part I

never felt a deeper sympathy with any wretched beast than I did with a pair of alligators in the Brighton Aquarium, England. Lying in a grotto, where all that could be done in the way of providing them with a few inches of water, and a certain amount of damp heat had been done to testify to the general good will of their keepers, were those miserable exiles from their hot, native lagoons. I fancied that among the mists and raw cold of “John Bull’s tight little island” these creatures longed, as I did, for the vivid blaze of a southern sun.

While an alligator basking on a log in hot sunshine, deep water close at hand to slip into for safety, is a picture of intense lazy enjoyment, an alligator blinking at an electric light in an aquarium, a chilly beast stretched upon wet stones, seems in his stillness a picture of apathetic misery. I doubt if either of the beasts in the aquarium could have roused to enough interest in life to snap at its favorite food, a puppy, had one ventured near. They did not even show appreciation of the fact that a person like myself, with a toleration for dog-days, and a hearty longing for palmettoes, trumpet-creepers, magnolias, and red-birds, was looking at them with sympathy and a gleam of kindness!

The adult alligator is easily taken prisoner by being seized from behind as it lies basking; its legs are securely bound, its mouth muzzled, and then--away to a showman’s cage! The Orinoco cayman and the Mississippi alligator are often captured in the following curious fashion. A hook baited with some small animal, which the alligator especially likes as food, is dropped into the water, and when seized by the alligator, the hook which is not sharp, but blunt and double, is arranged to expand and fill the creature’s throat, but will not pierce or tear it. Then by pulling at the chain or rope attached to this hook, the brute is drawn ashore. A strong man next leaps on its back, grasps its fore-legs and draws them bridle-wise back to serve as reins. Thus mounted the captor maintains his seat as on a fractious horse, during all the creature’s plunges and tail-lashing, until finally it succumbs, fairly worn out by its own battle. Once entirely exhausted, it becomes weak, mild, and obedient.

The food of the alligator is squirrels, rabbits, water-rats, water-fowl, fish, hares, and young dogs, but it will attack men and kill children if it has opportunity. Its method of preying is much like that of the Nile crocodile; the victim is first pulled under the water and drowned, and then eaten at leisure.[73] The alligator seems to know that while he is merely enjoying a little agreeable change under the surface of the water, his prey will drown.

Why does not the water rush into the lungs of the alligator, and so smother it, as the alligator is a lung-breathing animal? Because it has at the base of its tongue an interior collar which expands and guards the passages to the lungs when it is under water. When it wants a mouthful of air it elevates its head above water while its hands hold its victim below the surface.

The alligator is a smaller animal than the crocodile, its length being from five to ten feet; its head is shorter and broader than that of the crocodile, and its snout is more obtuse. The large, long teeth on the lower jaw do not, as in the crocodile, fit into external furrows on the upper jaw, but into pits made there to receive them. The hind legs and feet of a crocodile have a jagged fringe which the alligator does not have; the alligator’s hind feet are webbed only about half way up the toes, and the crocodile’s hind feet are webbed to the very tip.

Despite the strong musky odor of the alligator’s flesh, it has sometimes been eaten: so also there are people who will eat crocodile’s flesh and eggs. To a civilized appetite no flesh could be more loathsome.

The alligator’s bill of fare is not confined to the living creatures we have just mentioned as furnishing its favorite food. Alert for its breakfast, this pirate of the lagoons and bayous gathers up fish, flesh, and fowl for its table, but swallows, as a condiment, whatever comes handy. An old rubber shoe floating in the water, an empty soda-water bottle, a lost jack-knife, a battered tin can, a stone as big as an orange, part of a broken lamp,--any of these are welcomed as serving to fill the yawning vacancy in its stomach, and to aid in grinding up more digestible food. Similarly an ostrich will swallow a horseshoe, a table-knife, a spoon, a leather strap and buckle, a few spools of thread, or any other trifle left in its way, seeming to consider its stomach, as a school-boy does his pocket, a general receptacle for almost anything that comes to hand!

Baby alligators make rather amusing pets for a number of months, before they begin to exhibit hereditary traits, when they at once fail to be agreeable. They will eat eggs, raw or cooked meat, rats, mice, birds, frogs, toads. They learn to come when they are called, enjoy hearing a whistle, and, on rare occasions, show some slight degree of gratitude and affection, amiable characteristics which they speedily outgrow. When these baby alligators are a few months old, they must be killed or put back into the water where their relatives live.

Alligators are usually silent animals, but in the spring, when the eggs are being laid, they all become noisy and excited, and bellow like buffaloes. A number of adult alligators roaring together make a sound like distant heavy thunder.

The mother alligator builds with her front feet a mound of mud, or sand, though if she finds a mound just to her taste, she takes that, and saves herself trouble. In the mound she places her eggs, and in due time the sun hatches them. The eggs of reptiles are not enclosed in hard, brittle shells, as those of birds, but in a thick, tough, elastic skin, as if the white skin that lines a bird’s egg-shell had grown parchment-like and served instead of shell. The eggs are the size of hen’s eggs, but more pointed.

As soon as the little alligators come from the egg, they scuttle off to the water and are ready to fight their enemies and begin their predatory lives. As they are smaller and less fierce than the gavials, caymans, or true crocodiles, they are far less destructive. An alligator of twelve feet long is a giant of his kind. Not only are the alligators smaller than crocodiles, but they have fewer teeth, and are “less handy with their tails,” not being able to strike out quite so vigorously.

The alligator is among the animals that are disappearing before perpetual hunting and the presence of men about their old haunts. They are still numerous, but fewer than they were some years ago. They will die out speedily unless people undertake to raise them on alligator farms. And why should people do that? For the sake of their skins. Alligator skins make a strong and handsome leather, very beautiful for bags, portmanteaus, purses, boots, portfolios; and for the sake of their skins they should be reared.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] A true _Crocodilus Americanus_, long overlooked or mistaken for an alligator, has been discovered in America.

[72] _Alligator Mississippiensis._

[73] The alligator, like the crocodile, can close the nostril opening and remain under water for some time.

LESSON XXXIX.

WISER THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD.

“Beyond the shadows of the ship I watched the water snakes; They moved in tracks of shining white; And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes.”

--COLERIDGE, _Ancient Mariner_.

Between man and the snake there seems to be placed an instinctive and unappeasable enmity. The snake, seeing any human being, either glides off in haste, or coils itself up and hisses, or throws itself forward in attack. The human being, on the other hand, experiences fear, disgust, aversion, and seizes stick or stone, or makes use of his heel, if well protected, to kill the snake. “War to the death, and no quarter,” seems to be the cry between the highest of the mammals and the serpent tribe.

[Illustration: OUR NATURAL ENEMY.]

“As hideous as a snake” is a common phrase, born of the hatred between man and the ophidian order, but in point of fact, were enmity left out of the question, the creatures of the serpent tribe are not hideous. A lithe, long, cylindrical body, coated with glittering scales, and splendid with all the colors of the rainbow, elegantly arranged in rings, lines, or dots; bright eyes; graceful motions; a tongue that plays to and fro like lightning in an open throat, often of vivid flame color; a head sometimes crested as if bearing a royal crown,--these are some of the characteristics of that serpent family, which instinctively we call “hideous” and “hateful.”

To the above briefly noted particulars we may add that the eyes of snakes are lidless and the sight somewhat feeble; the sense of smell is better developed, and the nostrils are placed close to the mouth. The mouth is large proportionately, and opens widely; the tongue is the organ of touch; there are no external ears, and snakes seem to be deficient in hearing. Snakes have no external limbs, except in two or three species, where there are mere rudiments of hind-legs visible. The snake’s body is elastic and capable of enormous distention. It is furnished with a spinal column, and with numerous ribs. The ribs and scutes, or large scales, are the chief organs of locomotion.

The method of crawling shown by the worm, as described in Nature Reader, No. 2, is very much like that of some snakes. There are three ways in which snakes make their progression. First, they may glide forward with a perfectly straight motion, by pushing with the scutes, or large scale-like plates of the under part of the body, to which the ends of the ribs are attached. Second, these scutes may open out as the scales of a fish when scraped backward from head to tail,[74] and on the edges of these opened scute-plates, the snake may walk. Third, they may go forward by pushing; stretching out the body, and then contracting it, and making the same motion over again, these motions being sinuous, or wave-like, from side to side.

The light, smooth body of the snake, provided with numerous small, powerful muscles, renders its progress by any of these methods exceedingly rapid. Water snakes swim, waving the body from side to side, and using the tail as an oar is used in sculling. No serpent can move on a perfectly smooth surface, as glass; it must have some ridges, or roughness to resist the motions of the scales and ribs.

Serpents are dumb except for their hiss, which is produced by driving the air swiftly from the lungs. In some snakes the hiss is varied to a whine or hum.

Serpents, like the batrachians, cast off their skins and come out in gleaming new skins which have grown under the old ones. If the serpent for any reason cannot cast its skin at the proper time, it sickens and dies. The cast coat is perfect in form, but is generally turned inside out. Cast snake-skins are sometimes found in the woods by sharp-eyed boys. Sometimes the lucky boy finds a whole skin; at other times the cast skin has been partly destroyed by ants, beetles, or the effects of the weather. Some snakes swallow their cast-off skins.

Snakes usually move about and hunt in the day-time, and sleep at night. They hibernate, or take a long winter sleep, as the lizards do. For hibernation they retire to caves, to holes in logs or in the ground, and may be found torpid, a number rolled closely together. At such times the most poisonous snakes, as the viper and rattlesnake, may be handled without danger. In the spring they begin to revive with the first warm weather.

I remember that when I was a little girl a very beautiful hollow or cave in the river-bank not far from Niagara Falls was called “The Rattlesnake’s Cove,” because so many snakes lived there. In summer the place was carefully avoided. In early spring, before the snakes awoke from their sleep, this cove was a favorite place for picnics, and the school-boys often went there armed with knives, hatchets, picks, and hoes, and hunted for the torpid snakes and killed them by scores.

In hot countries, where there is no winter to send them off to sleep, the snakes are for some part of the year stupid and drowsy, and lie for several weeks in a nearly comatose condition. In this state they are too dull to be either timid or ill-tempered. On the other hand, when casting their skins, they are exceedingly nervous and vicious.

All snakes are flesh eaters, and have very hearty appetites. They drink a large amount of water, and when a captive snake is well supplied with water, it can live for several weeks without food. However, it is doubtless hungry, and the experiment is a cruel one to try even on a snake.

The serpents have many teeth, sharp, cone-like, and pointing backward. These teeth grow constantly; when they become at last old and worthless, they are at once renewed. Lucky snakes! no toothless gums, no worn-out, broken teeth, no aching teeth, no dentist’s bills. Nature keeps their teeth perfect from infancy to old age.

Snakes lay eggs, and with the one exception of the python, which carries her eggs in a fold of her body, they deposit the eggs in safe places, leave them to hatch by sun heat, and let the little ones take care of themselves as soon as they come forth from the eggs. There are also a few species of snakes which have their little ones born alive, not in the egg. Snakes’ eggs are enclosed in a leathery skin like those of turtles. There is a widely spread story that the young of some kinds of snakes accompany their mother, and in time of danger she stretches open her mouth, and they take refuge in her throat, where they remain safely until the danger is passed. The keepers of the “snake-house” in the London Zoological Garden told me they had never known a case of the kind, and the best scientific writers have found no proofs that such story is true. Therefore this tale is open to grave doubts.

The snake is a creature about which fables have been gathering from the earliest times. The snake was one of the first objects of false worship; coiled in a ring with its tail in its mouth, it was taken as a symbol of eternity. The Magi of the East used it as the emblem of their order and their arts; a serpent twined on a stick was also the emblem of physicians, and of the art of healing. It is strange that a creature exhibiting so many deadly varieties should have been chosen as the insignia of the physician, and not less strange that to the serpent should have been attributed great wisdom. Snakes exhibit fear and anger, but almost no wisdom or anything that seems like reason. Nearly all domestic animals--ants, bees, spiders, and many fishes--show far more forecast, ingenuity, architectural ability, than any snake. And yet “crafty as a snake,” “wise as a serpent,” are frequent expressions.

Snakes vary greatly in their habits: there are snakes which live on the ground, hiding under stones, leaves, or brush, and in rock crevices; other snakes live chiefly in the water, making their holes in the bank below water-mark; others live in trees, and some others almost entirely underground.

To this tribe surrounded by enemies, nature has given abundant means of self-preservation,--swiftness of motion; instinct of instant flight; poison, sometimes deadly to its enemies; vast size and strength, as in some boas and pythons, and especially colorations, which closely imitate their surroundings. Thus ground snakes have, especially on the back and sides, brown, gray, black, and white in spots and markings, which together look much like earth, twigs, pebbles, and dead leaves, so that the snake can scarcely be distinguished from its bed or home. Tree snakes, and snakes that live in grass or mosses, are usually green, marbled, or streaked with black and brown. Snakes from the marshes or muddy banks are nearly black; among the abundant flowers and gayly colored shrubs of the tropics, snakes take very brilliant hues. Snakes of temperate climates are also often tricked out with scarlet, or white or orange stripes and bands.

Snakes are largest, most numerous, and most brightly colored in hot countries. Like all the cold-blooded vertebrates, they delight in hot sunshine, and will lie motionless, basking for hours. In taking a position for this sun-bath, they select a place where they will not be conspicuous. I have often noticed that while a gray snake will stretch itself out in the sun on a bare rock, a green snake never chooses such a post. Instead, the green snake extends itself on a bed of moss, or close, short grass, or if slim and light of body, will crawl up the midrib of a big leaf, or the stalk of a fern frond, where its color is scarcely discernible from the vegetation about it. A dark brown or black snake seems to know that it is tolerably secure lying upon a fallen, decaying tree-trunk. So a gray, or black and white snake, may often be seen sunning himself on a fence-rail, or on the top of a stone wall.

There seems to be a common notion that because a creature is a snake, it must be dangerous and poisonous. This is quite wrong, for in point of fact, very few of the numerous serpent families are venomous. The greater number of their species are quite harmless. One of the most dangerous of all snakes, the boa-constrictor, does not kill its prey by poisoning, but by crushing it. In general, the head of the harmless snake is rounded and oblong, while the poisonous species have heads flat and triangular.

Snakes prey upon birds, toads, rats, mice, frogs, gophers, and destroy much harmful vermin. The common snakes, called “milk snakes” and “garter snakes,” which frequent barns, are not at all poisonous, but, on the contrary, are useful, destroying rats and mice. Nearly all snakes are very fond of milk, and will glide up to a bowl of bread and milk, especially if it is warmed, and eat it with great relish. Black snakes are seldom harmful to people, but are cruel enemies of birds, devouring the young and the eggs, and tearing up the nests.

Snakes seem to be able to “charm” or mesmerize small animals, and sometimes even human beings, by fixing their gaze steadfastly upon them. The victim appears to be smitten dumb and motionless with terror, and a bird thus charmed will presently flutter straight toward the open mouth of the snake. I have seen one case of a snake so charming a bird, but I had a better opportunity to study a cat charming a bird, and probably the process is much alike in both.

The cat placed itself on the outside sill of my window, near to a pine tree. A bird presently alighted on the pine tree, no doubt not observing the cat. The cat fixed its attention on the bird. The cat’s eyes were widely opened, and shone with a peculiar brightness; its head was raised and intent, the fur on its neck and about its face slowly stood up, as if electrified. Except for this rising of the fur, and a certain intensity of life in the whole attitude of the beast, it was as still as if cut from stone. The bird quivered, trembled, looked fixedly at the cat, and finally, with a feeble shake of the wings, fell toward the cat, which bounded to seize it.

FOOTNOTES:

[74] Nature Reader, No. 3, Scales and Teeth.

LESSON XL.

OUR COMMON ENEMY.

“Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire, Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and shone, and every track Was a flash of golden fire!”

--COLERIDGE.

One day while sitting at dinner I heard a loud outcry from some bluebirds, especial pets of mine, which had their nest in a little grove of dwarf oaks near my house. Hurrying out to inquire into the troubles of my favorites, I saw the mother bird sitting on a twig, her wings dropped wide and slack, her tail drooping, her head stretched forward, quivering with fear; the father bird was flying about crying wildly, while on a limb of the oak, and approaching the nest, was a large black snake. The nest was full of nearly hatched eggs.

To throw a big stone at the snake was the first performance. Then some one ran for a cane to beat the monster; but the snake had concluded that discretion was the better part of valor, and waited only to receive one good blow, before he glided off among the bushes so swiftly that we could not find him. Where these big climbing snakes are numerous, the birds have a hard time to raise a brood, for the snakes destroy the nests, and devour alike parents and fledglings.

Except for their attacks on the birds, tree-climbing snakes are usually of the harmless kind, and are sometimes even useful. There is, however, a tree snake in hot countries, which seems to have a spiteful disposition, and darts from the branches at the eyes and faces of passers-by, often inflicting a sharp, though not poisonous wound.

I once formed the acquaintance of a girl who acted as “snake-charmer” in a museum. She astonished the public by going into a glass cage filled with snakes, which she handled and played with. She held the snakes in her lap, twined them about her neck and arms, and made free with them in many ways. She told me confidentially, that while these snakes looked as if they were terrible monsters, they were the most of them fangless and of harmless varieties. Those which were of poisonous species had been rendered safe playthings by having their fangs cut out.

The poisonous snakes have a poison sac or bag, which empties into a little duct or canal running along each side of the jaw to a large tooth or fang; by an action of the throat muscles, the serpent presses poison from the sac through the canal, and ejects it through the tooth as it bites. By cutting out the fangs the snake is rendered harmless, but only for the time being. The poison apparatus reproduces itself, and unless the process of growth is watched and the fang again cut out, the lately harmless snake may suddenly become harmful, and the snake-charmer be fatally wounded.

“The poisonous ones do not keep from biting because I charm them, or because they like me,” said the snake-charmer frankly. “Snakes never know or like anybody, so far as I can see; it is only that they can’t bite, that’s all. Folks think the snakes love me because they coil about me. It is only because I am warm that they do that. They are cold creatures, the snakes, and they like the heat of my arms, neck, and lap, that’s all.”

Among the snakes without poison glands are the pythons, the species that watches over and incubates its eggs. The mother python coils herself round and over the eggs, and for three months retains this position, until the little ones are hatched. She seems to be very fond of her young, and is the model mother of all the snake tribe. The larger pythons eat birds, cats, rabbits, hares, frogs, and dogs. They seldom meddle with human beings in any way. The sand snakes are nearly related to the pythons and are also non-poisonous.

The largest of all snakes, the boa-constrictor, belongs to the same sub-order as the python, and would be harmless if it were not for its rabid appetite, which tempts it to devour every living thing which it sees, while its great strength enables it to master almost any prey. Thus it will wind about a man, an ox, or a horse, and crush such victims to death, and feed upon them at leisure. The boas and most of the pythons are natives of hot countries.

A man who had long been a sailor gave me an account of the capture of a boa-constrictor, which is now in the London Zoological Garden. This sailor wanted to go to the interior of the island of Java, to see the country. When he landed in Java he met an English gentleman, Sir Henry ----, who was fond of travel and hunting, and had come to Java intending to capture some wild animals to present to the Regent’s Park Zoological Garden. A rajah of Java had invited Sir Henry to go to his bungalow in the central part of the island, and have a big hunt. Sir Henry offered to take the sailor along to aid him. They caught a tiger and several other beasts, and I will describe to you the way in which they captured a boa-constrictor.

They found a place in the forest, where the crushed grass and brush showed that a boa frequently passed by. Then at evening, they fastened a goat to a tree that its crying might attract the big snake. For two or three nights something carried off the goat, or it managed to escape. Finally they chained the goat. The hunters were watching and waiting some way off. At last they heard cries from the goat, which cries the natives said meant that a snake was coming. Then all was still, and they said that meant that the boa was eating the goat.

Accordingly they hurried to the spot. There, stretched out his full length, lay a huge boa; he had swallowed the goat, which distended the front part of his body so that he would have had hard work to move, even if he had not been held by the chain attached to the swallowed goat. This chain was fastened to a plane tree, and held the boa fast, as he could not disgorge the goat. The boa does not dismember or chew its food; it crushes it, and swallows it whole. Then it lies quiet, and waits for the mass to digest. Thus the boa was captured by the chain down its throat.

Several strong natives now leaped upon the monster’s tail and held it down. Others laid a long, thick bamboo on each side of the boa, from head to tail. Then with strong, new ropes they wound and bound the snake to the bamboos until he was stiffly imprisoned. Next they released the chain from the tree, and left the end dangling from the snake’s greedy mouth. Then a dozen or more strong natives picked up the bamboo sticks, with the great serpent between them, and marched off to the coast, where a cage had been prepared for it on an English ship.

The sub-order which includes the greatest snakes in the world, as the boas, pythons, and anacondas, includes also some of the very smallest, tiny creatures not over an inch in diameter and a few inches in length. These snakes exhibit every variety of color and marking,--green, gold, crimson, white, black, brown, violet, yellow; they gleam in the splendors of the rainbow.

I remember once on a crest of the Lehigh Mountains I was looking up some of the lower vertebrates, when, happening to glance over the side of a big stone on which I was sitting, I saw the most beautiful little snake that I could imagine. It was coiled up in the sun, and was only about ten inches long, and less than one inch in diameter. It was of a vivid emerald green color, and as the sun touched its tiny scales they seemed bordered and powdered with gold. The under part of its body paled to pea green and silver white, a few dots of red glittered about its neck and shoulders, like coral beads. Its wide-open mouth was reddish and bordered with yellow. Its tiny tongue played like lightning to and fro, caught the sunshine, and gleamed as if dipped in gold. Alarmed at seeing me, and afraid to leave its retreat on the sunny side of the stone, it erected its head with a low hiss, darted it from side to side, and seemed to try to frighten me away.

Almost as pretty as this little dweller on the mountains are some of the water snakes, which are often iridescent, and change in tints of red, purple, crimson, orange, and green. Good swimmers and fishers, they pass a happy life among the lily-pads.

LESSON XLI.

WITH A HOUSE ON HIS BACK.

And through the mossy wood-paths slow I see the silent tortoise go. The flecks of light, the shadows dim, The springing flowers, are naught to him; The dry pine needles are his bed, His house is always o’er his head, The fungus is his table spread.

Several years ago, walking one morning in a wood in Pennsylvania, I surprised a wood turtle or box tortoise, eating his breakfast. The season had been rainy and many varieties of large fungus had attained a prodigal growth. The woods were full of what are popularly called toad-stools; many of them were of the diameter of a tea-plate, and stood five or six inches high. As I walked through the wood I observed that many of these fungi had been gnawed off evenly, as if cut by a knife, leaving only the central pillar intact. What had done this? I soon discovered; for moving noiselessly over the mossy earth, I came to a little opening, where grew one of the finest of these toad-stools, and there was a wood turtle taking his breakfast.

The animal had already made one or two rounds of his plate, and was eating with praiseworthy deliberation. He would bite off a mouthful of toad-stool, chew it carefully until he had extracted all the juice, then open his mouth and drop out the chewed fibre, and take a fresh mouthful, not biting inward toward the stem, but breaking off the morsel next beside that which he had just eaten. He paced round and round the fungus as he took his bites, eating his plate like Æneas and the other Trojans,[75] and as the fungus decreased in regular circles, the circle of chewed fragments increased. In three-quarters of an hour he had eaten all the disk of the fungus to the stem part, and then he walked slowly off to look for another.

I found the crumbs that had fallen from his vanished table quite dry, nothing nutritious being left in them. Why he rejected the central part of the fungus and the stem, I could not imagine, but he left it in every instance. If he came upon a decayed or wormy portion of the toad-stool, he did not “bite round it,” but abandoned it altogether, and went for a fresh one.

At another turn in this wood, I found, under a pine tree, the shell and entire skeleton of a turtle, from which every particle of flesh and muscle was gone. The animal had died on his bed of pine needles, and his decaying body had been devoured by ants, which had left a delicately white skeleton. The little horny jaw had a very close resemblance to the beaks of certain birds.

The turtle is a four-legged reptile, with a short, stout, oval-shaped body, encased in a bony frame or box, from which the animal is able to protrude its head, legs, and tail, and into which it can withdraw them at pleasure. In different varieties of turtle, the size and shape of the box-like covering varies. The box tortoise can retire into its shell and close the under part into a groove of the upper edge, and thus form for itself an impregnable retreat; but there are varieties only partly encased by the shell, which cannot bring their heads and feet under cover.

The turtle wanders about with its house on its back as the snail does, and against its enemies it can close its doors and be emphatically “not at home.” Turtles have keen sight and hearing; they have no teeth, the jaws being simply cased in horn, like those of birds. Many of them are capable of making loud sounds.

Turtles lay eggs which are buried in earth or sand, and left to themselves to hatch. The sea turtle is the largest variety, and will sometimes lay as many as two hundred eggs in a single heap. Sea turtles weighing a thousand pounds have been caught in tropical lands. Turtles of five or six hundred pounds weight have been captured on the United States coast.

In the four species of marine turtles, the feet are flat and fin-shaped. In one the shell is rather leathery than horny. Some of these marine turtles are carnivorous, living on fish, mollusks, and crustaceans; others are strictly vegetarian, feeding only on roots and various sea-weeds. The flesh of some of the sea turtles is rich and delicious, and a favorite and costly article of food; but of some others the flesh is coarse and strongly flavored, so as to be quite uneatable. The eggs are always sweet, good, and wholesome food. The shell of the sea turtle is a valuable article of commerce, boxes, cases, handles for knives, jewelry and other delicate ornamental things being made from it; it is susceptible of a high polish, which brings out clearly its rich brown and golden shades and markings.

Next to the marine turtles, come the fresh-water or river turtles. These eat both animal and vegetable food. They enjoy lying in a bed of mud, their heads lifted above the surface of the stagnant water, their long necks moving snake-like to and fro as they take mouthfuls of air. The fresh-water turtles are generally gregarious in their habits, large numbers of them being found together. They are fond of lying in the sun on logs or banks, near the water, into which they promptly slide at the first hint of danger. They are timid creatures, but if caught will snap and bite furiously.

Salt and fresh water terrapins are a variety of turtle. Some scientists distinguish the turtle from the tortoise thus: the turtle is a marine animal, does not hibernate, cannot draw its head and feet inside its shell. The tortoise never goes to sea; can draw itself entirely within its shell, though only the box tortoise can close the shell fast when so withdrawn, and finally, the tortoise hibernates. Some of the best and latest writers on the subject call all these animals turtles, giving the name tortoise to the box tortoise of the wood.

Clumsy as turtles appear in their box-like covering, they can walk rapidly on land, are climbers of some distinction, and all of them can swim. The head, neck, and legs of a turtle are of a uniform color,--bronze, blackish green, or deep brown. The shells or boxes are beautifully marked, glossy, ribbed, ridged, or carved, and made up of closely united many-sided plates, fitted upon a thickened, lighter-colored, uniform plate. This shell is not brittle and lime-like, as the shells of mollusks, but is more like horn.

In general, the shell or flat covering of the under part of the body is of a lighter color than the upper case, being light brown, yellow, or cream color, with yellow lines dividing the plates, and bordering bands of red, yellow, or purple. The upper shell is usually of a very dark color, marked and lined with darker and lighter tints, and often with a bevelled yellow edge.

The painted turtle receives its name from the beauty of its many-colored shell. The spotted turtle, often called the wood turtle, is distinguished by fine yellow spots sprinkled over its black back. The turtle which I saw feasting on the fungus was the common box tortoise. This box tortoise prefers dry woods, and dislikes the water. It is a long-lived creature. Some specimens have been known to live over a hundred years. A box tortoise that I had, ate meat, insects, and bread and milk from my hand, but if I put berries in its mouth it wiped them out with its front foot used hand-wise, in a very funny way. When it wanted to get away from the balcony, it crawled along the edge looking over, its neck outstretched; when it seemed to decide to go over it suddenly drew itself close into its shell, and making some quick jerk while quite shut up, over it went, came down safe in the grass, and walked away. I watched it do that many times and was never quite sure how it flung itself “overboard” after it was safely shut up.

The snapping turtle is a common variety. It has a box or shell too small to close over it and hide it completely. To make up for this lack, it has a bold and hasty temper, and snaps vigorously when disturbed.

The gopher is the turtle of the southern pine countries. It is a large, strong animal, with a shell fifteen inches long. These gopher turtles live in troops, a number of families digging their dens or burrows near together. The entrance to the den is about four feet long and expands into a spacious room. In each burrow lives a single pair of gophers. Gophers’ eggs are as large as pigeons’ eggs, and the eggs and flesh are prized by the negroes as food. By day gophers stay at home, by night they wander out and devour yams, melons, corn, and other garden produce. They dislike wet, and go indoors when it rains.

A near relative of the gopher is found in Europe, and is often kept about the house for a pet. If it can find its way into a garden in the autumn it digs a hole and hibernates, coming forth in the spring. A friend of mine in London had one of these animals which lived in the kitchen. It was fond of creeping into the fire-place and getting under the grate, where it would lie until the hot coals and ashes dropped upon its back and burnt its shell. When winter came this little animal wanted to take its long sleep, and dug so persistently into boxes, baskets, drawers, and closets that finally a box of earth was given to it, into which it worked its way until out of sight, and there stayed until April. It ate potatoes, carrots, turnips, and bread and milk, which it specially liked.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] The harpies, we are told, frightened Æneas by saying he would be so hungry that he would eat his plate. But as the Trojans at one of their meals used big cakes of bread for plates, the prophecy was harmlessly fulfilled.

LESSON XLII.

A REAL LIVE MERMAID.

“The waters pushed, the waters swelled, A fisher sat near by, And earnestly his line he held, With tranquil heart and eye; And while he sits and watches there He sees the waves divide, And lo! a maid with glistening hair Springs from the troubled tide.”

--GOETHE, _Trans._

When I was a child I was greatly fascinated with tales of mermaids, fabulous damsels who lived in the ocean. They had beautiful faces and arms, and long, pale green hair, which they combed with golden combs, and decked with sea-weeds and pearls. They swain like fish, and sang most sweetly. When I learned that mermaids were only creatures of fancy, and did not really exist, I felt as if I had been robbed of friends. A few years later a bronzed, wrinkled old fisherman restored to me my mermaids as real creatures, even more interesting than the sea maids of myth. And so there is a real live mermaid!

Where shall we find her? My old sailor said he first met her some miles out at sea, in the latitude of Florida. She was swimming along at ease, her head held above water, and she carried on her arm her baby, whose head she stuck up above the waves.

Was she beautiful? Had she large, lovely eyes? No; her face was something like that of a cow, but instead of the large black eyes of a cow, she had tiny eyes, smaller than those of a pig. But were not her arms beautiful? No; her arms were flat, short, somewhat of an oval shape; in fact, they were flippers rather than arms, though she had free use of the elbow, shoulder, and wrist joints. She had no hands, no fingers, but at the end of each flipper were three small, flat nails. Had she long, waving hair? No; she had a few coarse hairs about her face, and a scanty covering of very fine, short hairs over her body. Could she sing? Unfortunately all real mermaids are dumb. Finally, was she of a sea-green color? Not at all; her skin was very thick, and of a dark gray, finely wrinkled all over, very like the skin of an elephant. Her upper lip was divided into two deep lobes, and she had no lower limbs, but instead a tail, with a wide, strong fin.

Oh, an ugly, horrible creature! By no means; on the contrary, as amiable, mild, gentle, playful, kindly a creature as ever drew breath. A fish, of course! Indeed not: a mammal; a mammal of the sea.

The class mammalia has orders of animals that live in the sea; other orders of creatures that live mostly in the air, and very many other creatures that live on the land, and some that spend their lives under ground. Any animal that suckles its young is a mammal, whether a swimming, flying, walking, climbing, or burrowing creature. The sea mammals are the whales, dolphins, porpoises, dugongs, and this mermaid.

Our mermaid is called by sailors a “sea cow” from the shape of its head and face; a “river calf” from its size and habit of living in rivers; the most common and best name for it is that given it by the early Spanish colonists, the manatee, or handed animal, because it can so skilfully use its fore limbs or flippers.

Once there were manatees in many different parts of the world. They were numerous in the Indian Ocean and in Behring Sea; but they have been so recklessly slaughtered that now the creature is nearly unknown, except a few in Africa near Cape Verde and the Cape of Good Hope; some few along the coast of South America, and those that inhabit the rivers of Florida. The manatee, like the buffalo of the Western plains, is likely soon to be extinct.

The manatees of the Eastern hemisphere seem to have been much larger than those of Florida.[76] Eight or ten feet is the usual length of the American manatee. Efforts have been made to raise the animals in captivity, but they do not thrive. One was kept sixteen months in the aquarium at Brighton, England, and was fed on lettuce, cabbage, turnips, thistles, and dandelions. Let us now look at the animal in its favorite home, the Santa Lucia River in Florida.

Manatees live in droves or herds, and prefer shallow to deep water. When they move up the river they keep well to the centre of the stream, as they are very timid. They rest near to the banks where they find plenty of grass and lily-pads to shelter them. Manatees come from the West Indies and Central and South America to the Santa Lucia River, to rear their young among the thick vegetation. They arrive early in May and remain until late in the autumn.

Here is our manatee; let us take a good look at it. It has a gray wrinkled skin; no fin on the back; a stiff, thick, shovel-shaped tail, with a flat tail-fin; a moderate sized oval head with small eyes; a very small under lip. The nostrils are two slits of a half-moon shape; the ear is a little orifice, set not far behind the eye. The sight of the manatee is good, but its hearing is something extraordinary. Probably no other animal has ears so acute. If a blade of grass or a leaf drops into the water the manatee hears it and darts away, for it is as timid as it is harmless.

To the shoulders of the manatee are attached the flipper-like arms, which it uses so readily. When in shallow water the creature supports itself on the ends of the flippers and the tail, and thus raising its body it moves slowly about the sandy river bottom. Its food is purely vegetable, and it is interesting to watch it eat. If you notice a caterpillar, or a silkworm feeding on a leaf, you get a notion of the method of the manatee in eating, and its use of its odd double lip.

Hold out a cabbage leaf to a manatee which has been kept in a tank as a pet--for though timid they are affectionate when kindly treated; the gentle beast extends its head toward the leaf, and in so doing parts the lobes of the upper lip, leaving a wide gap. As soon as the leaf is within this space, the lip lobes come together and hold the leaf firmly with their bristly surfaces. Then the lobes draw backwards, and the leaf is thus pushed into the mouth where there are some twelve teeth to chew it. The mermaid has in all twenty-two teeth, but some fall out before others come, so it generally has twelve in its mouth at one time.

While the manatee lives constantly in the water, it breathes air through its nostrils into its lungs. To secure air it comes to the surface of the water once in every three or four minutes. When it thus rises it will blow like a whale and send a spout of spray and water twelve or fifteen feet into the air. It seems to enjoy this blowing; it also enjoys rolling itself on the sand and fine pebbles in the bottom of the stream. It rolls and plunges to cleanse its skin; it is its way of making its toilet. After a roll the manatee rises to the surface, parts its lip lobes, gives a good blow, draws in all the air it can, and returns below.

Lily pods and pads, bananas,[77] a coarse river grass called manatee grass, are its favorite food. A large manatee will eat three bushels of lily-pods in a day.

The manatee is a strong, swift swimmer, and dives with wonderful agility. In its favorite haunt, the Santa Lucia River, the mermaid’s babies are born among the lily-leaves, and in that green and pleasant nursery, the clean white sand for their bed, the fragrant lilies rocking on the water, the butterflies and dragon-flies darting out and in among the shadows, and the birds singing and sporting above them, they live for several weeks. When they are quite small their mothers carry them around in their flippers if they seem tired or do not go fast enough, but the manatee baby can swim as soon as it is born.

Being now very scarce, the manatee is largely increased in value. One fifteen feet long would cost two or even three thousand dollars. A large skeleton is worth a thousand dollars. The hides and flesh have been so much sought after that the creatures have been hunted nearly out of existence. Formerly the Indians made light, strong, and handsome canoes of manatee skins.

The manatee is very hard to kill; being timid, it darts away at the first alarm, and its swimming speed is exceedingly rapid if it is frightened; its thick skin, remarkably large, strong bones, and a thick layer of fat under its skin protect it in a great measure from injury by a bullet. The general method of securing the animal is to drive it into a very large, strong net. One side of the net is sunk to the river bottom, the other rises to the top of the water, and is then drawn about the hiding-place of the manatee. After a little training it will come when it is called, will eat from one’s hand, and likes to be petted and to have its head rubbed.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] The rhytina and dugong are not, as some suppose, manatees, but animals closely allied to true manatees.

[77] When in captivity.

LESSON XLIII.

GREAT WHALES ALSO.

“So far I live to Northward No man lives North of me; To the East are wild mountain chains, And beyond them meres and plains; To the Westward, all is sea.”

--LONGFELLOW.

Many people think that a whale is a huge fish, the largest of the fish class. This idea is entirely wrong; a whale is not a fish, but a mammal. It belongs to the same class as the cow, sheep, horse, lion, monkey, and man, because all these widely differing creatures are born alive, and not in an egg, and when young are nourished by their mothers’ milk. The mammalian class, distinguished in this way by suckling the young, is divided into many orders, and to one of these, the cetacean, or whale order, the whales give their name.

The whale is the largest of all living mammals; it is a mammal of the sea, and has a fish-like body because its home is constantly in the waters. A whale is entirely helpless when cast upon the land; it is unable to move itself, or to find anything to eat. Out of water it will soon die, but not because it is unable to breathe air, as is the case with the fishes.[78]

The whale breathes air through its nostrils into lungs; it does not have gills, and therefore while in the water it must constantly come to the surface for air. Thus the principal motion of the whale in the water is up and down, coming to the surface, and then seeking the depths. To aid it in this motion the whale’s tail expands sidewise or horizontally, and not up and down or vertically, as do the tails of most fishes which chiefly swim straight forward, or in large curves.

Let us look at a whale. Its body is cone-shaped; the head is very large, sometimes one-third of the animal’s entire length; there is no notch of the body to mark the neck;[79] the body tapers to the tail, which is widely expanded on each side into what are called flukes, and thus becomes a very strong propeller. Just behind the head we find a pair of fore limbs, called paddles or flippers. These are flat and oval, and have externally no marks of joints, fingers, or nails. But if you examine the skeleton of a whale, you will find that this limb is divided into arm and hand bones, very much like those of your own arms and fingers. There are no external signs of hind limbs, but in some kinds of whales we find in the skeletons some small, soft bones like a hint of legs.

The skin of the whale is smooth, of a dark gray or black color, and without hair except a few bristles around the mouth. Under the skin is spread a layer of several inches of fat, called blubber. This layer of blubber serves to keep the whale warm, and also to render its huge body light, so that it will float easily; it also keeps it from being readily injured. Most whales have a low, narrow fin down the centre of the back, to aid them in keeping a proper position in the water.

Let us now examine more particularly the whale’s big head; it has small eyes, and a pair of tiny holes for ears. These ears are close behind the eyes, but the nostrils are usually placed on top of the head. In nearly all varieties of whales we find teeth inside the large mouth. In one very important species there are no teeth, but instead, we find a large number of horny plates. The whale’s mouth opens very wide, and the lips are stiff and immovable, not soft and flexible like our own.

Most people have read of the _blowing_ or spouting of the whale, when it sends a double stream of water from its nostrils up into the air. The general idea is that the whale takes this water in at the mouth, and then spurts it up into the air through the nostrils, as a matter of amusement. This is not true. When a whale comes to the surface he takes in a large amount of air, and returns below; most of this air becomes changed to steam or vapor, as the animal remains below for some time. Then the whale comes up for more air, and the first thing is to free his lungs of the heated, vaporized air that is already in them. The animal drives this air violently from its lungs through the nostrils, and rising into the cold atmosphere it is at once changed to spray by condensation. The whale frequently begins to blow before it reaches the top of the water, and so drives surface-water up with the vapor which it expels from its lungs.

Fishes, we know, have very little red blood; reptiles are cold-blooded animals; but whales have plenty of warm, red blood. They are very strong and active creatures in spite of their unwieldy size. The lightness afforded by their blubber, or sheath of fat, and the large amount of air they can contain in their great lungs, and the strength of the tail with its wide flukes,[80] enable them to dash through the water with amazing swiftness.

Most of the “true whales” are flesh-eaters, with very fierce appetites. They devour fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, and even seals or other whales. They need enormous quantities of food to support such large bodies, for a Greenland sperm whale is sometimes seventy feet long, and from twenty to thirty feet thick through the shoulders. To secure the needed amount of food, the vast mouth opens wide. In some whales a man can stand upright between the extended jaws.

In the “right whale,” which has no teeth, the mouth is lined along the upper jaw with long, narrow plates or flakes called baleen, of which whalebone is made. Every piece of whalebone is a strip of this baleen, from within the mouth of a right whale, and every such piece has a wonderful history behind it, for it has been floating, perhaps for many years, through the cold Arctic seas. It could tell us rare tales if it could speak.

These plates of baleen are sometimes seven yards long, and the mouth of one whale has about seven hundred plates. The chief food of this right, or whalebone whale, consists of very small brown crustaceans, one of the numerous crab family. These creatures are so abundant in the northern seas that they lie in banks many leagues long and several feet thick. The whale feeds on these beds of living animals, as a cow browses on grass or hay.

Whales are mild and inoffensive in disposition, unless greatly irritated by wounds and attack. They seldom quarrel among themselves, but are playful and affectionate, while the mother shows intense fondness for her young. Whales are social animals, and go in herds, or groups; one is seldom found alone.

In the spring the whales pair, and move off together to find some place where they may rear their young. As they travel together they seem very lively and happy; they stop to feed, and indulge in frolics, leaping out of the water, tumbling over and over each other, turning somersaults, and striving to show what they can do. As they come to inlets or deep, quiet bays, which may afford them a safe home, the male whale goes to explore their fitness, or to see if the spot is already taken by some other couple. This is the spring house-hunting of this famous family, and while Mr. Whale enters to make inquiries, Mrs. Whale waits outside. Finally, an abode is selected, and here the mother remains, until in autumn, one, or at most two, little baby whales are born. Compared with their big mother they are small, but compared with human children they are giants.

To her little ones the mother whale gives devoted attention. She suckles them for about two months, at the end of which time they are able to feed on crustaceans and small fish. Then the mother sets off with her family to complete their education by taking them abroad in the water-world. The baby whales can swim as soon as they are born, but not so fast as their big mother, and she carefully accommodates her pace to theirs. If danger threatens, she places herself between it and her child, and hastens the little one’s flight by pressing against it, and so shoving it through the water.

If there is need to go still faster, she sometimes grasps the young one between her flippers and her neck, and so swims with all her might, carrying the little one off. If attacked, she will sacrifice her life rather than abandon her baby. When the baby whale is attacked, the usually mild mother shows great fury.

A male whale also will defend his mate if she is attacked, swimming round and round her, blowing, lashing the waves with his powerful tail, and trying to overturn boats with his mighty head; he will die rather than desert her. Such noble, loyal qualities shown by these animals deepen our regret that through promiscuous slaughter, they are rapidly diminishing in numbers, and are likely to disappear from the Northern hemisphere. Sharks, narwhals, and white bears are enemies of the whale, but none of these brute hunters are as reckless and destructive in their warfare as men.

The sperm whale is more nearly allied to the porpoise than to the right whale. From the sperm whale, oil, ivory, ambergris, and spermaceti are obtained, but no whalebone. The spermaceti, from which this whale derives its name, is found in a cistern-like reservoir over two yards deep, placed near the brain cavity at the back of the whale’s head. This reservoir contains many gallons of spermaceti.

Dolphins, narwhals, and rorquals, all belong to the whale family. The rorquals have larger fins than the other whales. The blue whale is the largest of all the family.[81] The humpbacked whale is shorter and thicker than the other varieties, has a queerly shaped back fin, and large flippers.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] See Nature Reader, No. 3, pp. 243-4.

[79] Neck or nick, or notch. Notice etymology.

[80] A _fluke_ is either half of the tail of a cetacean, so called from the resemblance of the tail to an anchor, as the teeth of an anchor are called flukes.

[81] This _Balænoptera sibbaldii_ gets its common name from its bluish gray color; it is supposed to be the largest of living animals.

LESSON XLIV.

THE STORY OF A SEAL-SKIN COAT.

“And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhal and the seal. Ha! ’twas a noble game! And like the lightning’s flame, Flew our harpoons of steel.”

--H. W. LONGFELLOW, _in The Discoverer of the North Cape_.

[Illustration: GARMENTS OF PRICE.]

The Arabian legends tell us of a magical carpet, upon which one can seat himself, and then, wishing to be in a certain place, the carpet rises into the air, and safely and swiftly carries him where he would be. When Catherine showed to me a costly seal-skin coat, her Christmas gift, I proposed to her that we should use it as a magic carpet, and flying to the home of the fur seal, should trace the coat through all the changes of its history.

“Let us go at once!” cried Catherine.

“If we go now,” I said, “not a seal shall we behold, for they are now far off at sea. It will be useless to make our trip before the fifteenth of May.”

On the fifteenth of May, accordingly, Catherine and I spread out the seal-skin coat and began our journey. We went northwest, crossed the high Rockies, left behind us the new State of Washington, moved still west by north, and finally arrived at three small islands in Bering Sea, called the Pribylov Islands, from a Russian who discovered them in 1786. “Our fortune is good,” said I to Catherine; “this is just such weather as seals like. They delight in cool, moist, foggy days, so that the sun is obscured, and casts no shadows. This is the usual weather on the Pribylov Islands, where the sun shines clearly but few days in the year. Seals spend about eight months in the water, and four months chiefly on the land. When they land they choose a dry locality of hard sand and pebbles, shelving toward the sea, so that no water or slime shall be left on the ground, for if their fur becomes matted with mud it falls out at once.”

“Here we are at St. Paul’s Island; date, May eighteenth; day, mild and hazy. We stand on a ledge of rock, and to the left of us we see five or six giant seals walking. They come up on the rocky beach and calmly take their places on large rocks and sit looking seawards; they are watching for their mates, friends, and neighbors to arrive. We need not fear to approach them; unless attacked, even the largest seal is entirely gentle. His eyesight is good, but only for moderate distances, but his sense of smell is as keen as the hearing of a manatee. If we keep on the side to which the wind is blowing, so that he cannot detect us by his sense of smell, we may approach close to him.

“Look at him now. He is seven feet long, and weighs four hundred pounds. He has a small, round head, the skull bones are thin and light, and the brain fills almost the entire skull cavity, for the seal is a highly organized and very intelligent animal. The eyes are large, of a bluish hazel, and very beautiful; the nose is like that of a Newfoundland dog, but the mouth has not loose skin like the dog’s mouth, but firm, well-outlined, human-like lips.

“Open the mouth and there are large, sharp, dog-like teeth. A gray moustache ornaments the upper lip, outdoing Victor Emmanuel’s in length, and sweeping down upon the breast. At the back of the round head are two small, pointed, drooping ears. The neck and shoulders are very large and heavy; the tail is merely an apology for a tail, being but four inches long. The seal has four limbs or flippers. The front flippers are hairless, blue black, ten inches broad at the body, eighteen inches long, and taper to a point. There are no fingers, and the arm and the forearm are embraced in the body, and hidden under the skin and blubber. In fact, the flippers are only hands, the arm part remaining enclosed in the covering of the chest. These fore flippers are used as feet, the seal stepping on them with alternate up and down movements, and carrying his head three feet from the ground, in an erect and graceful attitude.

“The hind flippers are very odd. They are much longer than the front ones, light, slender, and ribbon-like; they look like a pair of empty, wrinkled, black kid gloves. They are twenty-two inches long, and at a little distance from the ends have each three strong nails. The heels are horny and projecting, and on them the seal rests the hinder part of the body, for the upper part of these hind flippers, bones, and joints are embraced in the body, as are the fore limbs. At every other step the seal pauses and gives his hind flippers a sidewise fling, as if to keep them out of harm’s way.

“Having slowly walked up the beach, this seal, who is an adult male, seats himself and surveys the ocean, his front flippers hang idly down, but he fans himself in the most comical style with his long, ribbon-like, hind flippers. He is exceedingly fat; under his skin lie several inches of blubber, and well it is for him that he is so provided, for now that he has come out of the water, he will not return there nor taste food or drink for the next three or four months.[82] All the time that he is on land he maintains an absolute fast. In the water his food is fishes, crustaceans, and squids,[83] of which he eats enormous quantities.”

“But the fur!” cries Catherine, “the fur! I see nothing on this beast like my lovely, soft, dark cloak. This creature is covered with coarse gray hair.”

“Step a little closer, my Catherine, and let us examine into this important matter. The seal wears two coats: the outer one is this coarse, grizzly hair, the inner one is a short, close, soft, elastic, silky fur. This fur is darkest on the back and shoulders, lightest on the flanks and breast. This adult male seal does not have that glossy nut-brown, or that delicate light gray or cream-colored fur which belongs to young seals, and to the females, and which presently we shall see prepared for your use.

“These big seals have come out of the water to make ready for spring housekeeping. Each one selects a dry, sloping place which will suit the mothers and their little ones, and this home he is prepared to defend against all intruders. About the fifteenth of June the mother seals begin to come out of the water. They are obliged to come out and nurse their little ones on land, as even a human baby will not be more helpless in water, or drown more quickly than a baby seal.

“As we watch the mother seals swimming toward land and walking up the beach, we shall see that they are only about one-sixth of the size of the big seals we have been examining. They are of a much more slender and graceful make, have remarkably handsome heads and necks, and are not encumbered with the mass of blubber under the skin. They do not need the blubber, for they go regularly into the water to feed, and even remain away two or three days, leaving the male seals to keep house and defend the children. Meantime these big seals fast and use up their store of blubber to maintain their vitality.

“The big seals meet the mothers coming up the beach, and escort them to their homes and to comfortable seats among the rocks. The mother seals sit down and fan themselves with their flippers, and croon or sing. They turn their pretty heads artlessly from side to side, and croon to each other. No mother seal will stay alone for a minute; from six to fifty mothers always keep together in one home.

“The big male seal has four distinct calls or notes. He has a chuckling whistle whereby he converses with the mother seals; a loud, angry roar for any other big seal who meddles with his family; a low growl, with which he talks to himself; and a sound like a cat spitting, when he is alarmed. Mother seals have the crooning song for their mates, and a bleat like a sheep for their little ones. Baby seals cry just like little lambs.

“A mother seal seldom has more than one baby or “puppy” at a time. These mothers are exceedingly gentle, patient creatures, and very quiet. On shore they fan themselves, croon, and curl up for cosy naps, but the big seals are nervous and restless, and never sleep when ashore more than a few minutes at a time.

“Baby seals cannot swim. They make their ba-a-a-ing cry all the time that they are awake. Their eyes are wide open at once; they are not blind at first, like kittens and puppies, but they do not know their mothers from any other seals. The mother seals know their own children by their cries, though to human ears their looks and cries are all exactly alike. No matter how far off the puppy may roll, no matter how many scores of puppies are heaped into a warm, furry ba-a-a-ing heap, the good little mothers can find each her own. Perhaps the sense of smell aids them as well as the bleating cry.

“The mother seal is not a very anxious nurse. She pays no heed if any one picks up her baby, carries it off, or treads on it. She leaves it for two or three days at a time, while she is off in the water enjoying herself; meantime the little one sleeps and ba-a-a-s, and does not seem to suffer from hunger. When the mother returns from her excursions she curls down by her baby and gives it plenty of rich milk. These baby seals have dark blue eyes, but the eyes become browner after a while. All seals have long, thick eyelashes.

“As the baby seals grow older they begin to roll about the shore, which from much trampling has been worn into hollows filled with tide-water. These hollows are muddy and the seal mothers do not wish their babies to get into them. The naughty little seals, like frolicsome children, trot to the puddles and go into them a dozen times a day, and their mothers pull them out.

“As the little ones reach the age of three months they go nearer the water’s edge in their rambles and venture in. At first they cannot swim, and clamber out, sputtering and spitting and crying ba-a-a at the top of their lungs. Still, after a little nap, they go back and try it again and again, and in a few days they know how to swim; but they are a full year old before they know how to dive, swim, fish, roll, and sleep in the water, as well as the adults.

“In swimming the seal carries his long hind flippers stretched backwards to serve as a rudder, and uses the fore flippers for propulsion. When the little ones can swim they are weaned, and they betake themselves to the water to stay, and are able to catch squids and crustaceans for themselves. They are three or four months old when they thus go to the water to find a home, and they do not come back for two years. A seal can sleep as comfortably on the water as on shore. To sleep it turns on its back, holds its nose and feet above the surface, and takes a profound nap, gently rocked by the waves.

“While the young seals are on shore the big seals defend them and take care of them so long as they keep at home. If they wander away, even though they do not go out of sight, they pay no attention to them.

“By the middle of September the homes are broken up and the seals return to the water to remain until May or June. Now, my Catherine, that we have thus observed the seals in general, let us look after the making of your coat. The fur came neither from a big male seal, a baby seal, nor a mother seal. Then from what seal did it come?

“Let us, on a July day, turn our eyes from the crowded rookeries, or seal homes on the rocks, and at some distance off on the shore we shall see thousands of other seals which the Indians call ‘bachelors.’ These are seals from two to six years old, young males fresh from the water, but not allowed by the big adult seals to approach the homes on the rocks. They do not seem troubled by the decree of exile; they are in good temper and high spirits, and they have very jolly times at play. They roll and tumble and gambol as do kittens and puppies. They lie on the grass, shut their eyes, and roll to and fro; they sit and fan themselves; they stretch out and gently comb themselves with the nails on their hind flippers; they take naps; they run races; they play leap-frog over each others’ backs, and snort and roar with great hilarity.

“These young seals have the long, coarse over-hair, less gray than the big seals, and the soft, rich under-coat is silken and of a delicate brown color. The down and feathers on a duck’s breast are arranged much as the hair and fur on a seal. In August seals begin to shed and renew their coats: in June and July they are at their best. These, then, are the seals from which the skins for commerce are to be taken, and in June and July it must be done. They are so docile and gentle that it is very easy to kill them.

“The seal-killers are Indian natives of the islands who understand their work. A number of these natives go to a herd of bachelors, and passing around them just at daybreak ‘cut out’ from one to two thousand, just as a shepherd ‘cuts out’ a drove of sheep from a great flock. Surrounding and gently driving them, they turn them to the slaughter-houses. Seals walk easily and quickly, and they go as they are driven with the docility of sheep. Arrived at the houses, they are allowed to lie down and rest and cool for half an hour.

“Then an expert man goes out with several others armed with clubs. The expert points to different seals and says: ‘Don’t kill him, he is too young.’ ‘Don’t kill that one, he is shedding his coat.’ ‘Don’t kill that one, he is too old.’ ‘Let that one go, he is sick.’ And so on. When he has thus pointed out the exceptions, the men with the clubs lift the clubs high and bring down a crashing blow on the skull of each seal, killing it instantly. As the seal is killed it is dragged from the group, laid on its back, and bled at once. If this is not done immediately the body heats very soon and the fur falls off.

“Then expert skinners strip off the skin, making cuts around the snout, tail, and flippers. Next the skins are carried to the salt-house, piled on each other in bins, ‘fur to fat,’ in layers like piles of paper; salt is thickly strewn on them, and they are held in place by heavy planks. In two or three weeks they are taken out, rolled in bundles, two skins together, corded tightly, and shipped to London to be dressed. Now, my Catherine, we must leave the Pribylov Islands, and go to London to follow the fortunes of your seal-skin coat.[84]

“In the seal-skin dressing establishment the skins are carefully heated to loosen the coarse hair and not disturb the fur; then the hair is very carefully combed out, leaving the soft, silky fur, which is at once dyed to a rich, even brown color. The difference in the price of seal-skin garments arises chiefly from the greater or less labor and skill expended in combing and dyeing them.

“The process of preparing the skins is this: they are stretched on frames or beams, and the flesh side is well scraped; the skins are next washed to remove grease, and are then dried, tacked on frames to keep them smooth. When dry they are again soaked and well cleaned with soap and water. Next the skin is dried by heat, and while still warm the coarse hair is combed out, the skin being kept warm and pliable, so that the hairs will not break. Once more being dried, the surface of the fur is shaved evenly. Then the skins are made soft by a fulling mill, or by being covered with sawdust and then trodden upon until pliable.

“After all this the skins are examined, mended where torn, and two skins are laid together fur to fur, with paper fastened between. In this way they are shipped to the United States. It requires three skins to make your coat, my Catherine; if the style demanded very long coats it would require five. Being safely at the furriers in the United States, the skins are cut into coats and muffs and collars of the latest fashion, beautifully lined with quilted silk, and you, my Catherine, walk forth defiant of the cold, clad in the soft, warm garments which a year ago were swimming, rolling, plunging, feeding, sleeping in Bering Sea.”

FOOTNOTES:

[82] See U. S. Govt. Reports of the Pribylov Fisheries.

[83] A kind of cuttle-fish.

[84] Many seal skins are also dressed and dyed in Germany.

LESSON XLV.

A FLYING MAMMAL.

“Silent they rest in solemn salvatory, Sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse.”

--JEAN INGELOW.

We have been studying together these wonderful creatures, the manatee, the whale, and the seal. These are not the only mammals that live in the sea; the sea-lion, porpoise, dolphin, and others are also sea-mammals. In a book like this we cannot discuss all the animals of any large order, and now we turn from these huge citizens of the sea, to learn something about a small but equally curious flying mammal, a citizen of the air,--the bat. It is a little beast, universally disliked, even feared; let us hope to clear away some of the foolish notions which surround it, and place it where it belongs, among harmless and interesting animals.

One evening last summer, as we sat on the veranda, a dark, winged creature with an uncertain, zigzag flight swept above us. “Oh! Oh! the horrible thing,” screamed Mabel, putting her hands to her head; “he will get tangled up in my hair. Bats always do that.”

“Mabel,” I said, “I don’t think you ever saw a person in whose hair a bat had become tangled. I never did. It would be as unusual an incident as to find that a toad had hopped into your pocket.”

A few minutes after we saw in the moonlight, on the gravel walk, a small, dark object, moving in the most clumsy, hobbling fashion. “It is that bat,” shouted Rex. “Where is a stick? Let me kill him.”

“Let him be,” I said. “I can tell you some very delightful things about him.” In fact, I told Rex such wonders that he became interested in bats, and happening the next day to find a young, half-grown bat in the smoke-house, he concluded to take it to school, to ask for further information from his teacher. To do this, he put it in a pasteboard box, with the cover left partly off to give the creature air. The little bat cried, and the mother bat came flying in haste to her child. As she could not get into the box to her baby, she clung to the outside with her head to the opening, making little encouraging squeaks; and thus Rex actually carried both bats to school. The teacher put them into a small cage, and fed them bread, milk, and sugar for several days; then one evening they were set free.

Now let us see what Rex learned about bats. The bat has a number of names; the English peasants call it a “flitter-mouse,” from its jerky, uneven flight. The Germans and Dutch give it the same name; the Swedes call it a “leather-mouse,” from its parchment-like wings; Goldsmith used to call it “a mouse with wings.”

The bat is a four-legged, hairy creature, with teeth set in sockets in the jaws; it suckles its young; in addition to these characteristics of a mammal, it has wings and truly flies. Were it not for the wings it would have been put in the order of insect-eaters, but its wings have secured for it an order for itself. The name of this order is the “wing-handed,” or “hand winged,” and to it belong the bats, vampires, and flying foxes, all of them truly bats, under varied names.

The lemurs, flying squirrels, and a few other animals have extensions of the skin mantle-wise along the body and legs, to bear them up for a little in the air, as they make long leaps; but they do not really fly. The bat, on the contrary, has good wings, and flies. The bat reminds us a little of that winged reptile which was in the ancient world long before men appeared on the earth. That was a reptile with a large, skin-like wing; a bat is a mammal with two skin-covered wings.

The structure of the bat’s wing is very different from that of a bird.[85] The bones and muscles of a bird’s wing are set with stiff feathers, which can be folded together as a fan is furled. When spread they form an elastic instrument for beating the air, and sending the bird forward, upward, downward, wherever it may choose to direct its flight.

The body and head of the common bat are very like those of a mouse; it has bright black eyes, a mouth full of tiny white teeth, a covering of gray or reddish hair over all its body. A mouse has a long, scaly tail; a bat has a very short tail; the ears of a mouse are small and pointed; the bat’s ears are large. The nostrils have a fold or ruffle of skin about them, which is supposed to improve the sense of smell.

The fore legs, or rather the arms, are very wonderful. If we had the skeleton of a bat we should see that the bones of the arm and forearm are long and slender, and instead of two bones in the lower part or forearm, there is but one which represents the smaller bone in the human arm. The bat’s hand has five distinct fingers. The first of them, the thumb, is short, but the other four are very long, much longer than all the rest of the bat, and they are also very slim. Upon these fingers, as upon a frame, the thin, leather-like double membrane of the wing is stretched on each side of the extended hand, enclosing the finger-bones, thus the two arms have become a pair of wings.

This membrane is extended from the fingers to the sides of the body, then passes back to the hind legs, and covers them up to the ankles, and so round enclosing the little tail. Thus the bat has an enormous spread of wing for its size. The long forefinger of the hand extends to the tip of the wing, and the middle finger runs close to it, making this part of the wing strong. When the bat closes its wings the bony frame shuts together like the wires of an umbrella, and the skin hangs in folds as the covering of the umbrella hangs in folds between the closed wires. The thumb of the bat’s hand is left free, and the nail is a large, hooked claw.

The flight of a bat is strong and tireless, but it is not in straight lines, nor in easy curves or sweeps like that of a bird; it is restless and flitting, with sharp turns and jerky motions.

When the bat alights on the ground, as it but seldom does, it shows itself a genuine quadruped. It draws its fingers together, throwing the membrane of the wing into folds, and so the free, strongly clawed thumb projects, and on this claw, and the hind feet which are free to the ankles, the bat walks, but as you might expect, its gait is very awkward.

The bat is a night-flying creature. Its sight is better suited for night than daylight; it prefers twilight, or dark caverns. Like the owl and the moth it sleeps by day, and comes out after sunset. As it eats insects it frequents shady places where insects can be found; during the day it rests in cool, dark places where there is some rough surface to which it can cling. Thus, dark woods, hollow trees, old barns, abandoned houses, church towers, and caves are the choice haunts of the bat.

From its habit of hiding, its night-flying, its uncouth motion, its mouse-like body and unfeathered wings, which are so unhandsome that artists have copied them when they wish to show demons, witches, dragons, harpies, and evil angels with wings, the poor bat has derived its unlucky reputation, and the general dislike with which it is regarded. In truth, there is scarcely any creature so frail, defenceless, harmless, friendly, gentle, and timid as a bat. It has no weapons, and its only hope of defence lies in its quick, erratic flight.[86]

During the day in its dark shelter, the bat sleeps in a strange fashion. It hangs itself up on some projecting stone or twig, as you would hang a cloak on a peg, or an umbrella by the crook on the handle. It hangs head down, using the large hooked claws on the hind-feet to cling by, and queer as the position is, it seems to suit very well. Bats are social in nature, and live in large flocks or bands. A cave or tower may have its walls quite covered with them, hanging close together. Sometimes, especially in winter, they cling one to the other in a curious, compact mass.

Bats hibernate, or sleep, through cold weather, hiding themselves in tree-caves or other dark places early in the autumn, and coming forth when the spring is fully opened and has brought their insect food. When the bat goes abroad it spends all its time in hunting for insects. Our common bat is a most useful creature, destroying thousands of insects which would be harmful to our garden and fruit trees. In a season, a bat eats myriads of gnats, midges, moths, beetles, cockroaches, crickets, and grasshoppers.

The great bat, or noctule,[87] has a spread of wing of twelve or fourteen inches, while its body is only three inches long. Its mouth can open with a wide gap like that of a swallow. When it catches a beetle, it has to hold it to its mouth by its thumb claw while it eats it, as a boy would eat a pear. To bring the thumb around to its mouth the bat must partly close the wing; as it does this it drops a foot or so; then it gives a stroke or two of its wings as it chews the bite it has taken, and rises again; then it takes another bite of beetle, and so on. All the time it is hunting it gives shrill squeaks or cries.

Not only is the free thumb of the bat’s hand useful for holding food, but it is of great service in walking, as its method is to extend the arm, catch hold of the ground by the claw of one free thumb, and pull itself forward; then make the same motion with the other arm and thumb, the free feet following these movements. Thus it proceeds in a zigzag, moving first to one side and then to the other. Although this is such an awkward method of progress the bat can run rapidly.

Bats are not great travellers; they haunt the same locality year after year. The mother bat has seldom more than one young one at a time, and this is born early in the spring, before the bats begin to fly abroad. The baby bat is smaller than a small bean, is blind and hairless. The mother bat folds up a part of her wing membrane into a cradle or nest for this tiny creature; she seems very fond of it, smooths and brushes it, and keeps it warm and clean.

The little creature has from the first strong claws, and uses them to hold fast to its mother. For several weeks this little one clings to its mother, is fed by her milk, and when she goes out to hunt she carries it along and never lets it fall. Even after a young bat can fly and catch insects for itself, it keeps near its mother, and she watches over it, and timid as she is by nature, she will die in its defence.

Bats are found in nearly all parts of the world, and may be divided according to their food into insect-eating and fruit-eating bats. The insect-eating bats belong generally to cold or mild climates, and the fruit-eaters to the tropics. The fruit-eating bats are much larger than the insect-eaters, and they are destructive and troublesome, while the common bats are useful.

The four most famous bats are the common bat, which we have described; the long-eared bat, which has ears so enormous that they are as long as the creature’s entire body; the flying-fox, a bat of India, very lazy, and having a fox-like face. Flying-foxes are found in India, Africa, and the Oceanic Islands. In Java the fruit trees must be protected with bamboo nettings, to prevent the depredations of these creatures. The fourth notable bat is the vampire of Southern and Central America. These are very large bats given to blood-sucking, and while their bites and blood-sucking do not occasion death, they are very troublesome to both men and beasts.

One of the most wonderful things about the bat is its ability to guide itself in flying in perfectly dark places, and even when it is blind. A blind bat flies just as swiftly and safely as one with good eyes. It seems that the sense of touch is remarkably acute, so that even without contact, they can tell when a solid body, even of small size, is near them. Although the bat does not seem to need its sight to direct it in flying, its eyes are remarkably keen, as is shown by its insect-catching. So the phrase “as blind as a bat” is a poor comparison.

Bats can be easily tamed and become very friendly, eating insects from one’s hand, coming when called, perching on an extended finger, and seeming quite at home in a room. In captivity they eat insects, raw meat, sugar, cake, and bread soaked in milk.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] Compare Nature Reader, No. 3, Lesson 28.

[86] When alarmed by being caught and held, bats sometimes bite, but the bite is not very severe.

[87] Common in England.

LESSON XLVI.

ORDER OUT OF CONFUSION.

“O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities, For nought so vile that on this earth doth live, But to the earth some special grace doth give.”

--SHAKESPEARE.

We have now studied some of the mammals of the sea, and a family of mammals which spend a large part of their time on the wing. Let us look next at a species which lives entirely underground,--the mole. In describing the mole-cricket[88] and the “duck-bill,” we noted certain resemblances between these creatures and the moles, taking it for granted that moles, being common and widely distributed creatures, were well known. But in point of fact, what do we know of the structure and habits of this interesting little animal?

The mole is very nearly as unpopular as the bat. Gardeners complain bitterly that the moles destroy their lawns, by raising long furrows which disturb the grass, and that they ruin vegetables and cereal crops by eating the roots. I think the mole must plead guilty to the first charge; it does injure the lawns by raising its unsightly furrows, but it does not eat roots or other vegetable food. It sometimes draws down into the ground stalks of oats, wheat, or barley, to line its nest; it also serves some long-stemmed vegetable in the same way; it also cuts off the roots of vegetables, now and then, if it finds them in its way as it digs its underground galleries. But the food of a mole is animal--earth-worms, beetles, larvæ and pupæ of insects--and thus the mole offsets its errors and turns the scale of opinion in its own favor, by being exceedingly useful as a destroyer of insects harmful to vegetation.

Looking out on my lawn one morning, I saw that it was badly marred by mole ridges. Tom, the gardener, went over them with the roller, but the next day they were as bad as ever. “Tom,” I said, “you must catch that mole.” That afternoon Tom came into the library, carrying something which looked like a pretty fur purse, held by a short cord.

“I’ve caught him,” he said, “and as you like such things, I have brought him in alive.” So the pretty drab purse was the mole. Alive! He did not look it. Alarmed at his situation, as Tom carried him by his short, nearly bare tail, the little beast had drawn his head, hands, and feet closely into his soft, silky coat, and exhibited only a rigid, fur-covered cylinder. I watched him a few moments, Tom keeping perfectly still, and presently I saw a little red nose and a pair of pink hands stretched out from the fur, as if feeling for something to take hold of. Tom laid his prize on my table, and I proceeded to examine him, as we shall now do.

The common mole, which claims the short and pretty name of _talpa_, has a cylindrical body about six inches long and three inches thick. There is no apparent neck. The head tapers quickly off from the line of the shoulders to a little snout of the shape of the tip of a blunt lead-pencil. This snout is about a quarter of an inch long, flexible, of a deep red, tough skin. Under this snout is the mouth, which is very wide and furnished with twenty-two sharp white teeth on each jaw. The two upper and two lower front teeth are long and lap over; the others are smaller and pointed.

Once people said that the mole had no eyes, and needed none, as it lived in the dark underground. But it has two very small, jet black eyes, deeply hidden in its lovely thick fur and covered by a fold of skin. The nostrils and ears of the mole are almost as closely hidden, but internally well developed. We may say then that the creature has sight, somewhat limited and imperfect, but sense of hearing and smell very keen. We can see how wise it is that these delicate organs, the eyes, ears, and nostrils, should be well protected by the thick fur, as the mole burrows underground.

The body of the mole is entirely covered with soft, close, even, fine fur of a deep drab or mouse color, nearly black. No lady dressed in plush was ever more richly arrayed than this little burrower. The tail is short and scantily covered with hair; the legs are very short and strong, and set close to the body. The fore limbs or arms are furnished with broad, flat, five-fingered hands, set with the palms turned outward, so that as the mole digs, it throws the earth to the right and left. The palms of these hands are very singular; they are somewhat callous, of a rose pink, and the fingers are webbed up to the strong, curved nails.

When the animal is removed from the earth the snout and palms soon become peculiarly dry, and this evidently causes pain and irritation. The hind-feet are only about one-quarter the size of the hands. They are webbed, but are not so strong, and have more slender nails. The broad front feet, or hands, fitted for digging, indicate the underground life of the mole; the webbing of the hands and feet suggest, what we find to be true, that the mole is a good swimmer. Indeed, it often goes from the mainland to islands in lakes, rivers, or ponds to dig out its home.

Wet or stony land does not suit the mole, because it cannot dig its rooms and galleries in such soil. Fertile fields that have been cultivated and loosened by spade and plough are its favorite haunts. It is very wonderful that such a small, soft creature can move and disturb so much earth.

Every mole lives alone and builds for itself an elaborate and comfortable home. This house consists of a central dome, where the earth is well packed and beaten to prevent the percolation of water. A bed made of leaves, grass, and vegetable stems is placed in this room. Around this dome wind and radiate seven or eight long galleries or tunnels, which break off and pass into each other in a curious fashion, so that there is no direct line of approach to the dome. It is evident that this labyrinth of galleries is designed to make the dome safe from intruders, and to enable the mole to elude pursuit.

The mother mole has from four to six little ones at a litter, and she has two litters each year, one in April and one in August. Thus we see that moles multiply rapidly. The mother mole is very careful of her children. The large domed room is their nursery, and she makes them a soft bed. The little moles grow quickly, and in a few weeks are weaned, as they have become able to feed themselves. When they leave their nursery the digging instinct develops in them, and they at once set about making a dome and galleries, and going to housekeeping each one for itself.

While the fur of the mole is exceedingly pretty the skin is so small and delicate that very little use can be made of it, though sometimes it is used for gloves, purses, bags, caps, and mittens. In England, where moles abound, men called “mole-catchers” go about with spades and traps and catch and kill the moles.

The mole is the most hungry and ravenous in proportion to its size and weakness of all mammals. Hunger seems to be a madness with it. Moles eat snails and are very partial to frogs, but oddly enough they will not touch toads. A mole will eat the dead body of a bird, mouse, or small snake, if it finds these in its rambles. If two moles are shut up together without food one will kill and devour the other. Moles drink very freely.

These creatures seldom appear at the surface of the ground. Now and then they will come out of their galleries by night, but strong light is painful to them.

Except for attacking each other when imprisoned and very hungry, moles are quiet and gentle in disposition. No creature, however, is harder to tame and keep in captivity, not because of any violence or uneasiness of disposition, but because of its dislike for daylight, and its need of darkness, coolness, and the slight moisture of the earth below the surface. A mole shut up in a room or box seems seized with a terrible homesickness for its underground haunts, pines away, and soon dies.

It has been stated that a mole will die if left without food for ten or twelve hours, and that moles eat only animal food, refusing all vegetable substances. Though individual moles may have been found of which this is true, the statements are incorrect as applied to _all_ moles. The mole which Tom brought me, I put into a thick pasteboard box with some air-holes cut in the cover. I put in the box a little flat pan of water, and Tom insisted upon giving the animal some grains of corn and wheat. The mole did not touch these grains, but drank some water. After it had fasted sixteen hours, I gave it boiled rice, which it refused. In two hours more I gave it bread soaked in milk, and of that it ate a little.

After twenty-four hours of captivity, I gave it cracked oats, uncooked, but soaked in milk. This it ate heartily. After it had been thirty-six hours in the box, I let it out in the room, and it at once ran about looking for some place to dig. I threw a large woollen mitten on the floor, and that it soon found, crept into it, thrust its head into the thumb, and remained quiet for some hours. I kept it for several days, during which time it drank water, ate oats soaked in milk, and also took a little raw meat. It pulled and tore at the carpet and upholstery, seeking for places to burrow, but remained for the most of the time in the mitten.

A mole’s skeleton is a nice curiosity for a museum, and is easily prepared. A mole can be quickly and painlessly killed by a sharp blow just back of the head. After it is skinned, lay the carcass near a large hill of ants, or at the edge of a pond, where there are plenty of tadpoles, and soon only the clean white skeleton will remain. Wash this in hot water and ammonia, and dry it in the sun; then mount it carefully on a little board covered with black, which will set the small white bones in good relief.

These studies of swimming, flying, and burrowing mammals suggest to us the diversity which exists in the great class of mammalian animals. On the ground, and under the ground, in the water, in the air, on the trees, we find the mammals, and at first it might seem impossible to bring order out of this confusion, and divide these almost innumerable creatures into their proper groups. But a careful study of these varied forms has enabled scientists to divide them according to their most peculiar characteristics, putting orders, sub-orders, and families together according to their closest relationships. So, when we study these animals, we are able to decide upon their names and places in the class mammalia. And like all else that is orderly, this classification becomes presently clear and simple.

Let us now set the various divisions of the vertebrate animals in a table which can be easily understood, and will be found convenient for reference. The vertebrate or backboned animals are divided into--

Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals.

The mammals are divided into various orders beginning with the monotremes, the lowest form of mammalian life, and closing with man, the highest form. So our table stands--

Monotremes: duck-bill, echidna.

Marsupials: having a pouch for the young--kangaroo, opossum.

Edentata: having no teeth on the front of the jaw; sloth, etc.

Cetacea: fish-like creatures, eating animal food--whales, dolphins.

Sirenia: fish-like creatures eating vegetable food.

Insect-eaters: mole, hedge-hog, etc.

Hand-winged creatures: the bats and vampires.

Rodents, or gnawers: with chisel-like front teeth; rats, beavers, etc.

Ungulates or hoofed {even-toed; as cow, sheep, deer, etc. {uneven-toed; as hog, horse, elephant, etc.

Carnivora or flesh-eaters {seals, sea-lions. {dogs, cats, bears, lions, foxes, tigers, etc.

Primates {Quadrumana, or four-handed, as apes and monkeys. {Homo (man).

FOOTNOTES:

[88] See Nature Reader, No. 3, p. 123.

LESSON XLVII.

A REMARKABLE FAMILY.

“He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.”

--S. T. COLERIDGE.

In our last lesson we enumerated the orders into which the mammalian class has been divided. Of six of these orders we have already studied representatives. We have found in the duck-bill and two other animals, the only species of the order of monotremes; the opossum and kangaroo furnished us examples of the pouched animals. The third order mentioned is that of the edentata, or tooth-lacking creatures, and some of its families we will now discuss.

The name toothless is only partly descriptive of this group of mammals, because while some of them are really without any teeth, there are others that have the enormous number of ninety-eight. But all of the edentata are destitute of any teeth on the front of the jaws; there is always a vacant space there; and besides this, all the teeth are more or less imperfect, and have only one root. That vacant space in the front of the jaws, and the peculiarity of all the teeth being exactly alike, are constant characteristics of the edentata.

All of these animals are slow and clumsy in their movements, show very little intelligence, and have sharp, strong claws on all their toes. They are all natives of warm countries, and are most numerous in South America. None of the living edentata are more than four feet long including the tail, and some are no larger than rats. But from rocks and shell-beds, deep in the earth, have been taken fossil remains of this family, showing creatures which lived far back in the early periods of earth-building, some of them as large as an ox, or a rhinoceros, or an elephant.

The first of the edentata which we shall examine is called the sloth. It is a South American animal, and was for a long time classed among the monkeys, on account of its tree-climbing habits, and the long hair which covers its body. On the ground, to which it seldom descends, the sloth is the most ungainly of beasts. Its hind legs are very short, and its arms or fore legs are very long; its claws are strong and curved, and the toes are buried in the skin up to the nails, so that they can make no separate movements. Their leg joints turn outwards, and when the creatures try to walk on the ground, they are compelled to double up their fore legs and go on their knees. Moreover, these sloths cannot bear strong light. When placed on the earth in the sunshine they seem to be crippled and blind.

The sloth has no tail, and no external ears. The eyes are small and sleepy; the motions of the creature are slow; its intelligence is very limited; in length it is about thirty inches, and the body has the general proportions of a monkey. Is this beast, then, a poor deformity? Or, in the noble plan of nature, is there some place which it exactly fits and fills? Let us see.

Now we shall place this queer little animal on its native trees. At once all is changed. Why, this sloth is all grace! You could not see a more beautiful climber. The short hind legs, crooked claws, long forearms, are just suited to tree life, for clambering safely and lightly from bough to bough. The sloth, thanks to its claws, is as safe hanging back downwards as a bird is safe in its nest. Those weak eyes are suited to the soft shadows of the leaves; the subdued light on the tree is just right for it.

The sloth is a vegetable feeder; as it climbs about the tree it nibbles off the sap leaves and the delicate new bark and twigs; hanging by the feet and one hand, it reaches out the other long arm, and picks fruit as dexterously as any school-boy; then holding the fruit to its mouth it eats it daintily. In museums or zoological gardens the sloths are furnished with a tree to climb upon, and are fed on fruit, vegetables, and bread and milk.

The next of the edentata which we shall observe is the armadillo, one of the most singular of animals. At first sight you would feel sure it was not a mammal, but a reptile of the lizard or turtle family, for instead of being covered with hair or fur, it wears a heavy case or armor of large scales. These scales, or bony plates, are arranged in close bands about the body. The plates over the head, neck, and tail are immovable, but those on the centre of the back will lap, so that the creature can roll itself into a ball, bringing the nose, feet, and all parts of the body under protection of its horny armor. The under part of the body has no scales, but is covered with hair.

The armadillo has short legs with five-toed feet, each toe being furnished with a strong claw. The ears are very large; the eyes are small; the nostrils are set at the end of the long, pointed snout. The smallest of the species is about the size of a rat; the great armadillo is a yard long, and has in its widely opening mouth ninety-eight teeth.

Instead of living on trees like the sloth, it burrows in the ground; the rooms and galleries which they fashion for themselves are like those of the mole, only larger. The strong, curved claws are used to tear up the ground, and they do this so effectually that the animal will disappear beneath the surface in a very short time.

When undisturbed, the movement of the armadillo is a slow, a dignified march, suited to its short legs and heavy armor. When pursued, if it does not have opportunity to dig a burrow, it can run, and has been known to outstrip a man in a race. When attacked the creature prefers to tear up the earth and sink away out of sight; if it cannot do this, it rolls itself into a ball, and trusts to its armor.

As it paces about, it feeds daintily on vegetables and fruit; it waits under trees for the fruit to fall, and then nibbles at it very contentedly. Still it does not reject animal substances, not even carrion, for when it discovers a decaying carcass it feeds upon it; it also devours insects whenever it can get them.

A third curious specimen of this order is the ant-bear, which is chiefly found in Brazil and Guiana, but is not unknown in the other parts of South America. The ant-eater or “ant-bear” is sometimes a yard and a half long not including the tail. The most conspicuous part of this creature is its tail, which is plume-like, and carried over its back like that of a gray squirrel, but is very large, so that it overshadows most of the body, like a great canopy of fine, loose, waving hairs. The body is covered with long, coarse, dark hair; the legs are long and very strong, and the claws are deeply hooked and singularly powerful.

The ant-bear’s head is small, and tapers from the neck to a long, curved snout, at the end of which are the nostrils. The ears are small and placed far back on the head; the eyes are small and set half-way down the snout. This snout is well worth looking at; it is really a tube, with a small, round hole at the tip, through which the ant-eater can thrust out his tongue. The tongue is long, slim, round, worm-like, and covered with a sticky secretion. The ant-bear has no teeth.

The chief food of this odd animal is ants, and let us see its method of feasting. During the day, while ants work abroad, this animal sleeps; but it wanders out at night when the ants are in their hills. The ant-eater puts his long snout into a hill, and thrusting his sticky tongue into the rooms and galleries, gathers upon it ants and pupæ. Then he draws his tongue into the tube, swallows his prey, and repeats the performance. In like fashion the ant-eater will capture upon his slimy tongue other small insects.

This animal is mild in disposition, slow and listless in its motions. It prefers damp forests, or reedy marshes, for its home. Though quiet, it is not timid, and if attacked by a fox, wild-cat, or jaguar, it will defend itself, and often squeeze the enemy to death, or tear it to pieces with its powerful claws.

Owing to its lack of teeth and its tube-shaped mouth, it is evident that the ant-eater cannot chew food, but in addition to swallowing insects whole, it can take food by sucking the juices, as beetles and some other insects do. In the London Zoological Gardens were two ant-eaters, which not only ate insects when they could get them, but sucked up raw eggs and bread and milk, and would also suck the blood from raw meat.

The mother ant-eater is a fond and attentive parent. She has but one little one at a time, and she carries it about seated on her back. She never leaves it for a moment.

There is one variety of the ant-eater which lives on trees. This animal seldom comes to the ground; it eats fruit and the insects which frequent trees, and drinks the dew and rain from the leaves. It is a pretty creature of about the size of a small squirrel. This tree ant-eater does not carry her baby about on her back; instead, she finds a hole in the tree where she makes a nest of leaves, and there she puts her child to sleep while she hunts about for food. Every few minutes she returns and puts her little head into the hole to see how her baby is coming on.

In India, China, Java, and the Malay Islands, there is one of the edentata called a pangolin, which wears an extraordinary coat, from which it is sometimes called “the scaly lizard.” This coat is composed of large, leaf-like, pointed scales, set in the skin much in the fashion of the nails on your fingers. These scales lap over each other like roofing-slates, and extend from the nose to the tip of the tail. A strip on the under side of the body is bare of scales.

Like the armadillo, the pangolin can roll itself into a ball if it is in danger. Also like the armadillo, the pangolins have short, strong legs, strong, curved claws, and dig burrows. But they are not so fond of burrowing as the armadillo, and if they find a hollow in a tree they take that for a home. While the armadillos are short and thick in body, and much like a tortoise in shape, the pangolins are slender and lizard-like.

The pangolin has no trace of teeth, and its method of feeding is like that of the ant-bear. The head is short and the tongue less slim than the ant-bear’s, but the manner of procuring food is the same. It has the largest and brightest eyes of all its order. There is no external ear, but hidden under the scales on the head there is an ear opening.

When the pangolin wishes to defend itself, it can erect its scales as the porcupine does its quills, and so it looks very fierce. All the motions of the pangolin are slow except the play of its tongue, which darts in and out with great rapidity.

From a study of these animals we see, that while the edentata differ remarkably in many respects, they are alike in these particulars: There are no teeth on the front of the jaws; their toes have strong claws; their motions are very slow; their intelligence is small; they are inhabitants of South America or the eastern part of Asia.

LESSON XLVIII.

THE GNAWERS.[89]

“And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling, And out of the homes the rats came tumbling: Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers!”

--R. BROWNING, _Pied Piper_.

In our chapter on the whales we have given examples of the fourth in our list of the mammalian orders. The manatee stood as the representative of the next named order, that of the sirenia. Then came the order of the insect-eaters, or insectivora, and little Mr. Talpa, the mole, was described, though perhaps he is not more interesting than his relations, the shrews and the hedgehogs. The seventh order in our list is that of the wing-handed creatures, which is occupied entirely by the bats, with their first cousins, the vampires and flying foxes. These animals might have been set with the edentata, if they had not indulged in the peculiarity of wings.

Our eighth order is the rodentia, or gnawers. No order of animals is better known, or has more common examples. Hark! in the stillness of the house at night you may hear a rush and a scuttle through the walls, or a fine nibble in a corner; these sounds proclaim the presence of two very unpopular rodents, the rat and the mouse.

As I was sitting one day last summer in the shelter of a great rock, a little animal appeared from a maple wood some hundred yards distant, and with long hops came over the hillside towards me. When about thirty yards from me, he stopped--he had just discovered me. This was our most beautiful rodent, the large gray squirrel. I concluded that bright as his eyes are he could not see so far as I could, or he would have noticed me when he came out of the wood. A little while after, as I still sat silent and motionless, another beautiful rodent came from an adjacent tree, and, deceived by my stillness and the color of my linen gown, he came and sat down on the hem of the gown, and holding himself erect on his haunches began to eat a nut. This last was the pretty chipmunk, wearing a reddish coat, and having black velvet stripes down his back.

In introducing these four animals, I have already indicated the creatures to be found in the order of rodents, or gnawers. One of its most famous and ancient members, the beaver, we have already described in a chapter by himself. The order of gnawers is one of the most extensive of the mammalian class. All of its members are small, or of moderate size. They are distinguished by having only two kinds of teeth, incisors, or cutting teeth, and molars, or grinding teeth.

The incisors, generally two or four on the front of each jaw, are long, stout, and curved. They are covered with enamel on the front only, and so the back part of the tooth wears away faster than the front part, and thus constantly preserves a sharp, knife-like edge, which is as serviceable as the best tempered chisel in cutting any kind of wood. The incisors never wear out. They grow from the base just as fast as they wear off at the tip.

The rodents are furry, four-legged animals, with nails or claws upon their toes. They have large bright eyes, sharp, well-set ears, and all their senses are very acute. They are also distinguished for intelligence, and generally for amiable dispositions. Among them are to be found the rat, mouse, squirrel, rabbit, hare, musk-rat, dormouse, jerboa, chinchilla, porcupine, ground pig, marmot, and many others. The porcupine and his family offer an exception to the other rodents in wearing quills among the fur.

The rodents differ widely in their homes; some, as the squirrels, live in trees; others in forms or lairs on the ground, as rabbits and hares; some, as the beaver and musk-rat, are chiefly aquatic. The rodents also differ in their mode of life. The squirrels, rabbits, hares,[90] and some of the mice, work and eat by day and sleep at night; others, as the rats, guinea-pigs, and porcupines, are principally nocturnal animals, coming forth from their homes about sunset.

In general the rodents feed on roots, vegetables, seeds, nuts, bark, leaves, or fruit; but some of them, as the rats, are fond of meat, and indeed devour anything in the shape of food, and are as ready to eat carrion as fresh diet.

All rodents are easily tamed, and are often kept in captivity. Rabbits, squirrels, and guinea-pigs have always been favorites as pets; even the rats and mice, in their white specimens with red eyes, have not been despised.

[Illustration: THE NIBBLERS.]

The rodents include some animals with valuable fur, as the gray Siberian squirrel, and the chinchillas of the Peruvian and Chilian mountain ranges. The rodents are generally very prolific, and to the great number of their progeny is due their continuance, in despite of the multitudes of them killed every year by their enemies. The hunter, with his trap and gun, seeks the rodents for fur or for food; hawks, vultures, and owls prey upon them; dogs, cats, and foxes constantly lie in wait for them. Rats also fight among themselves, and prey upon each other, for the victor feasts upon the vanquished. Rats are also hunted for their skins, as thousands of dozens of kid gloves have been first on the backs, not of kids, but of rats.

As instances of the rapid increase of rodent families we may note that the mother rat has several litters of young each year, and ten or twelve at a litter. The fieldmouse has twelve little ones a year, but all of the same litter.

The harvest mouse is the smallest and perhaps the prettiest of all the rodents. Its back is tan color, brightening on the sides and legs, while all the under part of the body is snow-white and silky. It is not much over an inch long, has bright eyes, and a long, hairy tail; it lives upon grain, and constructs one of the prettiest of nests for a home. Laying together, with their long leaves, three or four stalks of wheat, oats, or barley, the harvest mouse weaves of grass and leaves a round, beautiful nest, about as large as that of a titmouse. The nest is shaped like a ball, and has a small opening on one side. In this nest the tiny mother places her little ones. She climbs up the wheat stems by means of her sharp claws, but comes down as one slides down a rope, holding on by one hand. This round nest is the summer home of the harvest-mouse. By the time the grain is ripe, some wise instinct teaches her to remove her household to a new dwelling. She either makes a burrow in the ground, or builds a nest in a corn-crib or hay-rick.

Another curious mouse is called the economic mouse, because it lays up grain and seeds for winter use. In this it resembles certain other rodents, as the beaver, which lays up a store of bark, the squirrel, which hoards nuts, and the hamster, which lays up grain, beans, peas, and seeds. Sometimes fifty or a hundred pounds of grain and dried seeds have been taken from the burrows of these animals. The squirrels, and the “pouched,” or earth-rats, are provided with cheek pouches for carrying home their winter store of provisions. Others convey their booty in their mouths.

I had at one time a pair of chipmunks, which made their home in the foundation wall of my house. A row of wild cherry trees stood near the lawn, and I found that the chipmunks laid up a large store of the cherry pits, making many journeys daily to and from the trees, and carrying off in their cheek pouches a number of pits each time.

The season was dry, and one morning I had poured a pitcher of water over some plants near my porch, when one of the chipmunks passed among them on his way to the cherry trees. He stopped, sat on his haunches, took one of the wet leaves in his hand, pressed the sides together to make a trough for the moisture, and holding it to his mouth drank the water in the most comical fashion possible. He drank from five or six leaves, while I stood watching him. When he went his way, I filled a large saucer with water and placed it near the plants. This was presently discovered, and both my little chipmunks hereafter drank and washed regularly at this dish.

I made a practice of testing these pretty little fellows’ knowledge of nuts. When I gave them cracked hickory nuts, they at once sat down, picked out the meats, and ate them. Cracked nuts were evidently not fit for storage. Sitting on their haunches, holding the cracked nuts to their mouths with their hands and using their incisors for nut-picks, these creatures were a pretty sight. When I gave them whole nuts, they tested them, evidently by weight, to see if they were sound. Sound nuts were promptly carried to the storehouse; poor nuts were dropped. I never knew these animals to make a mistake. I cracked the rejected nuts, and never found one of them good.

When walnuts or other hard-shelled nuts that have been emptied by squirrels are examined, and the cleanness and accuracy of the cutting is noted, we get some notion of those beautiful cutting tools, the incisors. Likewise the wood chiselled by the beaver bears witness to the excellence of the tools bestowed upon this order of animals.

The gnawers are found in most parts of the world; the deep snows of Siberia are tracked by the agile feet of the squirrel, the hamster, and the economic mouse. Cold Norway has hordes of rats, as well as squirrels and rabbits. Italy is the only country free from the ravages of the fieldmouse. In English gardens the dormice love to make their homes. Rats and mice live wherever men live. Africa possesses the sand rat and the brilliant mole rat, which wears a scarlet coat shining with the iris tints of the rainbow. The jerboas, with their short fore legs, and their curiously long hind legs, jump about in Tartary, Russia, and the African forests. South America has a monopoly of chinchillas and guinea-pigs. The porcupine is an inhabitant of three-quarters of the globe. Once the beaver built its dams and burrows over nearly all North America, and now every woodland abounds in squirrels and rabbits; almost every river-side has its musk-rats; every barn and nearly every house is infested with rats and mice. Thousands of hares are every winter brought into the English markets. In fact, wherever you go you can hear the busy teeth of the rodents, gnawing their way through the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Chapters 48, 49, and 50 give but brief glimpses of numerous well-known mammals. The object has been merely to call attention to peculiarities of structure and other points of interest, and thus encourage the pupil to seek more extended information in larger works.

[90] Hares are given to wandering about at night, and porcupines often feed and travel by day.

LESSON XLIX.

ODD TOES.

“A thousand horse, and none to ride! With flowing tail, and flying mane, Wide nostrils never stretched by pain, Mouths bloodless of the bit or rein, And feet that iron never shod!”

--BYRON.

One great order of mammals, is called the ungulata, or hoofed-order. The ungulates are animals well fitted for terrestrial life; they are vegetable-eaters, though now and then one of them, as the hog, may display some appetite for animal food, and sheep and cows will eat fish, especially if salted. No order is more familiar to us, as it contains all our best-known domestic animals, and those wild animals most popular in all menageries or zoological gardens, as the elephant, camel, and giraffe; and finally all those animals most ardently pursued by hunters, as the deer, antelope, and chamois. The order ungulata embraces two animals so widely different from the others, that they have been classified as sub-orders by themselves; one of these species is that of perhaps the largest land animal, the elephant; the other is nearly the smallest of all the ungulates, the hyrax, or cony. The hyrax is the cony mentioned in the Bible, and a verse of Scripture very well describes it: “The conies are a feeble folk, they have their dwellings in the rocks.” For a long time these little animals were a puzzle to zoologists, and finally Professor Huxley set them off in a sub-order all to themselves. Why were they so difficult to arrange? Let us see.

[Illustration: THE THICK SKINS.]

In the first place there are very few of them, and they are all found in Africa, near the Cape of Good Hope, except one species living in Syria. They are small creatures, rabbit-like, about eighteen inches long, covered with thick fur interspersed with bristles. First, they were classed with the rodents, because of their rabbit-like appearance. But their teeth turned out to be like those of a rhinoceros, and their skeletons like those of the hippopotamus family, and therefore they were placed among the ungulata. Soon there were other claims made upon them; their ribs and backbones were like those of that famous insect-eater, the sloth. These queer little beasts seemed to belong everywhere, and to fit nowhere, and they were set up by themselves.

The conies are gregarious animals; they live in colonies. They have no means of offence or defence, and so they make their homes in holes in the rocks, and stealing out from their stony citadels, they eat grass, fruit, seeds, and roots. As they go forth to forage they leave a sentinel perched on a high rock, to watch for danger and give the alarm. In Africa the lions are their greatest enemies, and as soon as the warning of an approaching lion is given, the conies dash off swift as the wind, to hide in small crevices, where their foe cannot follow them.

The other peculiar animal among the ungulates, which demanded a sub-order all for itself, is the elephant. Of this creature there are but two species now living, the Indian and the African elephants. They are classed by themselves on account of the proboscis or trunk, which no other animal possesses, and which a little boy described as a “big be-front tail, so that the elephant could walk backwards or forwards all the same.” But this is a most unhappy description of an elephant.

The African elephant is the larger species, being sometimes eleven feet high. Its ears are much larger than those of the Asiatic species, are differently set, and there are also differences in the structure of the head and teeth. The tusks of the elephant are two large curved, bony appendages, projecting from the mouth on either side of the trunk. What are they? Why, _teeth_ to be sure! Teeth? Yes; they are the two incisors such as I told you the beavers have, but the odd thing about these teeth is, that, beginning to grow in the second year of the elephant’s life, they keep on growing as long as he lives. Of course they are soon too long to be kept within the shelter of the mouth, and so they project and grow and grow, until sometimes they become so enormous as to weigh from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds each. But these are exceptions; from thirty to eighty pounds is a more usual weight. Sometimes the tusks turn upward; sometimes they grow almost straight, or with a downward inclination.

Besides these huge incisors the elephant has six molars or grinding teeth on each side of each jaw. As these molars are its only teeth useful in eating, we see at once that the food of an elephant must be grass, hay, grain, and fruit. The tusks of the elephant are almost entirely the purest of ivory, and as they are our main source of this valuable material, thousands of elephants are slaughtered to secure the tusks. As the elephant has the fewest young of any known animal, the race of elephants cannot keep up with the rapid destruction produced by the ivory hunters, and there is great danger that it will become extinct.

In Africa elephants are not tamed and trained, but in India for many hundred years they have been kept as beasts of burden, as war animals, and as ornaments to the state of kings.

The most notable characteristic of the elephant is its proboscis. What is that? As the tusks are two overgrown teeth, so the proboscis is an overgrown nose and upper lip. The nose and upper lip of the elephant are prolonged into a tube, often six feet long, tapering almost to a point. At the extreme end of this organ the nostrils are situated, and elephants often swim entirely under water, by simply carrying the end of the proboscis above the surface. The proboscis is composed chiefly of muscles, four thousand of them we are told, together with many nerves. Thus it is exceedingly strong, flexible, and very sensitive, and an injury to it gives the animal intense pain.

The proboscis of the elephant is used by its owner with all the ease and skill of a human hand. Through it, it can draw up water and pour it over its back, or squirt it wherever it chooses; it can use sand in the same way, and by an arrangement of valves near the air-passages, the water and sand while thus drawn up are kept out of the nostrils and air-tubes. The tip of the trunk is prolonged into a finger and a thick knob which serves for a thumb. With these the elephant can pick up even so small an object as a cherry or a pin. With this hand-like extremity of the trunk, the animal conveys food to its mouth.

To the elephant its proboscis is indispensable and invaluable; clumsy in its motions, with a very short neck, which does not permit the head to bend to the ground, and thick, pillar-like legs, difficult to bend, what would it do without this long, flexible appendage? With it the elephant collects food and drink, tears off fruit and leaves from the trees, and taking a branch for a fan, drives off the teasing insects which settle on its vast body. A horse switches off insects with its tail, but the tail of the elephant is small, slim, and bare, very like that of the pig.

With the proboscis the elephant strikes down its enemies, pumps water for its bath, lifts a burden to or from its back, defends its young, and shrieks and roars, as if braying through a trumpet when hurt or angry. From this trumpeting noise, the French have called the proboscis a “tromp,” or trumpet, which we have corrupted into that senseless name for a proboscis, a trunk.

In a fight with a lion or tiger, the elephant keeps its proboscis held aloft, out of harm’s way, waving it like a banner, and sounding an alarm, and uses its tusks for a weapon, wherewith to gore or toss its foe. It also tramples on its enemies, and crushes them with its enormous weight. With its tusks the elephant also uproots trees when it wishes to secure dainty leaf-food, too high up to pull down with its proboscis.

The skin of the elephant is bare, exceedingly thick, much wrinkled, and of a dark lead color, nearly black. The head is large, the eyes are small; the mouth is set under the thick upper part of the trunk, and is guarded by the tusks. The legs are enormously large and clumsy, and so are the feet, which have live toes enclosed in a cushion of thick skin up to the nails.

Elephants live from seventy-five to one hundred and thirty years. The baby elephant is woolly about the head and shoulders. It sucks its mother’s milk not through the proboscis, but with its mouth. The mother is very fond of her big baby, and is valiant in its defence. Elephants are enormous feeders, consuming half a bushel of grain and two hundred pounds of green herbage a day.

The sagacity of the elephant has been the theme of many stories, which have also celebrated its affection, gratitude, its sensibility to kindness, its revengeful memory of affronts, and its treacherous disposition, given to sudden bursts of rage. White elephants, of which so much is said, are not a separate species, but albinos.

We have now seen the greatest of the ungulates. With him in a menagerie we often find the tapir, remarkable for its long nose, and as being one of the oldest species of living mammals, therefore of an ancient dignity of family to which the king-crab, hatteria, opossum, and beaver may make their best bows.

The hippopotamus is a hoofed animal, next in size to the elephant. It is a hideous and dirty-looking animal, but one that in a menagerie or garden moves our compassion, for it is by its nature an amphibious creature, born to live in the rivers, and to spend the most of its time diving or swimming, or standing neck deep in water; and nothing can be more wretched than its appearance as it chews dry hay, and panting waits for a keeper to throw a few pailfuls of water over its fevered skin.

The hippopotamus is a tusk-wearer like the elephant, and while the ivory of its tusks is not quite so good as that furnished by the elephant, it is yet in great demand. The hide is also used in the manufacture of boots, trunks, and many instruments.

The rhinoceros is another big specimen of the ungulates, with a bare, smooth hide. It is an aquatic animal, wearing a single horn on the front of its snout. In its native home, this horn serves to root up river-plants, on which it feeds; it is also the weapon of war. Given in its natural haunts to spending hours in rolling in the mud or wading in water, the rhinoceros suffers severely in confinement. Usually of a mild, quiet temper, it seems sometimes filled with homesickness and despair, and with loud moans dashes its head against the walls of its prison as if wishing to end its miseries by breaking its skull.

No hoofed animal is better known, whether dead or alive, than the pig. The pig is the direct descendant of the wild boar, and owes the various changes in its appearance and conformation to ages of domestication. The wild boar is an animal with long legs, long bristles, lean body, a long snout, and a pair of big tusks formed by the elongation of two canine teeth on each side of the mouth. The two canine teeth on the lower jaw are much larger and stronger than those on the upper. The boar has fiery little eyes, a fierce and active disposition, and great courage.

It has been said of the common pig, that it is an animal “manufactured by man, and he makes it take such shapes as suit his wants best.” By careful feeding and breeding the tusks are lost, the bristles decrease, the head and legs diminish, the body and haunches greatly develop. Fed and sheltered, the pig is mild and lazy. Turned loose in the woods, for several generations, the snout and legs lengthen, the body grows thinner, and many of the characteristics of the boar return. Various famous breeds of pigs take their name from localities where they are reared, as the Berkshire, Suffolk, Norman, Pyrenean, and Perigord varieties.

The horse is the most noble of all the thick-skins, and indeed of all brutes. Its immediate relatives are the ass, quagga, and zebra. The curious stages and changes in the development of the horse have already been given.[91] Docile and quick to learn, the horse has been trained and used by men from the earliest antiquity. Only one of this species remains superior to domestication, the wild ass of the Himalaya regions. The zebra also is restless and intractable, and is not often reduced to a domestic state. Why of all the horse kind should the gentle, tractable, humble, strong, patient, easily-fed donkey have been chosen as the constant recipient of scorn; abuse, and hard fare? Scant food and plentiful kicks and curses are the portion of one of the most useful and gentle of brutes. Much more hardy than his cousin, the horse, demanding only a little water and the coarsest fare, the poor donkey gets many blows and few thanks for tireless service. Hats off to the donkey, who always does the best he can.

FOOTNOTES:

[91] Lesson 5.

LESSON L.

EVEN TOES.

“Then bend your gaze across the waste--what see ye? The giraffe Majestic stalks toward the lagoon, the turbid lymph to quaff; With outstretched neck, and tongue adust, he kneels him down to cool His hot thirst with a welcome draught from foul and brackish pool.”

--F. FREILIGRATH.

The order of ungulate has for its second sub-order the even-toed animals. This group is distinguished by the power and habit, which all its species have, of bringing back into the mouth, food already swallowed, in order to re-chew it thoroughly. This habit is called ruminating or chewing the cud. We have all observed it in sheep, kine, and camels.

The most notable characteristic of these animals is the formation of the stomach, which is divided into several compartments of different construction. The second of these stomach compartments is small and lined with cells of a honey-combed appearance. The slightly chewed food, on reaching this receptacle, is gradually moulded into pellets or small masses, which, instead of passing into the next lower division of the digestive apparatus, rise into the throat, are re-conveyed to the animal’s mouth, and are slowly chewed into a fine pulp. Any one who has watched a cow or sheep lying at ease, calmly and steadily chewing the cud, has seen a picture of quiet enjoyment.

The lowest division of the stomach of a cud-chewer is called the rennet-bag, from a fluid called rennet, which it contains, which digests all the food. Rennet has the property of curdling milk, or rather of making it partly solid without rendering it sour. It is used in making cheese. This rennet, mingled with the well-masticated food of the cud-chewers, completes the process of digestion. All liquids swallowed by these animals find their way at once to the rennet-bag.

All cud-chewers feed upon vegetable substances, and chiefly upon grass, of which they eat the stalks and fibrous portions as well as the blades. In a former lesson we spoke of the need of sheep for “roughness,” as stock men call it--a need which is shared by all ruminants. This roughness is the coarse and innutritious portions mixed with the richer parts of their food, to enable them to chew the cud, and to prevent indigestion, which would be caused by too rich and compact diet.

The teeth of cud-chewers are especially formed for grazing; there are no incisors or cutting teeth on the upper jaw, except in the camel family. The teeth are of two kinds, incisors (on the lower jaw) and grinders, or molars. These grinders are wide teeth, and as the jaws move, the molars act upon each other from side to side, the lower jaw grinding against the upper one. Watch a cow as she eats, and you will observe this motion.

Now let us look at these even-toed feet. You will say that these animals have hoofs divided in the centre, while the hoof of a horse is not divided at all. The pig, which does not ruminate, has a hoof centrally divided, like that of a sheep; and the hare, which chews the cud, has several separate toes, and belongs to the rodents. Amid all this diversity there is this constant characteristic, that the cud-chewers of the ungulates have the toes of each foot collected under what is called a cloven hoof, as if a solid hoof had been cleft into two.

There are four families of even-toed ruminants--the hollow-horned, including kine, sheep, goats, and antelopes, the deer tribe, the camel tribe, and the camelopards.

To the hollow-horned family belong our most useful domestic animals, and those earliest associated with man. The cow family affords us beef, our principal meat food, also butter, cheese, and milk; while the hides furnish our chief supply of leather. The bones are used for making buttons, combs, knife-handles; the hair is used in plaster; glue and gelatine and calves’ foot jelly are made from the hoofs. Oxen are largely used for draught purposes. What, then, should we do without the bovine race?

The sheep was no doubt the first domesticated animal; its gentle nature, and the ease with which it can be reared, made it an early associate with the homes of men; its wool furnishes probably our chief clothing supply; its flesh is a favorite food; many nations drink its milk, from which they make also cheese and butter. Thus we have in the sheep an animal indispensable to our civilization.

The goat is a third hollow-horn, the flesh and milk of which are much used in many countries, while the goat’s long and silky hair is in demand for woven fabrics.

Finally among the hollow-horns we find the famous animals of the antelope family, the beautiful, timid gazelle, the fleet chamois, the fierce, untamable gnu, the graceful ibex. If we had time to describe all these, we should find before us some of the most charming creatures in the world. They live in high mountain districts, and the Swiss is never more happy than when he pursues the chamois over the steep crests and among the crags of his native land.

The largest and most untamable of the hollow-horns is that cousin of our patient, useful ox, the bison, or buffalo,[92] an animal rapidly becoming extinct through cruel and wanton slaughter. While few of us have seen the bison himself, his shaggy pelt is well known in the buffalo robes of our sleighs and carriages, and in the heavy overcoats made for northern travel. Next to the elephant and the rhinoceros, the bison is the largest of land-mammals.

If we lived in Arabia instead of America, we should set beside the sheep, as the special ally of men, the camel. We have all seen this creature in menageries and zoological gardens,--a tall, awkward beast, with long legs, a shambling gait, one or two humps on its oddly shapen back, a small head, the upper lip split in the centre, a long neck, small ears, a dusty, shaggy coat, and a demeanor of patient endurance. Buffon says that “the camel is the chief treasure of the East.”

Gentle and hardy, demanding but little food, and that of the coarsest description,--a few dates, a few handfuls of grain,--capable of going for days without water, a strong beast of burden, this is one of the most important members of an Arab family. The milk of the camel affords the Arab cheese, and also a nourishing drink; of the animal’s long hair is woven cloth for clothing and for tent covering; its flesh is used for food; and across the long, hot, arid stretches of his desert land, the Arab rides in safety, seated on his tent and household goods piled upon the back of this “ship of the desert.”

From the earliest times the camel has been the only means of conveying travellers and Eastern commodities across the desert. It travels thirty or forty miles a day, under the hot sun, carrying a burden of five hundred or six hundred pounds.

Camels have broad, callous soles over the bottoms of their feet. These enable them to tread firmly without sinking in the desert sand. There are also callous knobs on their knees and breasts, which protect them as they kneel to receive burdens, or sleep in a kneeling position. The training of the young camel begins when it is but a few days old, and it is taught to get along with the smallest possible allowance of food, drink, and sleep.

The stomach of the camel is provided with numerous little sacs, called water-cells; these drain off a considerable quantity of water when the camel is drinking, and retain it for several days, restoring it gradually to the stomach. The camel seems to prefer coarse, unsucculent, dry food, and burning sunshine; it never seeks the shade. It is perhaps apathetic, rather than gentle; it seems little impressed by kindness, and, like the elephant, has a long memory for injuries.

Following the camel in our menageries usually comes a very strange-looking beast, the tallest of all animals. With its long neck, small head, and its habit of browsing off the tree-tops, it reminds us of what we have read of that fossil beast, the iguanodon. This is the giraffe, often called the camelopard, which name is given it because it has a somewhat camel-like form, and the beautiful spotted skin of a leopard.

If we watch a giraffe in a menagerie, we shall remark the beauty of its silky, spotted coat, the gentleness of its large, eager eyes, its two short horns covered with skin, its ears turned backward, its long, dark tongue, with which it constantly licks its lips and nostrils. Timid and mild, the giraffe shows vexation only by pawing the ground rapidly with its fore hoofs; it will bend its stately head to accept an apple or a carrot from a little child, and seems to forget the days when it wandered through the African forests, and browsed on fruit and leaves from the tops of the trees.

The giraffe is one of the swiftest of animals, and it is almost impossible to take an adult alive. They are generally captured while very young, and brought up on camels’ milk, until old enough to eat grain and green fodder.

The Western hemisphere gives us no animal corresponding to the giraffe. In South America the llama in some measure represents and takes the place of the camel; but the tall and beautiful giraffe stands alone of his kind.

We now turn to the fourth family of the ruminants, distinguished by the fact that they shed and renew their horns. The horns of the cow, ox, sheep, antelope, and goat are permanent. If by any accident they are lost, they are not renewed; but the deer family shed their horns, which indeed, are not properly called horns, but antlers. Antlers are a horny growth, large and branching, divided into what are called tines. Up to a certain age these antlers grow, fall off, and are renewed every year, and there is no mammal peculiarity more wonderful than the rapid growth of these large frontal ornaments. In many of the deer species the male alone wears the antlers. In the reindeer family both males and females have these huge horny branches.

The deer family is distinguished for grace of movement and beauty of form. They have smooth, close, hairy coats, but on the breast of the male deer the hair grows long and is called a beard. The eyes are large, clear, and bright, full of gentle eagerness, and furnished on the inner corner with a curious hollow, or gland, called the tear-pit. They have small, pointed ears, and short tails; their legs are slim, and their hoofs are small, the whole animal being built for lightness in running. Even the antlers are not nearly so heavy as they look, for they are porous and full of air-cells.

The deer family is distributed over the entire world. Deer vary in size from the large elk or moose, the royal stag, and the magnificent wapiti, to the small roe deer, not so large as a sheep, and the pigmy deer, which is the smallest of all ruminants, and indeed, is not larger than a hare.

Deer are vegetable-feeders, and in the coldest climates are capable of living on lichens, and the scantiest fare. In the far north reindeer or caribous furnish the chief wealth of the people, and serve instead of cows, horses, and sheep, their flesh and milk being the chief food-supply, and their skins furnishing clothing and bedding. They serve also as draught animals, and pull sledges over the snow with incredible swiftness.

Deer generally live in herds; the mother is a most vigilant and tender parent, devoting herself to her twin children with tireless care. Deer are distinguished for the perfection of their senses of sight, smell, and hearing, and as soon as one of a herd discovers anything that indicates danger, the alarm is given, and away they go. The deer mothers, while feeding, are constantly alert, and hurry their little ones off at the first hint of danger. The general disposition of the deer is amiable, but the old males sometimes fight furiously together, and if brought to bay by hunters, defend themselves valiantly with hoofs and horns.

Passing now from the ungulates, we reach a very well-known order of mammals, called the carnivora, or flesh-eaters. This order is divided into two sub-orders, the pinnipeds, or “fin-footed,” and the fissipeds, or “slit-footed.” In our study of the seal we have had the best example of the fin-footed, or aquatic carnivora. Bring up your dog or your cat for a sample of the slit-footed flesh-eaters. Ponto, set your foot down firmly, and let us look at it. All the toes are of equal length; the foot looks as if a roundish foot had been deeply slit into toes, which are hairy up to the nails. The feet of web-footed animals would look like this if they were not webbed.[93]

These slit-footed, or fissiped creatures, are divided into several species, and there is considerable difference in their way of treading; some, as the cats, walk on their toes. Come here, kitty, let us see your feet. Kitty can draw her claws close into the “velvet,” or fur, of her paw so that you would not know she had sharp nails. As she does this she curls her foot up into a cushion, and walks on the ends of her toes. Look at her foot when she stretches it; how well you can see the slit-foot arrangement and the clawed toes. Kitty is a mild and domestic representative of the great, feline race, at the head of which stands the lion. Ponto, on the other hand, is a civilized and educated specimen of the canine race, which numbers among its members the wolf.

While kitty draws in her claws and walks on her toes, the bears are what is called plantigrade carnivora, for they walk on the flat soles of their feet. These carnivora are all flesh-eaters, but when educated and refined, like Ponto and Kitty, they will eat any kind of food.

Among the carnivora we enumerate lions, tigers, bears, cougars, hyenas, panthers, wolves, jackals, leopards, cats, dogs, badgers, and many more. You see they embrace all the fiercest and most dangerous wild beasts, as well as our domestic friends, the cat and the dog. If you will open Kitty’s mouth, or Ponto’s, you will see what style of teeth these carnivora have; they are made for tearing flesh, and are accompanied by sharp claws for holding fast the living prey. All the carnivora are singularly strong, agile, and tenacious of life. The carnivora are so varied and interesting, that we leave them to be studied elsewhere, and indeed so we must serve the final order of mammals--the primates.[94]

These primates are divided into two sub-orders, the quadrumana, or four-handed animals, and the human race. Many scientists, instead of the order primates, with these two sub-orders, give us the order quadrumana, or monkeys, and the order bimana, or man, and that is the better division.

The quadrumana, or ape families, contain a large number of curious and interesting animals, all natives of tropical regions. They are hairy creatures, with three kinds of teeth, and are adapted for eating nearly all kinds of food. They are well known to us in menageries, and are frequently seen on our streets, fancifully dressed, and in company with a man and an organ, surrounded also by a group of admiring children.

“How many children are there in your family, Pierre?” we one day asked a bright little Italian boy.

“Four, and the monkey, signora.”

“But the monkey, Pierre, does not count with the children.”

“O signora! for care and trouble he counts more than the children! He must have the warmest corner and the best food. At night, for warmth, he sleeps in my father’s arms. He gets cold ten times as often as we do; and if he gets a cold he must have the doctor, for he is likely to die. If he dies, away go all our saved dollars for more monkey! Gracious! O signora! do you think our father would let our monkey run round in the streets and look out for his own dinner as Marie and I do? The thing is impossible!”

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] The animal called a buffalo in America is not a buffalo, but a bison. The buffalo of India and Italy is the _Bubalus_, the buffalo of the Western plains is the bison. The large, wild bison of Germany is called the Aurochs. All these animals belong to the family Bovidæ.

[93] If we examine the toes of the cat and dog, we shall see that the skin extends web-like partly up the toe bones.

[94] It has been impossible in so small a book to discuss with any minuteness the subjects noticed in the closing chapters. It is hoped that the hints given will incite pupils to study and observe the domestic animals of which we see so much and know so little.

SEA-SIDE AND WAY-SIDE.

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