop of habits, choose them as care- 
 fully as you do seeds, — plant the best only, 
 cultivate well, keep clean of weeds. 
 
PLANTS THAT POISON 
 
PLANTS THAT POISON 
 
 No one will care to know whether the old 
 Mother Goose story is true or not, — 
 
 " There was a man in our town. 
 And he was wondrous wise ; 
 He jumped into a bramble bush 
 And scratched out both his eyes ; 
 
 "And when he saw his eyes were out, 
 With all his might and main 
 He jumped into another bush, 
 And scratched them in again." 
 
 That the man saw his eyes were out, is, odd 
 to say, the least of it. Nevertheless, there is an 
 example in the story. Several common plants 
 cause a good deal of scratching to be done by 
 those who get too near them; another kind of 
 plants immediately stop the need for scratching. 
 The man who jumped out of one bush to be 
 cured in another was not such a ninny after all. 
 
 "3 
 
114 
 
 Plants That Poison 
 
 It is well to know the poisonous plants when we 
 see them, and quite as well to know what will 
 surely destroy their poison if we are unfortunate 
 enough to get it upon us. 
 
 One of these poisonous plants is known as 
 poison ivy, poison vine, poison creeper, poison 
 oak. Its proper name is Rhus 
 radtcans,vfhich means rooting 
 sumac. The roots meant are 
 those issuing from the under 
 side of the vine, which enable 
 it to cling to whatever it runs 
 upon. This poison vine grows 
 where it pleases and is wide 
 spread. If it does not find 
 anything to run upon, it is 
 satisfied to remain a low 
 In this shape it often forms 
 large patches. The peach tree and apricot will 
 run like a vine if supported. In England they 
 are usually grown on trellises or supported by a 
 wall facing the south. 
 
 The poison vine has but three leaves at the 
 
 bush or shrub. 
 
Plants That Poison 115 
 
 end of each leaf stem. The American ivy, or 
 Virginia creeper, a very common plant often 
 grown for ornament, has five leaves on each leaf 
 stem. When a three-leaved plant looking very 
 much like the American ivy is found, it is best 
 to keep away from it. The flowers are greenish. 
 The fruit of the poison vine stays upon it long 
 after the leaves have fallen. It grows in clusters 
 and is a white, smooth, waxy berry. 
 
 The poison is contained in all parts of the 
 plant. It is not volatile — which means that it 
 does not spread through the air. Until within a 
 few years it was firmly believed that the air 
 about the plant would poison. This is a mis- 
 take, — it will not. The poison must be touched. 
 A very small particle of it will cause intense 
 itching, then inflammation, then blisters. The 
 inflammation spreads rapidly, and causes great 
 suffering. Many a summer's hoUday has been 
 spoiled by it. If one's clothes touch the vine, 
 the sticky poison is carried home. Handling 
 the clothes afterward will have the same effect 
 as touching the vine. 
 
ii6 Plants That Poison 
 
 Being an oil it will not wash off with water 
 alone. Weak alcohol will remove it, and if 
 sugar of lead, which is very poisonous if swal- 
 lowed (it should be carefully labeled and kept in 
 a safe place), is dissolved in the alcohol and 
 rubbed upon the affected part, it will destroy the 
 poison. 
 
 By far the best, quickest, and surest way to 
 ease the pain, prevent the spread, and cure from 
 the effects of the poison, is to rub the skin with 
 oil of goldenrod. Every family, every camper- 
 out, every one who wanders in parks or woods 
 or along country roads, should have a small vial 
 of it, and should rub it on the skin the moment 
 the itching begins, or the inflammation shows. 
 A very small quantity is enough. The whole 
 inflamed surface should be covered with the oil, 
 and whenever a new spot appears it should be 
 touched with it. 
 
 When the skin is broken by scratching, the 
 oil of goldenrod smarts a little. When the 
 whole body, or large patches of it, are poisoned, 
 one-third of sweet oil may be mixed with the 
 
Plants That Poison 117 
 
 other. One application to one place is enough. 
 It cures instantly. 
 
 The oil of goldenrod can be bought at drug- 
 gists'.* Many do not keep it but have to order 
 it. This takes precious time. It is best to have 
 it at hand. 
 
 This perfect cure was given to me many years 
 ago by the men who make charcoal in the New 
 Jersey woods. They are constantly exposed to 
 the poisonous vine. To them, poisoning by it 
 means loss of their labor and the money they 
 get for it. 
 
 Goldenrod grows in great quantities almost 
 everywhere. The charcoal burners gather it and 
 make their own oil. Sometimes they simply 
 rub themselves with a bruised handful of the 
 stems and leaves. 
 
 For several years a lady in my family was 
 made seriously ill by Rhus poisoning. As she 
 was usually my companion on tramps after 
 
 1 The oil is imported from Germany. I know of but one drug 
 firm importing it — George D. Feidt & Co., 528 Arch Street, 
 Pliiladelphia. The oil costs 40 cents an ounce. 
 
ii8 
 
 Plants That Poison 
 
 specimens, she dreaded the poison vine. It 
 seemed impossible for her to escape it. Seven 
 years ago, after serious poisoning, she used oil 
 of goldenrod. It cured at 
 once. She has not been sub- 
 ject to the poison since. She 
 even glories in defying it. I 
 do know that this oil is a per- 
 fect safeguard. I do know 
 that it is a certain, quick cure, 
 and in many cases the per- 
 sons have not been poisoned 
 since. 
 
 Some persons, among them 
 myself, can handle the poison 
 vines and not be affected by 
 them. When I was a boy I 
 was badly poisoned. Once was enough. 
 
 Poison sumac {Rhus vernix), poison dogwood, 
 poison elder, poison ash, poison wood, poison 
 swamp sumac, thunder wood, are other names 
 given to it. It grows up to thirty feet in height. 
 It has leaves somewhat like the common sumac. 
 
 Poison sumac. 
 
Plants That Poison 119 
 
 but more slender and delicate. The leaflets 
 number from seven to thirteen. Its poison has 
 the same effect as that of the poison ivy. It is 
 cured in the same way. Several of our plants 
 are said to be poisonous to the skin of some 
 persons. Among them are the leaves of celery 
 and parsnip, if wet. I cannot vouch for this. 
 The nettle irritates by pricking; several of our 
 grasses by cutting. The irritation which follows 
 is not due to poison. 
 
 Any gardener, farmer, park laborer, will show 
 you the poison ivy, if you do not already know 
 it. If you do not know, and want to know, 
 never be ashamed to ask. Many persons re- 
 main ignorant all their lives, because they pre- 
 tend to know and are too foolish to ask for 
 information. 
 
A STUDY OF FLIES 
 
A STUDY OF FLIES 
 
 The very next time you have nothing to do, 
 it will very much interest you to watch both the 
 capers and the earnestness of the common house- 
 fly. 
 
 It is a wise rule to make use of loafing 
 minutes. Many years ago I taught myself that 
 it was a good thing, whenever nothing-else-to-do 
 times came along, to look about me and see 
 what was going on. I always found something 
 busy at its life work, — a bug or a bird, some 
 many-legged or some few-legged animal, even 
 plants. Thus idle moments are made interest- 
 ing and instructive, and the world holds more 
 for us. We become more interested in it; our 
 horizon widens. All information is of use some 
 time or other. 
 
 The house-fly is usually at hand, or at nose, — 
 as you please. It has six legs and two wings. 
 
 123 
 
124 A Study of Flies 
 
 It requires much care on our part to move two 
 legs with ease, grace, and safety. But the fly is 
 never bothered with his six (unless it be on 
 sticky paper). It is far ahead of us in motive- 
 power. It could even lose a pair of legs with- 
 out needing crutches. It moves them with the 
 greatest ease, and at high speed. It uses them 
 for many purposes. It sleeps on them. How 
 springy they must be! It is not particular 
 whether it goes to sleep hanging by them on 
 the wall, or swinging by them from the ceiling, 
 or resting on them standing up. With its pair 
 of hind legs it scratches its back, dusts the 
 upper and lower sides of its wings, and combs 
 out the hairs upon its body with their stiff bris- 
 tles. And this done, it sticks its legs out behind 
 while rubbing them together to clean out the 
 combs. Resting on its hind pair, you will often 
 see it using two or four front legs to wipe off its 
 thousands of eyes, clean the fore section of its 
 trunk, rub down its long, limber sucker which we 
 call proboscis, then shake hands with itself in a 
 comical way as if to thank itself for the cleaning. 
 
A Study of Flies 125 
 
 The sucker, which you see run in and out of 
 its head and poked upon all sorts of eatables, as 
 if it was a little stamper, is the fly's mouth. 
 Instead of taking the food to its mouth, it sends 
 its mouth for the food. It is spread out at the 
 end to make a sucker. If the food is liquid, it 
 sucks it up ; if it is hard, it secretes a fluid, wets 
 it, dissolves it, then takes it in. We partially 
 moisten our food in our mouths; the fly does it 
 outside. In this way it eats granulated sugar. 
 
 What appear to be two great eyes and nearly 
 all of the fly's head, are really thousands of eyes 
 set side by side. There are no lids to them; 
 they never wink at you. When a fly wants to 
 move its eyes it has to turn its head, just as the 
 owl does. Neither can move 
 its eyes. The fly's eye- 
 sight is sharp. Pretend to 
 strike one with your hand. 
 
 ni^nXV"" It ^'11 fly ^^^y- ^"d probably 
 magnified come back at once. If you 
 
 again raise your hand, even at some distance from 
 
 the fly, it will leave. If you want to hit a fly, wait 
 
126 A Study of Flies 
 
 until it is busy eating, or combing itself; then open 
 your fingers and strike. If you strike with closed 
 fingers, the rush of air from under your hand 
 will carry the fly out of danger. This is the 
 reason why a whisk-broom or a wisp of wire 
 now sold for the purpose of whacking flies, 
 seldom misses them, — the air passes upward 
 through them. A newspaper roughly folded is 
 good as a fly-killer. The air is driven in dif- 
 ferent ways by the folds, and the edges of the 
 folds strike the fly before the currents of air do. 
 
 House-flies proper, those in the far greater 
 number in the house, do not bite; they have 
 nothing to bite with. There is one, called the 
 stable-fly, which bites sharply. It visits the 
 house and looks so much like the house-fly 
 that, unless you know a great deal about flies, 
 you will mistake it. You will surely know it if 
 it bites. It really does not bite, neither does a 
 mosquito ; it pierces the skin with its proboscis. 
 
 No fly grows after it leaves the grub state and 
 becomes a fly. There are big and little flies, but 
 not in the same family of flies. There are no 
 
A Study of Flies 127 
 
 baby flies. A fly is as big when it is first born 
 as it ever is, — unless it gets at the molasses or 
 preserves. You see large and small flies in the 
 house, and, naturally, think they are all house- 
 flies. They are not. 
 
 Flies do not lay their eggs in the house. 
 The mother-fly goes to the stables, and lays 
 about a hundred and twenty eggs. Then she 
 goes visiting. She cares nothing more for them. 
 In twenty-four hours they hatch into little 
 grub-like affairs, — larvae. In this state they eat 
 ravenously for from five to seven days, and 
 change their skins, which get too small for 
 them, three times. Then they go into another 
 state, — the pupal. In this they change into 
 flies. This takes from five to seven days more. 
 Their funny-looking cover bursts, out they 
 come, and very soon they become sociable. 
 
 Flies are cunning, sly, persevering, and full of 
 fun. You will often see them teasing and play- 
 ing with one another. That they tease us, no 
 one will deny. 
 
FIREFLIES 
 
FIREFLIES 
 
 You have read so many pretty ideas about 
 glow-worms and fireflies and have so many pretty 
 ideas of your own that you have almost ceased 
 to think of them as things : very much as you 
 do of the rose, the violet, the lily of the valley. 
 It is real hard to think of the rose as having 
 stickers. It puts the rose on the level with a 
 brier. It is not easy to believe that the glow- 
 worm is not a worm ; that the firefly is not a fly ; 
 they are not often thought of as anything but 
 beautiful lights; yet the truth must be told; 
 they are both beetles. The glow-worm is the 
 female of one species; the firefly the female of 
 another. The females show their lamps; their 
 male admirers go to them. 
 
 The glow-worm is a wingless female, which 
 looks very much like a stupid grub of some 
 sort. The pale-green light it shows is steady. 
 
 131 
 
132 Fireflies 
 
 It glows. The lightning bug (firefly, fire-beetle), 
 has wings — two true wings, two wing covers. 
 Its light is flashed where it pleases Mistress 
 Beetle to flash it. These flashes come so sud- 
 denly out of the dark that they are not unlike 
 spots of lightning. That is the reason the fire- 
 beetle is often wrongly called lightning bug. 
 
 We naturally wonder how it is that an insect 
 carrying enough light to make several hundred 
 bright flashes, neither burns up nor sets anything 
 on fire. This is one of the greatest of puzzles. 
 It beats any of the puzzles in the papers or 
 magazines. The glow-worm and the fire-beetle 
 have the secret of making a light without per- 
 ceptible heat. A spark of anything burning, 
 many times less than the size of a fire-beetle's 
 light, would burn your fingers if you touched 
 it. The fire-beetle is always cold. 
 
 One summer night I stood listening to the 
 roar of an approaching storm among the roofs 
 and steeples of Cambridge, close by. I noticed 
 a few fireflies flashing their lanterns among and 
 high above the treetops of a near-by grove. In 
 
Fireflies 133 
 
 a moment the wind struck the trees with vio- 
 lence. Instantly the air was full of fire streaks. 
 Thousands of fire-beetles were driven from their 
 perches, and in their flight the flashes of their 
 lanterns were carried like a rain of sparks upon 
 the blast. The unusual sight was so real that 
 for an instant I was startled. I did not at once 
 think of the cause. I feared some of the out- 
 buildings would catch fire. 
 
 Swarms of the fire-beetles are sometimes im- 
 mense. A marvelous story is told in one of the 
 Government Reports upon "Insect Life," which 
 tells of a swarm in New Jersey that made night 
 as light as day, frightening the people and wak- 
 ing the chickens. 
 
 Along the banks and over the lake-like eddies 
 of Elk River, in West Virginia, I have seen the 
 fire-beetles so plentiful and brilliant that their 
 flashes in the air and reflections in the water 
 gave me the thought that the Milky Way of the 
 heavens had come down to bathe in the cool 
 waters of the river. 
 
 There are several kinds (species) of fire- 
 
134 Fireflies 
 
 beetles. The largest live in South and Central 
 America, the West Indies and Cuba. Fine print 
 can be read by the light of one of them. A few 
 of them confined together give enough light to 
 write by. Some of the people of these coun- 
 tries use them for lighting their houses. Ladies 
 fasten them on their hair and in their dresses to 
 flash as living jewels. One of the early histo- 
 rians of Central America gives an interesting and 
 curious account of these fireflies. He says: 
 " They have two stars close by their eyes, and 
 two more under their wings, which give so great 
 a light that by it you can spin, weave, write, and 
 paint; and the Spaniards go by night to hunt the 
 utios, or little rabbits of that country, and a-fish- 
 ing, carrying these animals tied to their great 
 toes or thumbs, and they call them locuyos, 
 being also of use to save them from the gnats, 
 which are there very troublesome. They take 
 them in the night with fire-brands, because they 
 make to the light, and they are so unwieldy that 
 when they fall they cannot rise again, and the 
 men stroaking their faces and hands with a sort 
 
Fireflies 135 
 
 of moisture which is in those stars, seem to be 
 afire as long as it lasts." In China the poorer 
 students use a species of fire-beetle to light them 
 while they read. The Chinese boys, no matter 
 who or what they are, have a great prize ahead 
 of them. If they study hard, and are bright 
 enough to pass the early examinations, they may 
 in time become rulers of districts, governors, 
 and be ennobled. A good thing about the 
 Chinese law is that, if a Chinaman by his energy 
 and brains becomes a noble, his parents are made 
 nobles for bringing up such a child. His chil- 
 dren have to rise by their own worth. There is 
 always a far greater prize than simply nobility 
 ahead of an American boy or girl who studies. 
 This is a knowledge which, if properly used, 
 will bring every other good. 
 
 The name by which the fire-beetle, firefly, 
 lightning bug, passes in insect society is Photi- 
 nus pyralis. Photinus in Greek means light, 
 shining. Pyralis comes from a Greek word 
 meaning a winged insect supposed to live on 
 fire. It is about half an inch long, slender, and 
 
136 Fireflies 
 
 has a soft body. Even the wing covers are 
 rather soft. All the fire-beetles have eleven 
 joints in each of their feelers, — antennae. The 
 best way to know one when you see it in the 
 daytime is to catch one when it tells on itself at 
 "^ vS^n. ^«aw night. The 
 
 true fire-bee- 
 tles fly only 
 y\jjg|pr\ l^^^^l^SjOT at night. 
 
 'i ^^^ Their eggs 
 
 Common firefly. Larva. Pupa in 
 
 Plutinus fyratis. its cell, hatch grubs 
 
 or larvae. These feed on earthworms and in- 
 sects with soft bodies. When the grubs are 
 ready to change into another shape, they cover 
 themselves with an earthen cell. In this they 
 pass, without eating, from larvae (grubs) to pupae. 
 This is usually in June. In ten days after they 
 shut themselves up in earthen cells they come 
 forth full-grown fire-beetles, with their lanterns 
 inside of them. If you will place one on the 
 face of your watch you can see the time by its 
 light. 
 
 Very small things, which persons have not 
 
Fireflies 137 
 
 seen before, will often get up very big scares. It 
 is told that away back in years a number of 
 persons landed on one of the islands of the West 
 Indies at night. They saw distant woods lighted 
 up by great numbers of fire-beetles. These they 
 supposed to be Spaniards coming by torchlight 
 to destroy them. They scurried off to their 
 ships and left. 
 
 Decaying vegetable matter sometimes gives 
 forth light. I have read a newspaper by the 
 light of a certain kind of decaying toadstool. It 
 is probable that the light of a fire-beetle is made 
 by the vegetable matter which it eats. This de- 
 cays inside the beetle. I hope you will take my 
 word for it, and not mash fire-beetles, — the light 
 is steady within the beetle. When the beetle 
 wishes to show it, it moves certain parts of its 
 body, — opens its lanterns. If a beetle is mashed 
 between your fingers in the dark, the light will 
 show for a short time on your fingers. 
 
 We all admire the stars, — we have them all 
 the year round ; but we feel more at home with 
 the fire-beetles, — ^they are more sociable. 
 
THE BUSIEST OF INSECTS 
 
THE BUSIEST OF INSECTS 
 
 The mosquito is wonderfully interesting, yet 
 the person who has never seen or heard one is 
 fortunate. Usually we have to hunt for the 
 natural history specimens we want to study ; the 
 mosquito hunts us. We are specimens for the 
 mosquito. They 
 enjoy us, too. It 
 would be inter- 
 esting to know 
 what they say 
 
 •' ' Adult female 
 
 about us. They 
 
 no doubt have opinions of their own about thick- 
 skinned and thin-skinned people, and know the 
 daintiest delicacies in ears and ankles. They 
 must have thrilling stories to tell of their nar- 
 row escapes from whacks, wet towels, pillows, 
 and the dreadful scoldings that follow them. 
 Just what use the mosquito is has not yet 
 
 141 
 
142 
 
 The Busiest of Insects 
 
 been discovered; but that it is of some great 
 use, and that it takes its place in the per- 
 fect plan of Nature, there can be no doubt. 
 
 Everything under the 
 sun has its use. Be- 
 cause a thing does not 
 seem to be of any use 
 to us is no reason at 
 all that it is good for 
 nothing. It is well to 
 learn early in life that 
 Adult maie^ while we make use of 
 
 everything we can, there are a great many 
 minute forms of animal life which make use 
 of us, and are our masters. 
 
 The life history of the mosquito is quite a 
 story. Early in the spring, depending upon 
 how warm it is, the female mosquito flies from 
 the sheltered place in which she has slept all 
 through the winter, to some fresh water pool or 
 marsh, or barrel of rain water, and lays from 
 two hundred to four hundred eggs. These are 
 set on end and stuck together in a saucer-shaped 
 
The Busiest of Insects 143 
 
 mass which floats on the water's surface. In 
 about sixteen days the eggs hatch. The little 
 wrigglers (larvae) have jointed bodies, big heads, 
 and many bristles about their mouths which 
 move quickly and catch the tiny microbes which 
 live in still water that is not very fresh. These 
 they feed to the mouths of the larvae. Though 
 the larvae live in water, they have to 
 come to the top to breathe. They are 
 heavier than water ; they have to wrig- 
 gle hard to rise for breath. The weak 
 and sickly drown because they cannot 
 rise to air. After growing for seven or 
 eight days, and changing three times, 
 they become pupae, odd looking wrig- 
 glers with big bodies and jerky, jointed 
 tails. They are now lighter than water. La„a, greatly 
 They have to swim hard to get to the -"'snified 
 bottom. When they stop swimming, they slowly 
 rise to the top. If oil is poured on the water, 
 it spreads over the entire surface in a thin layer 
 or film. As neither the larvae nor pupae can get 
 air through the oil, they drown under it. A little 
 
144 
 
 The Busiest of Insects 
 
 coal oil poured into all pools, rain-water barrels, 
 puddles, every week, will kill nearly all the young 
 mosquitoes. 
 
 In two days the fully grown mosquito bursts 
 from its pupa covering and comes out with six 
 legs, one pair of wings, and a long beak or pro- 
 boscis, through which it 
 feeds. The female mos- 
 quito does all the biting. 
 The male is easily told 
 from the female by the 
 feathery antennae or feelers 
 alongside of its shorter 
 beak. The female has 
 short hairs upon her an- 
 tennae. If one does not 
 care to examine carefully 
 those mosquitoes which light, to find out which 
 is Mr., and which is Mrs., the Mrs. will soon 
 tell on herself by planting her legs firmly by her 
 hook-toothed feet, driving her beak through the 
 skin, and setting one frantic by the thrust. 
 
 As each female lays from two to four hundred 
 
 Pupa, greatly magnified 
 
The Busiest of Insects 145 
 
 eggs, and there are from ten to twelve genera- 
 tions a year, the millions upon millions of mos- 
 quitoes are easily accounted for. 
 
 I have seen vast armies of them, so thick that 
 I could not open my mouth without their enter- 
 ing. The bite of a mosquito is poisonous. 
 
 During the Civil War I was in command of 
 the picket line on John's Island, South Carolina. 
 At night the mosquitoes swarmed about the 
 men on guard in such hordes that their bites 
 drove some of the men crazy. I had to take their 
 guns from them. Several men were in the hos- 
 pital for days, swollen, ill, from their bites. 
 Several battery horses were killed by the mos- 
 quitoes. I was dangerously bitten. 
 
 These hordes of mosquitoes are found in the far 
 North as well as in warm regions. In Alaska, in 
 extreme Arctic regions, mosquitoes are at times 
 more numerous than in New Jersey. The United 
 States Government Report upon the insect says 
 that in 1866, when the snow was several feet 
 deep and the ice on Lake Superior five feet 
 thick, the mosquitoes literally blackened the 
 
146 The Busiest of Insects 
 
 snow in sheltered places. Farmers living in 
 Vermont and New Hampshire have told me 
 that calves were often killed by them there. 
 
 Not more than one mosquito in a million gets 
 a chance to feed upon the blood of an animal. 
 Mosquitoes are vegetarians. Why they ever 
 drink blood is not known. They are fond of 
 bananas and other fruits. I have seen them in 
 great numbers, feeding on the stalks of the red 
 clover. 
 
 It takes a very small pool to give birth to a 
 large number of mosquitoes. One rain-water 
 barrel will yield more than enough to satisfy a 
 village. The water in one barrel was filtered 
 and found to contain 17,259 eggs, larvae, and 
 pupae. A month later the same barrel yielded 
 another crop of 19,110. This number multi- 
 plied by ten furnishes quite enough mosquitoes 
 to go around. 
 
 Because hedges, trees, bushes, shelter many 
 mosquitoes, persons think they breed in them. 
 This is not the case. So far as is known, they 
 breed only in water. 
 
The Busiest of Insects 147 
 
 About two hundred and fifty species of mos- 
 quitoes are known. Of these, thirty have been 
 found in the United States. 
 
 While mosquitoes are known to carry disease 
 germs from one person to another, and from 
 unhealthy places to persons, it is possible that 
 they may, too, carry preventives of disease. 
 They do destroy countless microbes in stagnant 
 water and may thus prevent disease. We can 
 rest assured that (sneaking mean as they are) 
 they are for some good. 
 
JACK FROST 
 
JACK FROST 
 
 If there were such creatures as Fairies and 
 Brownies, Jack Frost and his family — White 
 Frost, Black Frost, Hoar Frost, Rime, Ice, 
 Snow — would certainly be among the busiest 
 and best of the lot. 
 
 When you and I and our grandmothers were 
 little, we as firmly believed that Jack Frost was 
 a jolly, roguish, invisible imp who nipped our 
 ears and noses and made our cheeks rosy (when 
 we poked our heads out of doors on a cold 
 morning) as we did that Kris Kringle came 
 down the chimney on Christmas Eve and filled 
 our stockings with good things. The time 
 comes for all of us to learn what Jack Frost 
 really is. It seems to be a pity that we have to 
 say "Good-by" to him, for we knew him, and 
 liked him right well if he did not nip too hard, 
 but we grow wiser as we do it. 
 
152 Jack Frost 
 
 Here is what Jack Frost, in his many forms, 
 really is: The air which surrounds the earth, 
 and which we breathe, contains water in such 
 small particles that we do not always see them. 
 If you will take a glass quart preserving jar, 
 screw on the top, set it in ice-water for half an 
 hour, drops of water will collect on the inside 
 of the jar. Of course they could come from no 
 other place than from the inside air. If you 
 warm the jar again, the drops will go back into 
 the air. 
 
 When air contains as many particles of water 
 as it will hold, it is said to be saturated. How 
 much water it will hold depends upon how warm 
 or how cold it is. If warm air is cooled, it will 
 let go its hold on a part of its water particles. 
 You see these dropped particles on the outside 
 of a pitcher of ice-water or a glass of cold water 
 taken from the well. These collections of water 
 particles are called condensation. 
 
 If you will turn a tin dishpan or tin plate open 
 side down upon the sod of your lawn and leave 
 it there all night, in the morning early you will 
 
Jack Frost 153 
 
 find the inside quite wet. The reason is this : 
 The earth under the pan contains water. The 
 earth is constantly giving up its water to the air 
 by evaporation, which is what happens when 
 you hang wet clothes out to dry. Now, then, 
 the earth gives its water to the air; the tin pan, 
 at night, gets colder than the air under it; the 
 air gives up its water to the tin pan. On the 
 grass alongside of the tin pan you will find dew- 
 drops. At night the grass is colder than the 
 air, so the particles of water coming out of the 
 earth and the particles of water in the air about 
 the grass, gather upon the grass. This gather- 
 ing is called dew. When particles of water come 
 together they have an attraction for one another. 
 They huddle together in ball shape. These tiny 
 balls are our glistening dewdrops. 
 
 Suppose the heat leaves the air and earth until 
 the mercury in the thermometer stands at the 
 32 mark. (There is no such thing as cold. 
 There is such a thing as heat. Cold is the ab- 
 sence of heat.) The 32 mark is called the freez- 
 ing point. Water freezes at the 32 mark. As 
 
154 Jack Frost 
 
 the air cools it lets go a part of its water. The 
 water, collecting as dew, freezes. Freezing is a 
 wonderful change in water. You may be sur- 
 prised to learn that water is a mineral. The 
 stones, rocks in the fields, the pebbles on the 
 sea-beach, are made up of several kinds of min- 
 erals. Minerals of all kinds crystallize, — that is, 
 under the right conditions they form into crys- 
 tals. Each mineral has its own shaped crystal. 
 Water, at 32 degrees of heat, crystallizes, takes 
 the exquisite shapes we find in frost, snow, the 
 ice on our window panes. Just before water 
 freezes, and at any time when it is not frozen, 
 the particles of which water is made glide, fall, 
 tumble, revolve about each other, and are in 
 what we call a fluid condition. 
 
 The particles of which mercury is made do 
 the same thing. When the freezing point 32 is 
 reached, the particles of water rush to fixed 
 lines, pile one upon another, and so close to- 
 gether that they make hard masses. To the 
 different forms of these masses we give different 
 names. White frost is not quite as hard as 
 
Jack Frost 155 
 
 black frost; the crystals of snow are not as hard 
 as those of ice. 
 
 Some morning when the mercury in your 
 thermometer is below 32, take a shallow pan or 
 dish of water out into the open air. Rest it 
 where it will be perfectly still. Watch it. You 
 will see the lines forming. These lines will cover 
 the whole surface of the water. When they are 
 well formed, gently slip a piece of stiff black 
 paper under them. Lift the paper out. On it 
 you will have the framework of ice. Or, of a 
 right cold morning, dash water against the out- 
 side of your window and from the inside watch 
 it freeze — crystallize. Watching Nature do her 
 work is not lost time. 
 
 Science comes from the Latin word sdentia, 
 which means "knowledge." Scientists are those 
 persons who work systematically to gain knowl- 
 edge. They study the laws of Nature, which 
 govern everything about us. To them we owe 
 our microscopes, telescopes, spectacles; our 
 stoves, furnaces, telegraph, telephones, and almost 
 everything man makes for his use and comfort. 
 
156 Jack Frost 
 
 To them we owe our artificial ice, which largely 
 takes the place of the ice which used to be 
 gathered fi-om our ponds and rivers. Strange 
 to say, the first ice scientists made was made in- 
 side a platinum crucible heated to a white heat. 
 Throw water on a hot stove griddle, it will take 
 ball shapes and dance about. The steam be- 
 tween the water -and the griddle prevents the 
 balls from touching the griddle, and bounces 
 them about. The water in the balls is cold. 
 Wet your finger in your mouth, and hold it up 
 in the outside air. The side next to the wind 
 will feel much colder than the side away from it. 
 The wind evaporates the water quicker on the 
 wind side. It is this plan which is used in mak- 
 ing ice. The hot crucible evaporated the water 
 so rapidly that a part of it froze. The stove 
 griddle works in the same way. In making ice 
 in large quantities, ammonia and other sub- 
 stances are evaporated rapidly about masses of 
 water. In making ice-cream (it makes my mouth 
 water to write about it), we draw the heat from 
 the cream by rapidly melting ice with salt. As 
 
Jack Frost 157 
 
 the cream freezes, we break up the crystals by 
 stirring. The finer we break the crystals the 
 smoother the ice-cream. 
 
 Jack Frost builds his finest, most beautiful 
 temples under the earth, along the banks of our 
 roadsides, and on plowed grounds. Take a walk 
 on a cold morning, before the sun thaws Jack 
 Frost's work. Carefully look at these temples 
 with their crystal columns. It will pay you. 
 You will see, too, one of Jack Frost's ways of 
 pulverizing the surface of the ground for the use 
 of the plants. 
 
 Usually the soil of the earth contains water. 
 When a spadeful of earth is turned up it is 
 damp ; so is that turned up by a plow. If heat 
 leaves the earth (radiates) until there are but 
 thirty-two degrees or less of it showing on the 
 thermometer, the water in the earth freezes — 
 forms into crystals. In doing this, the water 
 rushes through the ground to the nearest place 
 where a crystal center has been started. These 
 crystals frequently take the form of columns 
 half an inch through, and as much as two inches 
 
158 Jack Frost 
 
 high. They stand close together, and are very 
 beautiful. You can often see them along road- 
 banks or in plowed ground. Often, when you 
 step on an earth or gravel walk, your feet will 
 sink and you will hear cracking. You are 
 breaking down the ice columns beneath your 
 feet. The water near the top of the ground 
 freezes first. That is after the frost forms on 
 the grass. In freezing it expands. The crystals 
 need room. To get room they raise the earth 
 that is on top of them. If there is a long cold 
 spell, the freezing goes on, lower and lower, until 
 a depth of several feet is reached. The frozen 
 ground is lifted higher and higher. The par- 
 ticles of soil are crushed finer and finer by the 
 great pressure. They are turned up and about, 
 squeezed, mixed, ground, aired. This is Jack 
 Frost's greatest work. He makes soil and pre- 
 pares it for the plants and trees to feed upon. 
 
 When the crystals in the ground begin to 
 melt, we call it thawing. We say, " The frost is 
 coming out of the ground." When this hap- 
 pens, our wagon wheels cut through the weak- 
 
Jack Frost 159 
 
 ened crust which has been lifted by the crystals, 
 and go down with a bump until they strike 
 ground which has not been frozen. This is the 
 principal reason that country roads are "bad" 
 in the early spring. Again, the melting of the 
 crystals sets free a large quantity of water which 
 has to be soaked up by the earth or evaporated 
 by the sun. If the earth and sun do not work 
 as fast as the ice melts, we have mud. Upon 
 every foot of our earth where the thermometer 
 marks thirty-two or lower. Jack Frost is at work. 
 In the neighborhood of Philadelphia he is hard 
 at work, day and night, for nearly four months 
 of the year. In many colder regions his work 
 never ceases. He tears down mountainsides, 
 splits huge rocks, lifts the pavements, throws 
 grain and grass roots from the soil, forces huge 
 trees apart, rips off their bark. 
 
 Jack Frost is a good, hard-working friend; he 
 is also a powerful hurter and destroyer. He 
 does not care a snap for anybody. He has his 
 work to do in Nature's plan, and he does it. 
 
IN THE DARK 
 
IN THE DARK 
 
 If you will go into a room in the daytime, 
 close the shutters, pull the curtains down, stuff 
 something in any crack there may be, the room 
 will be dark. You will notice that you have not 
 shut the dark in, but that you have shut the 
 light out. You will notice, too, that you do not 
 feel one bit afraid. Maybe if you had to go into 
 that same room in the night-time you would be 
 a little bit scared, especially if you had to go up- 
 stairs to get into it, the wind slammed the door 
 shut, and you were left alone in the dark. 
 
 Did you ever sit down in the daytime, and 
 calmly think why ? It is a good plan. 
 
 Perhaps I can tell you. If I can, I am sure 
 you will feel much more comfortable about going 
 into the dark for the rest of your lives. 
 
 As you shut the light out of the room when 
 you made it dark, and did not shut dark in, it is 
 
 163 
 
164 In the Dark 
 
 as plain as the noses on your faces, that dark- 
 ness is the absence of light, and that there is no 
 such real thing as darkness. There is such a 
 thing as light. We see it come from the sun, 
 the fire, the lamps. No one ever saw darkness 
 come from anything. If you will look through 
 a hole into a dark room you will see that it is 
 dark. Not a bit of the darkness will come but 
 of the hole when you take your eye away. If 
 you will then darken the room in which you are 
 standing, and have some one put a lamp in the 
 dark room into which you have been looking, 
 the light will come out of the room through the 
 hole and make a spot of light on the wall some- 
 where about you. By these two trials you learn 
 that dark does not travel and that light does. 
 
 You will very naturally ask : How does light 
 travel? How does the light from a lamp or a 
 window many miles away travel to our eyes on 
 the darkest night? How does the light of a 
 flash of lightning or the fire from a gun get to 
 our eyes long before the sound of either the 
 thunder or the crack of the shot ? 
 
In the Dark 165 
 
 Here is the explanation : If you throw a pebble 
 into a still pond of water, little waves start from 
 where the pebble strikes, and in a ring move in 
 all directions. The force of the pebble striking 
 the water makes the waves. Place a basin of 
 water before you, drop something upon the 
 center of it. The waves thus made will reach 
 all sides of the basin. The waves coming toward 
 where you are sitting come in a straight line. 
 If you strike a match, or light a lamp, or set fire 
 to the gas, the force of the burning starts waves 
 of light which, like those in water, move in all 
 directions until they strike against something. 
 When these waves strike your eyes they make 
 you see what is called light, no matter whether 
 the waves come from a candle or come from the 
 sun. Waves of light travel at the rate of one 
 hundred and eighty-six thousand miles in a sec- 
 ond. If an express train going at sixty miles an 
 hour started to race around the world with a 
 wave of light, the wave would go around the 
 world over one million and a half times while 
 the train was going once. Sound is made by 
 
1 66 In the Dark 
 
 stirring the air or the particles of some body 
 violently. If air is stirred by the force of an 
 explosion from a gun, or by a streak of hot 
 lightning passing through it, we hear the crack 
 of the gun or the crash of thunder. Sound, like 
 light, travels in waves. It travels about one 
 thousand feet in a second. As light travels 
 nearly ten million times faster than sound, it is 
 easy to understand why we see the flash of a 
 gun or a flash of lightning before we hear the 
 gun go off or the noise the lightning makes, 
 which is thunder. Thunder never hurt any- 
 body. If we see the flash of lightning, the dan- 
 ger is over from that flash. 
 
 Take a ball of any kind out into the sunlight. 
 You will see that the side of the ball next to the 
 sun is bright, while the side away from the sun 
 is much darker. Turn the ball around as often 
 as you please, the side toward the sun will 
 always be lightest. Hold a sheet of white paper 
 so that the ball is between the paper and the 
 sun, and you will see the shadow of the ball on 
 the paper. The reason is that the rays or waves 
 
In the Dark 167 
 
 of light from the sun cannot get through the 
 ball — are stopped by it. Stopping the light 
 makes a shadow. The same thing happens if 
 you hold the ball near a lighted lamp. The 
 reason the ball is not entirely black on the side 
 from the sun or lamp is because the waves of 
 light that pass the ball strike against something 
 else and are reflected or bounced back, and in 
 this way get behind the ball. 
 
 You all know that the earth is a very big 
 ball — eight thousand miles through. It turns 
 around once in twenty-four hours. Just like the 
 ball you have held to the sun or to a lamp, the 
 side of the earth which is turned toward the sun 
 is always in the sunlight. The earth is so big 
 and thick that the waves of light from the sun 
 cannot get through it, and there is very little 
 about the earth to bounce back the waves of 
 light which do not strike it. Therefore, the side 
 away from the sunlight is in the shadow the 
 earth itself makes, and this shadow is very dark. 
 We call it night. 
 
 If you stick a pin in your ball, and imagine 
 
1 68 In the Dark 
 
 that you are that pin (a sharp, bright pin, of 
 course), and turn the ball around away from the 
 light, you will notice that you (the pin) are in 
 the shadow of the ball. 
 
 Each of you is stuck on the earth somewhere. 
 As the sun turns around he or she turns with it, 
 like the pin in the ball. The earth turns from 
 west to east. When it turns us to where the 
 waves of light from the sun begin to be stopped 
 by the earth, we begin to get into the earth's 
 shadow. This we call evening — the evening of 
 light, twilight or half light, or the more beauti- 
 ful word, gloaming, which means glooming. As 
 we are turned farther into the shadow, the 
 shadow becomes darker. This darker shadow 
 is all that dark is. What is there in it to be 
 afraid of ? Why be afraid of it more than any 
 other shadow — even the shadow of a tree or a 
 house, or the one we ourselves make ? 
 
 If one of our feet or arms is caught in some- 
 thing and held fast, we feel helpless, we get 
 scared and " holler " for help. In the dark our 
 eyesight is held fast; we cannot use it to see 
 
In the Dark 169 
 
 about us ; we have a helpless feeling. We, per- 
 haps, feel scared. There are no such things as 
 ghosts, spooks, goblins, bogies. The stories 
 told you of them are made up. You are as safe 
 in the dark or shadow as you are in the light. 
 I love to walk in the woods in the night-time 
 and to listen to the night birds, the calls of 
 insects, the rustle of night rambling animals, the 
 distant barking of dogs, the low of cattle, — ^these 
 are the voices of the night. 
 
 Two old ladies bought a folding bedstead. 
 Every night they opened it, let it down, made 
 up the bed carefully, and then looked under it 
 to see whether or not there was a man there. 
 There is a good deal in habit. Feeling afraid 
 of the dark is a bad habit. Think about it, and 
 break up the habit, if you have it. 
 
OUR UNDERGROUND NEIGHBORS 
 
OUR UNDERGROUND NEIGHBORS 
 
 One would think, if one did not think much, 
 tk^t there is plenty upon and over the ground to 
 supply everything with a living, if it hunts for it. 
 Yet there are many insects and worms, besides the 
 ground-mole, which spend their entire lives 
 under the ground and manage to pick up a very 
 good living there, a living entirely to their liking. 
 
 Underground is a pretty big place. The 
 ground-mole is seldom seen unless patiently 
 watched for or killed by a trap; not, however, 
 because it is a scarce animal, but because, wher- 
 ever it goes, it tunnels its way and is careful to 
 keep a covering of earth over itself A walk 
 almost anywhere in lawn, garden, or field, will 
 show the raised earth over its zigzag runways. 
 
 The object of the ground-mole in making a 
 tunnel is not that it may travel for pleasure from 
 one place to another, but that it may find some- 
 
 173 
 
174 ^^^ Underground Neighbors 
 
 thing to eat. As the mole lives entirely upon 
 insects, grubs, earthworms, it knows that the 
 best place to find them is where these find tender 
 titbits in sprouting seeds and new roots. These 
 are plentifiil under grass and near the surface of 
 the ground. Many insects, worms, grubs, do 
 great injury to the crops of the farmer and 
 gardener, probably without knowing it, or caring 
 anything if they do. The ground-mole is a 
 busy help in destroying things which are very 
 hard for the farmer and gardener to get at. It 
 should not be killed. It does a great deal more 
 good than harm. We must remember that the 
 mole is made to do things in its own particular 
 way, and for its own use. If in making up its 
 tunnel it bulges up our walks, uplifts the trimmed 
 sod of our lawns, tosses out a few of our pet 
 plants, or by boring too near their roots lets the 
 air get at them to wilt them, kill them, it cer- 
 tainly displeases us. If we saw the insects or 
 worms or grubs the mole was after, things that 
 would eat the roots or nibble the tender bark 
 and ends by which the roots get a living for the 
 
Our Underground Neighbors 175 
 
 plants, we would thank the mole for preserving 
 the health and lives of the plants we are fond of 
 
 It is a common belief that ground-moles eat 
 newly sprouted corn, peas, and the roots of other 
 plants. They do not. They eat animal matter 
 only. Ground-mice frequently make use of the 
 tunnel the mole has made, to easily find meals 
 for themselves in seeds and tender rootlets. The 
 mole gets the blame. 
 
 The common ground-mole, when fully grown, 
 is seldom over six inches long from the tip of 
 its very short, almost bare, tail to the tip of its 
 bare, sharp, limber nose. Its body is round, 
 soft, without any waist worth mentioning. Its 
 fur is lead-color and has a beautiful luster, rub it 
 whatever way you may. It is short, velvety, 
 and, like the nap of velvet, stands on end. 
 Whether the mole backs or goes ahead, its fur 
 keeps the earth from getting to its skin. 
 
 The eyes of a mole are so small and hidden 
 by fur that the only way to find them is to blow 
 about where they are thought to be, thus part- 
 ing the fur until they are found. As the mole 
 
176 Our Underground Neighbors 
 
 lives under ground, it has not much use for eyes. 
 They would be a bother if they were large; the 
 dirt would get in them. It is stated that a mole 
 can run its eyes out beyond the fur about them 
 when it wishes to look around. I have not seen 
 it done, — maybe because the mole did not care 
 to see me. 
 
 Though a mole seldom needs eyes, it has 
 plenty of use for its nose. This tells it when a 
 worm is near, even which way to find the easiest 
 digging. Its ears are very small, but they are 
 very good. They help the mole's nose in find- 
 ing food. They tell the mole of danger. It is 
 hard to travel quietly enough to catch a mole at 
 work. 
 
 The fore-paws and shoulders of the mole are 
 wonderfully strong. They are made for digging. 
 Every one who has tried to dig out a ground- 
 mole with a spade, knows how fast it can dig 
 away from danger. The only way to get one 
 alive is to quietly, spade in hand, watch until the 
 mole begins to raise the earth in lengthening its 
 tunnel, then dart the spade under it and quickly 
 
Our Underground Neighbors 177 
 
 throw the mole out. It cannot run very fast, but 
 it must be quickly caught by the tail or it will 
 dive into the ground and leave one looking at 
 nothing but a hole. 
 
 In making its tunnel the mole does not throw 
 the earth behind it. With its great flat paws, 
 armed with thick, sharp claws, it tears apart the 
 earth in front of it, forces its body forward, lifts 
 the earth above it with its strong shoulders, 
 smooths the sides as its furred body passes 
 along, and leaves behind it an open tunnel which 
 it can use as it pleases. The tunnels run out 
 
 (radiate) from the 
 mole's nest, like 
 the spokes of a 
 wheel from its hub. 
 Nest of the ground-mole. The homc or nest 
 
 of a mole looks, in a picture of one, like a basket 
 made of galleries, turned upside down. Though 
 not far under ground, it is so made that rain 
 water drains away from it. In its bed of soft 
 dead grass, roofed with earth, the mole can laugh 
 at storms. 
 
1 78 Our Underground Neighbors 
 
 It does not sleep (hibernate) during the winter, 
 as many animals do. When the ground is frozen 
 hard and deep it sometimes 
 comes out of its hole, — per- 
 haps to get water; for moles 
 are great drinkers. When, 
 as a boy, I used to trudge 
 across fields and along 
 roads, two miles and a half, 
 over the Springton Hills 
 to a country school, deep 
 snow, packed and sleeted 
 hard, filled the way in some places. Where the 
 snow was blown into drifts the road was left bare 
 in places. I caught moles on the snow. They 
 came from the ground in the bare places, lost 
 their way on the ice-covered snow, and could not 
 dig through it to get back to earth again. The 
 skins made handsome purses. The height of my 
 wishes was to get enough skins to make my 
 father a mole-skin vest, very fashionable at one 
 time, but I grew to be a man before I had half 
 enough. And I am glad of it. I did not know 
 
 How the mole leaves 
 its home. 
 
Our Underground Neighbors 179 
 
 then what a friend to the farmer the ground- 
 mole is. 
 
 Cats and dogs catch the ground-moles but 
 they do not eat them. They have a strong, 
 musk-like smell, which is not pleasing to such, 
 sometimes, particular creatures. 
 
 Mrs. Mole has from four to seven children at 
 a time, once a year. I once accidentally dug up 
 a nest of five. They were three or four times as 
 ugly as young mice. Yet I do not believe their 
 mother thought so. 
 
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