Man and Nature Part 27

[85] The enthusiasm of naturalists is not always proportioned to the magnitude or importance of the organisms they concern themselves with.

It is not recorded that Adams, who found the colossal antediluvian pachyderm in a thick-ribbed mountain of Siberian ice, ran wild over his _trouvaille_; but Schmidl, in describing the natural history of the caves of the Karst, speaks of an eminent entomologist as "_der gluckliche Entdecker_," the _happy_ discoverer of a new coleopteron, in one of those dim caverns. How various are the sources of happiness!

Think of a learned German professor, the bare enumeration of whose Rath-s.h.i.+ps and scientific Mitglied-s.h.i.+ps fills a page, made famous in the annals of science, immortal, happy, by the discovery of a beetle!

Had that imperial _ennuye_, who offered a premium for the invention of a new pleasure, but read Schmidl's _Hohlen des Karstes_, what splendid rewards would he not have heaped upon Kirby and Spence!

[86] I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that earthworms attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one or two species employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are at least rare in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the soil is brought under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so scarce in the newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of every village kept secret the few places where they were to be found in their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, but at present one can hardly turn over a shovelful of rich moist soil anywhere, without unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in the woods of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these worms were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by the anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even of shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered undrinkable by the quant.i.ty of dead worms that fell into them. The increase of the robin and other small birds which follow the settler when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last checked the excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance.

[87] I have already remarked that the remains of extant animals are rarely, if ever, gathered in sufficient quant.i.ties to possess any geographical importance by their mere ma.s.s; but the decayed exuviae of even the smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain of c.u.mana," says Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun, diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very different cla.s.ses, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the cabia, the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear to be disengaged in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains of an innumerable mult.i.tude of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to be impregnated with water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck with the ma.s.s of organic substances which in turn are developed and become transformed or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more active, more prolific, and so to speak, more prodigal of life."

[88] It is remarkable that Palissy, to whose great merits as an acute observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence, which he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an important part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon Waters and Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in special, thou shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that is to say, that the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre, and the herbs growing beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there be upon the trees, being decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw unto them the salt of the said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which shall greatly better the water of thy fountains, and hinder the putrefaction thereof."

[89] Between the years 1851 and 1853, both inclusive, the United States exported 2,665,857 pounds of beeswax, besides a considerable quant.i.ty employed in the manufacture of candles for exportation. This is an average of more than 330,000 pounds per year. The census of 1850 gave the total production of wax and honey for that year at 14,853,128 pounds. In 1860, it amounted to 26,370,813 pounds, the increase being partly due to the introduction of improved races of bees from Italy and Switzerland.--BIGELOW, _Les etats Unis en 1863_, p. 376.

[90] A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the continent, was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown insect, which ran out from a hide he was handling.

[91] In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for several years, and they may, under peculiar circ.u.mstances, be almost indefinitely prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable case of this sort, which may be new to many readers: "While I was here [at Williamstown, Ma.s.s.], Dr. Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch in length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antennae, not unlike a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea table, made of the boards of an apple tree." Dr. Dwight examined the table, and found the "cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two inches in length, nearly horizontal, and inclining upward very little, except at the mouth. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, there were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that the sawyer and the cabinet maker must have removed at least thirteen grains more, and the table had been in the possession of its proprietor for twenty years.

[92] It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of France are indigenous or imported. See QUATREf.a.gES, _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_, ii, pp. 400, 542, 543.

[93] I have seen the larva of the dragon fly in an aquarium, bite off the head of a young fish as long as itself.

[94] Insects and fish--which prey upon and feed each other--are the only forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great abundance of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the lakes of Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for them by the swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the waters, or, in other stages of their life, are accidentally swept into them. All travellers in the north of Europe speak of the gnat and the mosquito as very serious drawbacks upon the enjoyments of the summer tourist, who visits the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight sun, and the brothers Laestadius regard them as one of the great plagues of sub-Arctic life. "The persecutions of these insects," says Lars Levi Laestadius [_Culex pipiens_, _Culex reptans_, and _Culex pulicaris_], "leave not a moment's peace, by day or night, to any living creature.

Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild beasts, suffer intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge, the gnat, and the mosquito are numerous."--_Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, p. 50.

Petrus Laestadius makes similar statements in his _Journal for forsta ret_, p. 285.

[95] It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake, and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings, _stornelli_, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw away the remainder.

[96] Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the mult.i.tude of insects and of lizards, all circ.u.mstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country.

I have, however, been a.s.sured by persons very familiar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives, except the professional snake charmers. See _Appendix_, No. 18.

[97] I use _whale_ not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name.

[98] From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed this dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any evidence to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove their earlier partic.i.p.ation in it. In mediaeval literature, Latin and Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in Latin, _baleneria_, _balenerium_, _balenerius_, _balaneria_, etc.; in Catalan, _balener_; in French, _balenier_; all of which words occur in many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would suggest the meaning, _whaler_, _baleinier_; but some have supposed that the name was descriptive of the great size of the s.h.i.+ps, and others have referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The _whalebone_ of the mediaeval writers, which is described as very white, is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.

[99] In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal gas for illumination, the subst.i.tution of other fatty and oleaginous substances, such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single circ.u.mstance. According to Bigelow, _Les etats Unis en 1863_, p. 346, the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94 in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The present number of American s.h.i.+ps employed in that fishery is 353.

[100] The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424.

[101] Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent occurrence. I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the extermination of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by the sudden discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his _History of Vermont_, i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 142, records a case of the increase of trout from an opposite cause. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fis.h.i.+ng season they were commonly sold at a s.h.i.+lling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of their numbers.

[102] BABINET, _etudes et Lectures_, ii, pp. 108, 110.

[103] THOMPSON, _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 38, and Appendix, p. 13. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the seal was found.

[104] See page 89, note, _ante_.

[105] According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in 1618, three thousand herring busses and nine thousand vessels engaged in the transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons employed in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most successfully prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of Gottenburg alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200 herrings, making a total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the exhaustion of the fish, from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.--_Das Leben des Meeres_, p. 182.

In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or enough to supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe.

On the sh.o.r.es of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quant.i.ties.

Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net has sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.--DWIGHT's _Travels_, ii, pp. 512, 515.

[106] The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated life is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to reflect that it becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the refinement of the race. The savage slays no animal, not even the rattlesnake, wantonly; and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats the dumb beast as gently as a child. One cannot live many weeks in Turkey without witnessing touching instances of the kindness of the people to the lower animals, and I have found it very difficult to induce even the boys to catch lizards and other reptiles for preservation as specimens. See _Appendix_, No. 19.

The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment of them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they are immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest inhabitants of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily be overcome. The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public parks of Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of pa.s.sengers, and they not unfrequently enter the neighboring houses.

[107] A fact mentioned by Schubert--and which in its causes and many of its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological students--is important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in rivers exposed to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the mechanical action of the current, and not mainly, as some have supposed, to changes of temperature occasioned by clearing. Our author states that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in the Indalself, which rises in the Storsjo in Jemtland, by drawing off into it the waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed houses and fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water made turbid and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river altogether, and never returned. The banks of the river have never regained their former solidity, and portions of their soil are still continually falling into the water.--_Resa genom Sverge_, ii, p. 51.

[108] WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142.

[109] To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of _animalcule_, which, as a popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name is founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are animated, which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was first drawn to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were unquestionably vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true cla.s.sification of which is matter of dispute among the ablest observers.

There are cases in which objects formerly taken for living animalcules turn out to be products of the decomposition of matter once animated, and it is admitted that neither spontaneous motion nor even apparent irritability are sure signs of animal life.

[110] See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio, Italian Consul-General at Algiers, in the _Bollettino Consolare_, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and in the _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, No. ii, pp. 360, 373.

[111] The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are now ascertained to be due to vital processes of living minute organisms both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological, as well as to chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. See an interesting article by Auguste Laugel on the recent researches of Pasteur, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for September 15th, 1863.

[112] The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text has been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his _Histoire des grandes Forets de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France_, and by Becquerel, in his important work, _Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols boises et non boises_, livre ii, chap. i to iv.

We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically among historical records, old geographical names and terminations etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods--such as, in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Bruhl, -wald, -wold, -wood, -shaw, -skeg, and -skov.

[113] The island of Madeira, whose n.o.ble forests were devastated by fire not long after its colonization by European settlers, derives its name from the Portuguese word for wood.

[114] Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and, therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other destructive cause. "According to Beatson's _Saint Helena_, introductory chapter, and Darwin's _Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural History_, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann, in the notes to his translation of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively a.s.sured that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there, having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been carried, still abound in sandal wood.'"

In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose deer, subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet--though from the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause, these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising more than one hundred and fifty square miles--the wild browsing quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the gra.s.ses and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds and young shoots princ.i.p.ally in the season of growth. However this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law, interferes and destroys the balance.

When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years ago," says Clave, "there were not less than two thousand deer of different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of gra.s.s, they are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent r.e.t.a.r.dation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per year, * * and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing their heads against them when shedding their horns; and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine is found uninjured by them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p.

157. See also _Appendix_, No. 21.

Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100 rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates, contain, upon the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent of surface.

[115] Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive.

Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coa.r.s.e black sand, thrown out in 1669, which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be made to grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor.

The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the years 1861-'62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams, which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet."--_Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, p. 19.

[116] _A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom._ 1610, lib. 4, p. 260, edition of 1627. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubeo, all cited by Roth, _Der Vesuv._, p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 1631. Ashes, though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quant.i.ty of lava was ejected. In 1139, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take those dates from the work of Roth just cited.

[117] Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the interior of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost dest.i.tute of animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of the yellow pine of the West, _Pinus ponderosa_, remarks: "In the arid and desert regions of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in forests of yellow pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by other forms of vegetation, nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or the hum of an insect."--_Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. vi, 1857. Dr.

NEWBERRY's _Report on Botany_, p. 37.

The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many species of walnut, the b.u.t.ternut, the hazel, yield very little, frequently nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only when the trees around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures, that they become productive. The berries, too--the strawberry, the blackberry, the raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all except in cleared ground.

The North American Indians did not inhabit the interior of the forests.