Under the Maples Part 12

III. HEADS AND TAILS

I have heard a story of a young artist who, after painting a picture of a horse facing a storm, was not satisfied with it, and, feeling that something was wrong, asked Landseer to look at it. Instantly the great artist said to him, "Turn the horse around."

The cow turns her head to the storm, the horse turns his tail. Why this difference? Because each adopts the plan best suited to its needs and its anatomy. How much better suited is the broad, square head of the cow, with its heavy coating of hair and its ridge of bone that supports its horns, to face the storm than is the smooth, more nervous and sensitive head of the horse! What a contrast between their noses and their mode of grazing! The cow has no upper front teeth; she reaps the gra.s.s with the scythe of her tongue, while the horse bites it off and loves to bite the turf with it. The lip of the horse is mobile and sensitive. Then the bovine animals fight with their heads, and the equine with their heels. The horse is a hard and high kicker, the cow a feeble one in comparison. The horse will kick with both hind feet, the cow with only one. In fact, there is not much "kick" in her kind. The tail of the cow is of less protection to her than is that of the horse to him. Her great need of it is to fight flies, and, if attacked in the rear, it furnishes a good hold for her enemies. Then her bony stern, with its ridges and depressions and thin flanks, is less fit in any encounter with storm or with beast than is her head. On the other hand, the round, smooth, solid b.u.t.tocks of the horse, with their huge ma.s.ses of muscles, his smooth flanks, and his tail--an ap.r.o.n of long, straight, strong hair--are well designed to resist storm and cold. What animal is it in Job whose neck is clothed with thunder? With the horse, it is the hips that are so clothed. His tremendous drive is in his hips.

IV. AN UNSAVORY SUBJECT

If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, I suppose the breath of the obscene fungus by any other name would smell as rank. The defensive weapon of our black-and-white wood p.u.s.s.y would probably not be less offensive if we called him by that name alone, instead of the common one by which he is universally known.

While in southern California last winter I heard of one that took up his abode in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a house that stood on the side of a hill in the edge of the country. It was in a sort of lumber-room where all sorts of odds and ends had acc.u.mulated. On some shelves was a box of miscellaneous articles, such as lids to tin cans, bed castors, old toothbrushes, bits of broken crockery, pieces of wire, chips of wood, and the dried foot and leg of a hen. One morning, on opening the door of the bas.e.m.e.nt, the mistress of the house was surprised to see the whole collection of trash laid out in a line across the floor. The articles were placed with some degree of regularity covering a s.p.a.ce about fifteen inches wide and ten feet in length. There were sixty-one articles in the row.

Having such an unsavory creature in the bas.e.m.e.nt of one's house is rather ticklish business; not so perilous as a stick of dynamite, yet fraught with unpleasant possibilities. They cleared away the exhibit and left the door open, hoping their uninvited guest would take his departure. But he did not. A few nights later he began another collection, finding a lot of new material--among other things a box with old atomizer bulbs, four of which bulbs he arranged here and there, in the row--a motley array.

What is his object? I confess I do not know. No one has seen him do it, as he works at night, but there is little doubt that it is his work.[3]

The Western skunk is a small creature, not much bigger than a gray squirrel. He can hide behind a dustpan.

[3] Later investigations point to this having been the work of a wood rat instead of a skunk.--C. B.

I wish some one would tell me why this night prowler so often seems to spray the midnight air with his essence which leaves no trace by day. He never taints his own fur with it. In the wilds our Eastern species is as free from odor as a squirrel or a woodchuck. Kill or disturb one by day or night in his haunts, and he leaves an odor on the ground that lasts for months. While at a friend's house in the Catskills last August a wood p.u.s.s.y came up behind the kitchen and dug in the garbage-heap. We saw him from the window in the early evening, and we smelled him. For some reason he betrayed his presence. Late that night I was awakened by a wave of his pungent odor; it fairly made my nose smart, yet in the morning no odor could be detected anywhere about the place. Of course the smell is much more p.r.o.nounced in the damp night air than by day, yet this does not seem an adequate explanation. Does he signal at night to his fellows by his odor? He has no voice, so far as I know. I have never heard him make a vocal sound. When caught in a trap, or besieged by dogs in a stone wall, he manifests his displeasure by stamping his feet. He is the one American who does not hurry through life. I have no proof that he ever moves faster than a walk, or that by any sign, he ever experiences the feeling of fear, so common to nearly all our smaller animals. His track upon the snow is that of a creature at peace with all the world.

V. CHANCE IN ANIMAL LIFE

Chance plays a much larger part in the lives of some animals than of others. The frog and the toad lay hundreds of eggs, the fishes sp.a.w.n thousands, but most birds lay only five or six eggs.

A spendthrift with one hand, Nature is often a miser with the other. She lets loose an army of worms upon the forests, and then sends an ichneumon-fly to check them. She wastes no perfume or color upon the flowers which depend upon the wind to scatter their pollen.

Cross-fertilization is dear to her, and she invents many ingenious ways to bring it about, as in certain orchids. She will rob the bones of the fowl of their lime to perfect the sh.e.l.l of the egg. She wastes no wit or cunning on the porcupine or on the skunk, because she has already endowed each of them with a perfect means of defense.

Two things Nature is not chary of--fear and pain. She heaps the measure here because fear puts her creatures on the safe side; it saves them from many real dangers. What dangers have lurked for man and for most wild things in the dark! How silly seems the fear of the horse! a fluttering piece of paper may throw him in a panic. Pain, too, safeguards us; it s.h.i.+elds us against real dangers. The pains of childbirth are probably no check upon offspring, because the ecstasy of procreation, especially on the part of the male, overcomes all other considerations.

VI. MOSQUITOES AND FLEAS

Mosquitoes for the North and mainly fleas and ticks for the South--this seems to be Nature's decree, at least in this country. The mosquitoes of the Far North pounce upon one suddenly and ferociously, while our Jersey mosquitoes hesitate and parley and make exasperating feints and pa.s.ses.

On the tundra of Alaska, if I stopped for a moment a swarm of these insects rose out of the gra.s.s as if they had been waiting for me all the years (as they had) and were so hungry that they could not stand upon the order of their proceeding, but came headlong.

In Jamaica the dogs were persecuted almost to death by the fleas. They were the most sorry, forlorn, and emaciated dogs I ever saw. Life was evidently a burden to them. I remember that Lewis and Clark, in their journey across the continent, were greatly pestered by fleas. I have found that our woodchucks, when they "hole up" in the fall, are full of fleas.

VII. THE CHANGE OF CLIMATE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

I have just been reading, for the third time, Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast," my sojourn near San Diego for a few months, where so many of the scenes and events he describes took place, having given me a renewed interest in the book.

It is very evident that the climate of southern California has greatly changed since Dana was here in the trading s.h.i.+ps Pilgrim and Alert, in 1832 and 1833. The change has been from wet to dry. At that time his s.h.i.+p collected, and others engaged in the same trade collected, hundreds of thousands of hides and great quant.i.ties of tallow, all from cattle grown by the missions between San Diego and Santa Barbara. This fact implies good pasturage. The cattle grazed on the hills and plains that are now, during a large part of the year, as dry as a bone. At present cattle left to their own devices on this coast would soon starve to death.

Dana describes violent storms of wind and rain, mainly from the southeast, which the s.h.i.+p, anch.o.r.ed a few miles off the coast, or cruising up and down, experienced at all times of year--one or more storms each week, often lasting for days. One December he describes it as raining every hour for the whole month. The dread of the southeasters was ever present with the sailors. One of these, lasting three days, which came out of a cloudless sky, blew the sails to tatters. Nowadays a southeast storm of half a day is, according to my experience, an uncommon occurrence. To-day scarcely a drop of rain falls here from April till November, yet Dana describes many heavy rains in August. At present, in some of the interior valleys, where they grow alfalfa by means of irrigation, I see herds of well-kept dairy cows. In the season of rains the gra.s.s springs up and for a time cattle do well, but during the long dry season there is no pasturage save dry pasturage.

Although winter is supposed to be the rainy season here, I have been here during three seasons and have so far seen only light rains. To-day (December 16th) the earth is like powder as deep down as you care to dig. Yesterday I saw a man dragging in grain, and a great cloud of dust streamed out behind him. Ten or more years ago there was a very heavy rainfall in this locality that inundated large sections of the country and destroyed much property, the dry San Diego River getting out of bounds and carrying away bridges and floating houses on its banks. But it has been as dry as a highway ever since. It is clear that when the big rains do come they are more sporadic and uncertain than formerly.

VIII. ALL-SEEING NATURE

Sitting by a flat rock one summer morning, on my home acres in the Catskills, I noticed that the wild strawberry-vines sent out their runners over the rock, the surface of which is on a level with the turf, just as over the ground. Of course they could not take root, but they went through all the motions of taking root; the little cl.u.s.ters of leaves developed at intervals, the rootlets showed their points or stood at "attention," and the runners pushed out two or three feet over the barren surface and then seemed to hesitate like a traveler in the desert whose strength begins to fail. The first knot, or, one might say, the first encampment, was about one foot from the last one upon the turf, the next one about eight inches farther in; then the distance dropped to six inches, then to four. I think the runner finally gave it up and stopped reaching out. Each group of leaves apparently draws its main sustenance from the one next behind it, and when this one fails to reach the soil it loses heart and can give little succor to the next in front.

The result is that the stools become smaller and smaller, and the distances between them less and less, down the whole line.

Nature's methods are seen in the little as well as in the big, and these little purple runners of the vine pus.h.i.+ng out in all directions show the all-round-the-circle efforts of Nature as clearly as do the revolving orbs in sidereal s.p.a.ce. Her living impulses go out in all directions.

She scatters her seeds upon the barren as well as upon fertile spots.

She sends rains and dews upon the sea as well as upon the land. She knows not our parsimony nor our prudence. We say she is blind, but without eyes she is all-seeing; only her creatures who live to particular ends, and are limited to particular spheres, have need of eyes. Nature has all time and all s.p.a.ce and all ends. Delays and failure she knows not. If the runners of her strawberries do not reach their goal, the trouble corrects itself; they finally stop searching for it in that direction, and the impulse of the plant goes out stronger and fuller on other sides.

If the rains were especially designed to replenish our springs and supply our growing crops, the clouds might reasonably be expected to limit their benefactions, as do our sprinkling carts; but the rains are older than are we and our crops, and it is we who must adjust ourselves to them, not they to us.

The All-Seeing, then, has no need of our specialized vision. Does the blood need eyes to find its way to the heart and lungs? Does the wind need eyes to find the fertile spots upon which to drop its winged seeds?

It drops them upon all spots, and each kind in due time finds its proper habitat, the highly specialized, such as those of the marsh plants, hitting their marks as surely as do others.

Our two eyes serve us well because our footsteps are numbered and must go in a particular direction, but the goal of all-seeing Nature is everywhere, and she arrives before she starts. She has no plan and no method, and she is not governed.

These conceptions express too little, not too much. Nature's movements are circular; her definite ends are enclosed in universal ends. The rains fall because the vapors rise. The rain is no more an end than is the rising vapor. Each is a part of the great circuit of beneficent and malevolent forces upon which our life (and all life) depends, upon which the making of the soil of the earth and the shaping of the landscape depend; all vegetable and animal life, all the bloom and perfume of the world, all the glory of cloud and sky, all the hazards of flood and storm, all the terror of torrents and inundations, are in this circuit of the waters from the sea to the sky, and back again through the rivers to the sea. In our geologic time there is, in this circuit of the waters, more that favors life than hinders it, else, as I so often say, we should not be here. The enormous destruction of human life, of all life, which has taken place and will continue to take place, in this beneficent circuit, is only an incident in the history of the globe; the physical forces are neither for nor against it; they are neutral; life to be here at all has to run these risks; has to run the gantlet of these forces, and to get many a lash and gash in the running. Against the suffering and death incident thereto there is no insurance save in the wit of man himself. All this wit has been developed and sharpened by much waste and suffering. We learn to deal with difficulties through the discipline of the difficulties themselves. If man were finally to learn to control the rains and the floods, it would be through the experience which they themselves bring him. The demons that destroy him are on his side when he strikes with the strength which they give him. Gravity, which so often crushes and overthrows him, is yet the source of all his might. The fire that consumes his towns and cities is yet the same fire that warms him and drives his engines across the continent.

There is no G.o.d that pities us or weeps over our sufferings, save the G.o.d in our own b.r.e.a.s.t.s. We have life on heroic terms. Nature does not baby us nor withhold from us the bitter cup. We take our chances with all other forms of life. Our special good fortune is that we are capable of a higher development, capable of profiting to a greater extent by experience, than are the lower forms of life. And here is the mystery that has no solution: we came out of the burning nebulae just as our horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a mult.i.tude of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the const.i.tution of the world.

THE END