Original illustration by Edwin Willard Deming from American Animal Life, p. 68.
R
ed fox is one of the wisest and most cunning of little creatures, with so little feat of man that he prefers to live neat settlements, where he can poach upon the farmer’s chickens and fowl to help out his menu of mice and rabbits, birds and other wood folk.[1]
The foxes make dens in the midst of big tree forests, or in crevices among the rocks, where the vixen (mother) hides her four of five cubs while she goes out to find food to bring home. She always travels in a roundabout way, to and from her den, so that her enemies cannot find the way. She never leaves any refuse about her doorway that might attract the attention of man or animal folk who may be hunting about her domain.[2]
On sunny days the vixen takes her fox cubs out into the sunshine to play. They may never have seen man, yet they run and hide at his approach; but if caught, they make very lovely little pets.
Some friends, hunting in New Brunswick, caught a little fox cub and put him into a box cage.[3] They shot Canadian jays for their little captive, and the cunning little fellow carried each on into his box to hide it, until he had his box so full that he could not get into it himself. He became very tame and played all day; but at night the hunters would awaken to hear his plaintive little bark, then off in the distance would come the answer comr the poorl old vixen, who was mourning the loss of her little one, while the screech-owl flew from limb to limb, seeming to laugh at the troubles of the poor mother trying to quiet her lost one.
During the nesting season, the red fox destroys quantities of quail and partridge nests. He is hunted with hounds and seems to enjoy the sport as much as his pursuers, leading them a merry chase, often running the top rail of a fence or jumping from stone to stone. Should he get far ahead, he will stop and wait for the hounds to catch up, then off he runs again and often gets away finally, to hide and rest in his den. If he should suddenly come upon a hunter, he will show no signs of fear, but just pretend he never saw him, and gradually work away until he is over some small hill, then he will run as fast as he can, to get out of the way.
He is the handsomest and most valuable fox from the Southern Alleghanies to Point Barrow, wearing many different suits in different parts of the country, from yellow-red to the palest of bleached-out colors on the sun-kissed desert, and very bright colors in the forest regions of Alaska.
He is so cunning and so well able to care for himself that it is not so easy to exterminate him as it is other animals less wise.
The black-cross fox and the silver fox are just two different phases of the same red fox.
The red fox has a very keen sense of hearing. He depends more upon his ears and nose than upon his eyes in detecting the approach of danger or in locating his prey. When he gets scent of a rabbit, he is happy: for rabbits are his favorite food, and poor little molly-cottontail must always be watchful or she will be caught. Should she not see her enemy until he is almost upon her, she will lie very close to the ground, behind a bunch of grass or a bush, and never move. Often the hunter will pass her by; but sometimes she has a hard run to save her life, and many times. poor thing, she is caught.
The cottontail is the smallest of the rabbit family and is found all over the country. She burrows in the ground for a home; but, unfortunately, she has not learned to make herself a back door, to escape in time of danger, for members of the weasel or marten families follow this creature into her home.
Original illustration by Edwin Willard Deming from American Animal Life, p. 71.
Like all rabbits she has regular runways or trails through the woods; but on moonlight nights she will come out into the clearings, with her relatives, and romp, play and frisk about in the moonlight, having a lively time. Suddenly one of the brothers will stamp his feet, and in a second all have disappeared and run for safety. Most people might have wondered what the matter was. Little Brother Rabbit knew, for almost instantly, Ko-Ko-Kas, the big brown owl, flew over the clearing and each little rabbit was glad he had heard and obeyed the warning. Had he not he would have suffered more than when Chief Rabbit refused to go to a council called by Owl. Owl was chief then, and called four times, but the Rabbit did not answer. Then he told the Rabbit his ears would grow until he came to the council. We all know how long his ears grew; and they might have been much longer had not the Rabbit answered and run to the council as fast as he could go.
Original illustration by Edwin Willard Deming from American Animal Life, p. 72.
DEMING, THERESE OSTERHELD. “RED FOX AND COTTON TAIL,” IN AMERICAN ANIMAL LIFE, 67-76. NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES, 1916.
[1] In addition to rodents, rabbits, birds, and amphibians, the diet of red foxes also includes fruit.
[2] Interestingly, red foxes rarely sleep in their dens, but out in the open. They will only sleep in their burrows during extreme weather or, in the case of female foxes, while raising their kits.
[3] New Brunswick is a province of Canada.
Contexts
American Life is one of a series of books written by Therese Osterheld Deming and illustrated by Edwin Willard Deming. After marrying in 1892, the Demings frequently worked together. Edward Willard Deming was an American painter and sculptor who, after studying in Paris in 1884 and 1885, lived in proximity to various Indigenous American tribes. These experiences informed most of his work.
By Comte de Buffon, translated by Daniel Alexander Payne (Bishop Payne)
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Martin Johnson Heade. Amethyst Woodstar. Oil on canvas, ca. 1863-1864, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR). Public Domain.
Beautiful and useful translations from the French of Buffon. By BISHOP PAYNE. [Original byline in the Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Art.]
Of all animated beings, behold the most elegant in form and the most brilliant in colors. The stones and the metals polished by our art, are not comparable to this jewel of nature: in the order of birds she has placed it, in the last degree of the scale of size; her master-piece is the little humming-bird: she has overwhelmed her, with all the gifts she has divided among other birds; lightness, rapidity, swiftness, grace, and rich attire, all appertain to this little favorite.[1] The emerald, the ruby, the topaz, glitter upon its robes: it never soils them with the dust of the earth, and in its life all aereal, one hardly sees it touch the grass by moments; it is always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness, as it has their brilliance; it lives upon their nectar, and it dwells in climates, where, without ceasing, it renews itself.
It is in the warmest countries of the New World, where one finds all the species of the humming-birds; they are very numerous, and appear to be confined between the two tropics; for those of them that advance into the temperate zones, there may be but a short sojourn: they seem to follow the movements of the sun, to advance, and to retire with him, and to fly upon the wings of zephyrs, in the retinue of an eternal spring.[2]
The Indians, smitten by the splendor of the fire which radiate from the colors of these brilliant birds, have given to them the name of rays and hues of the sun.[3] The smallest species of these birds are less than the ox-fly in length, and the drone-bee in thickness. [4] Their bill is like a fine needle, and their tongue, as a delicate thread; their little black eyes appear as just two brilliant points; the plumes of their wings are so delicate, that they appear transparent. Their feet are so short and small, that one with difficulty perceives them; they make but little use of them; they only set them down to sleep during the night, and during the day keep them pendant in the air; their flight is continuous, rapid, and humming; and some one has compared the noice of their wings to that of a spinning-wheel. Their clapping is so swift, that the bird in the air, stopping itself, appear not only immoveable, but all at once without action. One may see it thus arrest itself for a few moments before a flower, and then to dart from it like an arrow to another; it visits all; plunges its little tongue into their bosoms; caressing it with its wings, without alighting upon them, but also without ever quitting them.
He passes his inconstancies, but for the better to follow his loves, and to multiply its innocent enjoyments; for this lover, by slighting its flowers, lives at their expense, without withering them. He does but pump their honey, and it is to this use that his tongue seems to be so uniquely destined, it is composed of two hollow fibres, forming one little canal, divided at the end into two fillets; it has the form of a proboscis, and performs the functions of that instrument; the bird darts it out of his bill and plunges it into the bottom of the cup of the flowers, and thus extracts the nectar from them. Nothing equals the vivacity of these little birds, if it be not their courage, or rather, their audacity. One may often see them pursuing, with fury, some birds twenty times their size, attaching themselves to their bodies, and alluring them to carry them in their flight, peck them with repeated blows.[5]
Impatience seems to be their soul; if they approach a flower, and find it withered, they pluck out its petals, with a precipitation that marks its spite. The nest which they construct, respond to the delicacy of their bodies; it is made either of fine cotton or a silken hair, gathered from certain flowers; this nest is strongly tissued, and of the consistence of a soft and downy skin; the female charges herself with the work, and leave to the male the care of bringing the materials. One may see her at this cherished work, seeking, choosing, employing, blade by blade, such fibres as are proper to form the tissue of that soft cradle, which is designed for its progeny. She polishes the borders of it with her neck, and the interior with her tail; she coats it on the outside with little pieces of the bark of resinous plants, which she glues around it, to defend it from the injuries of the air, so as to render it more solid; the whole is attached to two leaves, or to a single blade of the orange or citron tree; or sometimes to a straw which hangs at the eves of a cottage. This nest is no bigger than the half of an apricot, and formed like a half cup. One there finds two eggs all white, and no larger than little peas, The male and the female cover them by turns, during twelve days; the little ones are hatched on the thirteenth, and are then no larger than some flies. “I have never been able to discover,” says P. Durterte, “what kind of billfull the mother gives them, only that she gives them her tongue to suck, while yet it is enameled with the sugar drawn from the flowers.” [6]
Martin Johnson Heade. Hummingbird and Passionflowers. Oil on canvas, ca. 1875-85, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY). Public Domain.
BUFFON (TRANSLATED BY BISHOP PAYNE). “THE HUMMING-BIRD.” REPOSITORY OF RELIGION AND LITERATURE, AND OF SCIENCE AND ART’S VOL. III, NO. 3 (JULY 1861): 122-4.
[1] “. . . in the last degree of the scale of size”: The Bee Hummingbird, which can be found in Cuba, is not only the smallest hummingbird, but also the smallest bird in the world.
[2] “It is in the warmest countries of the New World . . .”: There are almost 340 species of hummingbirds in the world, all of them occurring, in fact, in the American continent.
[4] The ox-fly, also known as warble fly, refers to a kind of large flies that lay their eggs on mammals. A drone-bee is a male honey bee.
[5] Hummingbirds can be aggressive and territorial. Males will usually fight each other to assert their breeding grounds. Interestingly, the symbols of authority of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of sun and war, are the hummingbird and fire. In fact, Huitzilopochtli means “blue hummingbird on the left.”
The Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Arts was a short-lived (1858-63) quarterly for Black children published by a group of African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) societies. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893), who translated “The Humming-Bird,” was one of the magazine editors and a main figure in the A.M.E. He was also an educator, administrator, and author. George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1749-1788), was an influential French naturalist.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
aereal: Aerial. Dwelling, flying, or moving in the air, above the earth; occurring or taking place in the air; (spec. of birds or bats) spending much of the time airborne.
appertain: To belong as parts to the whole, or as members to a family or class, and hence, to the head of the family; to be related, akin to.
proboscis: Any of various elongated, tubular, and usually flexible mouthparts of insects, used for sucking liquids and sometimes for piercing, as in bees, flies, mosquitoes, bugs, and butterflies and moths (in which it is coiled when not in use).
progeny: Offspring, issue, children; descendants. Occasionally: a child, a descendant; a family.
Interactive experience designed to accompany a 2020 exhibition about Martin Johnson Heade’s hummingbird paintings. Courtesy of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR).
Ernst Haeckel. Trochilidae. Illustration, 1904, Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
All the readers of Our Young Folks must remember Mrs. Stowe’s charming sketch of Hum the Son of Buz, which appeared in its first number.[1] It was an interesting account of the peculiar habits of a young Ruby-throated Humming-Bird, for several weeks her petted companion. Some novel facts in regard to the food and manner of life of these tiny specimens of bird-kind were there presented with a freshness that gave them great interest. We shall endeavor to give a general account of this wonderfully beautiful family of birds, although we cannot hope to invest it with an equal charm.
No birds are so universally attractive as the Humming-Birds. They are the smallest in size, the most brilliantly beautiful in plumage, and have the most numerous varieties of any of the feathered families.[2] They are found nowhere except in the New World, but here they may be met with anywhere, from the Falkland Islands of South America almost to Greenland in North America. They are most abundant in the warmer portions of the continent, especially in the West India Islands and in Central America and the northern states of South America.
More than three hundred different kinds of Humming-Birds have been already described, and our best-informed naturalists believe that not less than four hundred exist. So far as men of science have studied their habits, it has been found that all these different varieties have very nearly the same peculiarities, modified chiefly by the differences in their places of residence. Some Humming-Birds, like our common Ruby-throat, are found scattered over a very large extent of country. This variety occurs in all the United States, and as far north as the Arctic regions; other kinds are found only in small lonely islands. Some Humming-Birds remain all the year in the same localities; others only visit certain parts of America during the warm season.[3]
The food of Humming-Birds is now known to consist almost entirely of insects. They were once supposed to subsist chiefly on the sweets they obtained from honey-bearing flowers, and in confinement they have been made to live partly upon sweetened water; but the honey of plants is not alone their natural food, and is insufficient for them.
In order to obtain its insect-food the Humming-Bird is provided with a tongue of very peculiar structure, the anterior portions of which are made up of two long and hollow thread-like tubes. These unite behind and are closed at the end, as represented, magnified, in the figures below. This forked and hollow tongue the bird thrusts in and out of the tube-shaped flowers with the rapidity of a flash, and captures the minute insects lodged in their depths.[4]
M.E.D. Brown. Humming Birds / from Life & on Stone. Print: Lithograph, ca. 1832, Library of Congress. Public Domain.
These tiny birds are adorned with more brilliant plumage than any other family of the whole feathered tribe. It is impossible to give our young readers any adequate description of the beauty and variety of the bright colors of nearly all Humming- Birds. These colors excite wonder and admiration, even when prepared for exhibition in ornithological collections; but when living the brilliancy of their colors is far greater than when dead.
Travellers who have seen them flitting about like beams of variously tinted light in the dark green woods of their native forests tell us they know nothing in nature that can be compared with them. Even the colors of the topaz, the emerald, the ruby, and the amethyst, to which the bright tints of the Humming-Birds have been likened, pale in the comparison. The various hues of all these gems are often seen combined in the plumage of the same bird, now one appearing and now another, with the changes of light and shade.
Without attempting to give a learned account of the different classes into which naturalists now divide Humming-Birds, we will mention only a few of the more marked differences which distinguish them. Some have perfectly straight bills; others have bills very much curved. These are nearly all tropical varieties, living the year round in the same climate. A few varieties have bills which curve upwards in a very singular manner,—an admirable adaptation for reaching up into flowers growing in the forms of pendent tubes or bells. Formerly all Humming-Birds were divided into two classes,—those with straight bills and those with curved bills. But later writers have subdivided the straight-billed into two classes and the curved-billed into three. The first two are those with short rounded tail-feathers, and those with very long and forked tails. These are all or nearly all birds of temperate climates, migrating from them in the colder season. The three varieties of the curved-billed birds are those with long centre tail-feathers, those with curious sabre-like wing-feathers and rounded tails, and those with very short tails and very much rounded bills.
In the tropical regions of America Humming-Birds in great number and variety swarm throughout the forests. In other portions of the same country, where the forests have been cut down and the land tilled, the Humming-Birds equally abound, and seem to delight in the society of man. As we recede from the warm regions their numbers decrease. Some are found in very high northern latitudes, others in equally far southern regions, while others seem to prefer high mountains, where the temperature is quite low. We have the nest of a South American Humming-Bird, which the late Captain Couthouy found on the eastern slope of Mount Pichincha, at a height of ten thousand five hundred feet.[5] Another traveller met with Humming- Birds flying about in a snow-storm near the Straits of Magellan.[6]
Martin Johnson Heade. Two Humming Birds: “Copper-tailed Amazili.” Oil on canvas, ca. 1865-1875, Brooklyn Museum (NY). Public Domain.
The habits of all Humming-Birds are so very nearly alike that a description of the peculiarities of one will serve for them all. They are almost always on the wing, moving with great rapidity and ease. They flit about in short, quick flights. Like flashes of light they dart now this way and now that. Their wings are so constructed as to give them the power of hovering over a flower and keeping themselves in this position a long time; some writers say, for hours.[7]
Their boldness and intrepidity is surprising in birds so small. They do not hesitate to attack birds greatly their superiors in strength that approach too near their nests, or even to fly in the face of any intruder when they have young. This boldness and anxiety is often fatal, betraying their nests to the naturalist seeking them for his collection.
The nests of Humming-Birds are built with exquisite delicacy, of soft materials, and are warm, compact, and strong. They are placed on the horizontal branches of trees, a few feet from the ground, and are usually made of silky vegetable down. Over this they fasten, with their saliva, a strong covering of gray moss. This appears to be an instinctive endeavor to conceal their nest by making it resemble the moss-covered limb on which it is built. It is a curious fact that often this mossy covering is not put on until after the female has occupied the nest, her mate busying himself with completing the moss-work while she is sitting upon her eggs.
But the nests of Humming-Birds are not alike. Some vary in their materials, others in their shape. One kind builds a hanging nest under a large leaf. It is curiously wrought of spiders’ webs, and has its opening underneath. The smallest known bird of this family is found in the island of Jamaica.[8] It is only two inches long, and its outstretched wings are only three inches across. Its nest is not larger than a thimble, and is woven of spiders’ threads and silk and covered on the outside with fine moss. The eggs are very small, looking like little white homœopathic pills. The Humming- Bird’s eggs are always white, and only two in number.[9]
Many attempts have been made to domesticate Humming-Birds, but these have been only partially successful. The birds have soon died, probably from change of diet, or from inability to endure the extremes of cold and heat. If a substitute for their natural food could be found, they would probably live and thrive in confinement, and become very tame and familiar.[10]
Martin Johnson Heade. Hummingbird and Apple Blossoms. Oil on canvas, 1875, Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY). Public Domain.
Several instances are known of their being kept in this manner, and in every case they have been, like Mrs. Stowe’s pet, very docile and affectionate. A young Englishman, as he was about to sail from Jamaica, caught a Mango Humming-Bird on her nest, and, cutting off the twig on which the latter was built, brought nest, eggs, and parent on board. The bird was fed with honey and water, became tame, and hatched out two young birds during the passage. The mother died, but the young birds were brought to England, and were for some weeks in the possession of Lady Hammond, readily taking honey from her lips. One of them lived two months after its arrival.
Within the limits of the United States seven different kinds of Humming-Birds are found, though two of them are very rare and may not belong here.[11] These are the Black-throated or Mango Humming-Bird, one of the curved-billed or tropical forms.[12] This is a common West-Indian variety, and is only found in our most southern State, Florida, and rarely there. Its plumage is resplendent with a metallic lustre of green and gold.
The Black-chinned Humming-Bird of California is similar to our common variety.[14]
The Red-backed Humming-Bird is the most common kind in the States on the Pacific, and is found from the Gulf of California to Nootka Sound.[15] It is very prettily marked, but is not a brilliant bird, having very little lustre in its plumage.
The Broad-tailed Humming-Bird is only found in Texas, and is also very much like the common Ruby-throat.[16]
Our most beautiful variety, the Anna Humming-Bird,—so called in honor of Anna, Duchess of Rivoli, a lady greatly distinguished for her love of natural history, —is very abundant in California.[17] Its entire head, neck, and throat are covered with feathers of a bright metallic amethystine red color. One other variety, with no common name, about which little is known, has been found on the southern borders of California. It most resembles the Anna Humming-Bird.
BREWER, T. M. [THOMAS MAYO]. “ABOUT HUMMING-BIRDS.” OUR YOUNG FOLKS. AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE’S VOL. V, NO. IX(SEPTEMBER 1869): 578-82.
[1] The author references Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sketch “Hum, the Son of Buz,” also included in our anthology.
[2] There are almost 340 species of hummingbirds in the world, all of them occurring in the American continent.
[5] In part IV of the series of essays “Bird Architecture,” published in Scribner’s Monthly on December, 1878, pp. 161-76, Thomas Brewer refers to a hummingbird nest he received from the late Captain Joseph Couthouy, “taken by him, with its owner, near the snow-line on Mount Pichincha, at a height of 10,500 feet” (p. 168). Brewer identifies the bird as an Eriocnemis luciani. Mount Pichincha is located in Ecuador.
[6] The Strait of Magellan (Estrecho de Magallanes) is a channel that links the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean in South America. It is 350 miles long and 2-20 miles wide.
[7] Watch hummingbirds in flight in this video from Terra Mater.
[8] The smallest hummingbird, which is also the smallest bird in the world, it is actually found in Cuba, not Jamaica. It is known as Bee Hummingbird.
[9] Although two is the typical size of hummingbird clutches, sometimes they will also lay either one or three eggs. Hummingbirds’ nests, the smallest bird nests in the world, are woven with spiderweb thread and camouflaged with other materials.
[10] Trapping or keeping hummingbirds in captivity is illegal in the United States. They are a protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
[11] According to the American Bird Conservancy‘s website, there are fifteen types of hummingbirds in the United States, without counting nine vagrant species.
John Abbot. Red Throated Hummingbird (Troculis Colubris). Transparent and opaque watercolor and graphite on paper, 1791, Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Public Domain.
Thomas Mayo Brewer (1814-1880) was an American naturalist. Trained as a doctor, he gave up medicine and dedicated himself to the sudy of birds and their eggs. In the nineteenth century, Europe became fascinated with hummingbirds and “hundreds of thousands were hunted and killed for their skin.” In fact, the commercial trade in bird feathers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sparked the fierce conservation movement that led to the creation of the National Audubon Societies. Many activists were women who opposed the killing of birds for the sake of the latest fashions.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
amethystine: Of a colour: resembling amethyst. Of an object: amethyst-coloured; violet-purple.
homœopathic: Very small or minute, like the doses usually given in homoeopathy. (Often humorous.)
ornithological: Of or relating to birds; avian.
pendent: Hanging; suspended from or as from the point of attachment, with the point or end hanging downwards; dependent. Of a tree: having branches that hang or droop down.
topaz: The name given (with or without distinguishing adjunct) to several highly valued precious stones. Also, the dark yellow colour of topaz.
Interactive experience designed to accompany a 2020 exhibition about Martin Johnson Heade’s hummingbird paintings. Courtesy of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR).
Original illustration from The Youth’s Cabinet p. 103.
There is a great deal of ingenuity displayed by many birds in their manner of building nests. But perhaps there is no bird which constructs one so curious as that species of the Parus vulgarly called Bottle Titmouse, or more familiarly, Bottle Tit. The bird is not a native of the latitude of New York, though it is found, I think, in the southern part of the United States. It will be interesting to the reader to know that it belongs to the same family with the snow-bird, that sings his “chick-a-de-de” so merrily during the winter. The little bird called the Bottle Titmouse, is called in the technical language of the ornithologist, the Parus Caudatus. The engraving on the preceding page is an accurate representation of the male and female of this species, with the nest they have so ingeniously built. This little bird is about five and a half inches in length. The bill is very short, and the head round and covered with rough feathers. It has a very long tail, as will be seen by the picture. The bird is most commonly found in low, moist situations, that are covered with underbrush, and interspersed with tall oaks or elms. Its nest is generally placed in the forked branch of a tree overhanging the water. The number of eggs it lays varies from twelve to eighteen. The eggs are spotted with rust color at the larger end. Few of our birds, except the humming bird and the wren; lay an egg so small. The building of their beautiful nest, costs the birds at least a month’s hard labor. The basis is composed of green mosses, carefully woven together with fine wool. The outside consists, in a great measure, of white and grey tree lichens, in small fragments, intermixed with the egg nests of spiders, from the size of a pea and upward, part of which are drawn out to assist in the weaving process—so that when the texture of the nest is stretched, portions of fine, gossamer-like threads appear along the fibres of the wool. Having neatly built and covered her nest with these materials, she thatches it on the top with tree moss, to keep out the rain, and to hide it from the eye of any enemy that may chance to come that way. Within she lines the nest with a great number of soft feathers—so many, that it is a matter of wonder to those who examine the beautiful structure, how so small a room can hold them, and how they can be laid so closely and ingeniously together, as to afford sufficient space for a bird with so long a tail, and so large a family. The nest is of an oblong shape, not unlike that of a pineapple, and somewhat resembling a bottle, from which circumstance the name of the bird was given. On one side (as some say, uniformly on the eastern side) of the nest, is a small door, scarcely large enough, one would suppose, to admit the occupants, which, nevertheless, serves for ingress and egress.
The food of this bird consists of the smaller kinds of insects, and the larvae and eggs of other insects, which are found deposited in the bark of trees. Its sight is remarkably acute. It flits with the greatest quickness among the branches of trees, while in pursuit of its food.
Knight[1], in his entertaining volume on the “Habits of Birds,” says he once saw a flock of Bottle Tits, just at dusk, in a noisy dispute as to the places where they were to roost respectively. That circumstance is not much to their credit, perhaps, and shows, that with all their intelligence and good qualities, they are not altogether destitute of foibles. The ground was covered with snow at the time—so says the observing man on whose authority the statement is made in Knight’s volume—and they were beginning, no doubt, to be cold, as the night approached, and were making preparations for passing the night in as warm a place as they could find. Then commenced a contest for the best spot, which seemed to be a hollow in the neighboring tree of large size. When they had all assembled on the under bough of the tree, they began to crowd together, fidgeting and wedging themselves between one another, evidently quarreling for the coziest corner.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN. “THE BOTTLE TITMOUSE AND ITS NEST.” THE YOUTH’S CABINET 4, NO. 4 (MARCH 1849): 104-5.
[1] Charles Knight’s The Domestic Habits of Birds was first published in London in 1833.
Contexts
The bottle titmouse is a member of the Parus genus of the Paridae family. This family includes titmice and chickadees. The bottle titmouse is more common in Europe than in the U.S. The author suggests that they can be found in the southern states but are not as common as other titmouse varieties, such as the bridled titmouse which resides in the southwest, the black-crested titmouse in the midwest and eastern and central Mexico, the juniper titmouse in the western U.S., the oak titmouse along the west coast, and tufted titmouse along the east coast.
Resources for Further Study
The bottle titmouse is now known as the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus).
Artist Unknown. Original illustration from Parley’s Magazine p. 94.
The wild pigeon of America, or, as it is often called, the passenger pigeon, is sixteen inches long, and twenty-four in extent. In the spring, multitudes of these birds are seen on the wing, speeding to the northern and western regions of the continent. Here, in the extensive forests, they collect in vast companies, and devote themselves to the rearing of their young. They build their nests in the tops of trees, and such is the almost incredible multitude sometimes assembled at a particular place, that they break the branches of the trees by their weight, and desolate the forest for miles around.
Towards autumn, these birds with the young ones now added to their number, set out for their return to the southern latitudes to spend the winter. The flocks that are sometimes seen, particularly in the Western States, contain many millions. A continued stream, for several miles in width, and many hours in duration, is often seen to pour along the air, sweeping forward with almost incredible swiftness. When the roosts of these birds are first discovered, the inhabitants from a considerable distance visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for that season; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion.
The migrations of these birds are thus noticed by Mr. Audubon. “Their great power of flight enables them when in need, to survey and pass over an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by facts known to the greater number of observers in America. Pigeons for example have been killed in the neighborhood of New York with their crops still filled with rice, collected by them in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, the nearest point at which this supply could possibly have been obtained; and, as it is well ascertained, that owing to their great power of digestion, they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must have travelled between three hundred and four hundred miles in six hours, making their speed at an average about one mile in a minute, and this would enable one of these birds, if so inclined, to visit the European continent, as swallows are undoubtedly able to do, in a couple of days.”
“This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision, which enables them as they travel at that swift rate, to view objects below, to discover their food with facility, and thus put an immediate end to their journey. This I have also proved to be the case, by having observed the Pigeons, when passing over a destitute part of the country, keep high in air, and in such an extensive front, as to enable them to survey hundreds of acres at once. But if on the contrary, the land is richly covered with food, or the trees with mast, they will fly low, in order to discover the portion most plentifully supplied, and upon these they alight progressively.
United States National Museum Photographic Library. Passenger Pigeon “Martha.” Gelatin silver print, 1914. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.
audubon, john james. “The wild pigeon of America.” Parley’s Magazine 1 (March 1833): 94-95.
Contexts
The same year this article appeared in print, Audubon believed the passenger pigeon to have the highest population of all birds in North America. There may have been as many as three billion passenger pigeons worldwide in the early 1800s, which would have made it the most numerous bird species. By 1900, no passenger pigeons were left in the wild. The bird pictured above, Martha, was the last surviving passenger pigeon, and she died in September 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Artist Unknown. “Buttermilk Falls [near Ithaca, N.Y.].” Illustration in The PortfolioMagazine 1, no. 101 (1809). Engraving, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
To the young folks, — to all the young folks, — to my especial friends I among them, and to those whom I shall never know except as a distant crowd of bright and happy boys and girls whom I like to imagine reading this Magazine, I dedicate the following pages. Sometimes, perhaps, when they have finished the stories, they will enjoy turning to my more serious chapters.
There are few among you, I fancy, who have not grown up under the impression that the world we live upon has been always, so far as its general features are concerned, much what it is now. You know that forests have been cleared, that countries have been marked out according to certain boundaries, that cities have been built, and that countless changes have taken place upon the earth’s surface; but these changes are all connected with the history of man. Your school-books tell you little or nothing of the extraordinary events which preceded by ages the very existence of mankind, and prepared the world to be our home. Your map shows you the United States as they exist to-day, and your lesson in geography gives you the name and boundaries, the rivers, mountains, and lakes, the cities and towns, of every State; but while it teaches you so many facts about the State of New York, for instance, it tells you nothing of an ancient sea-shore running through its centre from east to west, the record of a time when America itself was but a long, narrow island, around which the ocean washed.
You go, perhaps, to Trenton Falls, and gather there the curious animal remains of which the rocks are full; but as you pick up the fossil shells, or look at the curious old crustacea called trilobites, I doubt whether it occurs to you that you are doing just what you might do at Newport, or Long Branch, or Nahant, namely, walking on a beach, and picking up the animals which lived upon it.
In the very spot from which I write, Ithaca, in the State of New York, lying on a line parallel with the old sea-shore of Trenton, the young people are all familiar with the broken bits of clay, slate, or limestone, to be found at every roadside, filled with shells and remains of marine animals; but I doubt whether they ask themselves how it happens that here, so far from the ocean, sea-shells are so common that the very rocks are crowded with them. Perhaps they wonder how they came there; but, as their school-books tell them nothing about it, they are contented to let it remain a mystery. Indeed, it is not very long since the wiseșt scientific men asked themselves the same question, and could find no answer. Only by very slow degrees have they learned, that, in the process of building the world, sand and mud, sea-shores, lake and river bottoms, have been consolidated, have hardened into rock, petrifying within them the animals living upon their surface, and the plants growing upon their soil. It is not very difficult, when one has the clew to it, to understand how this may happen. An animal, dying, sinks into the sand or mud, as the case may be; his solid parts — such as the hard envelopes we call shells, or the skeleton of a fish — do not decay; if more and more sand or mud is piled above him, and hardens into rock, in the course of time, by the pressure of its own weight, the animal is embalmed there for ages, till for some purpose or other the rock is split, and he is found in his strange tomb.
Of these things I will tell you more in detail hereafter, if you care to listen. Just now I only want to show that our world has assumed its present outline and general character very gradually, and that creation has been a process of growth, not a single complete act.
Let us return to our geography lesson. Go a little farther west, and we come to the bank of the Mississippi, and our map shows us the great river flowing from north to south, from Minnesota to Louisiana, till it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, but our geography tells us nothing of a great gulf once occupying almost the whole of what is called the Mississippi Valley, when the States now forming the boundaries of the river had no existence, and all that part of our continent lay open to the ocean. Nor does it say anything of a time when there were neither Rocky Mountains nor Alleghanies, when immense marshes, on which grew forests wholly unlike our forests, filled the central part of the United States. No doubt it speaks of the coal beds in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and explains how coal is formed by the decomposition of plants; but these coal beds have a story of their own to tell, which would interest the dullest mind. They were built up by the slow decay of vast forests, in which the largest trees were of a kind known to us now almost entirely as ferns, rushes, reeds, and the like. It is true that some large representatives of them still exist, but they grow in very different climates from ours, — in the tropical parts of South America, where there are tall and stately tree-ferns, and where some of the palms also resemble the trees of the coal forests.
Jacques Francois Benard and Nicolas de Fer. “Mississippi River Valley.” Hand-colored map, 1718. Map provided courtesy of the Map Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
You may ask how we know all this, if nothing remains of these forests except the coal. We know it because the coal beds are full of stems, leaves, fragments of trunks, fruits, seed-vessels, in all of which the structure is perfectly preserved. The coal, you must remember, was once only mud, the trees falling in swampy ground, soaked with rain, slowly decomposing, and forming a rich loamy soil, as trees do now, if they are left to decay where they lie. My young readers must not suppose, however, that one or twenty such forests would make a coal deposit of much thickness; on the contrary, countless generations of trees must have grown up and perished, before the beds of coal were formed which feed all our fires to-day. As the layers of vegetable soil formed by the decomposition of such successive forests were heaped one upon another, the pressure of the upper ones consolidated those below, and gradually transformed the whole mass from a soft to a hard substance. Here and there, however, a branch, a fallen leaf, a fruit or seed, has been buried in this soil without decaying; and by such remains we are enabled to decipher the character of these old woods.
Then came another process; this mass had to be baked, to give it the character of coal. For reasons which, so far as I understand them myself, I shall try to explain hereafter, the interior of the earth is hotter than its surface. Here and there this internal heat finds an outlet, — comes in contact with what geologists call the crust of our globe, that is, with the solid envelope which forms its surface. This envelope is composed of a great number of materials, — sand, mud, lime, &c.; and these materials are changed into a variety of substances by the action of heat. The effect of this heating process upon the deposits left by the dying forests of which we have been talking was to change them into coal. We shall see hereafter, if you care to know more about it, how the petroleum of which we hear so much nowadays is connected with this same internal furnace, and with the coal beds themselves.
Petrified tree trunk outside the United States National Museum, now known as the Arts and Industries Building, Washington, D.C. From 8″ x 10″ glass negative, c. 1880s.
Leaving the Middle States, and going farther south, we read there the same story of change and gradual growth. In the days when the coal forests existed, there was no Florida at all. It has been built on to our continent by coral animals, — strange little workmen, the busiest and most patient architects the world has ever seen, whose history we will study together.
In short, all the countries with the present aspect of which your geography makes you familiar have grown slowly, through innumerable ages, to be what we find them. Europe was once an archipelago of islands in the wide ocean, — a bit of France here, a fraction of Germany there, Russia just showing herself above the waters, neither Alps nor Apennines nor Pyrenees to be seen. There are regions of Central Europe, now far removed from the sea-shores, the soil of which is so filled with remains of marine animals, that you cannot take up a handful of roadside dust without gathering a variety of shells. The mountains of the Jura, in Switzerland, are full of such localities. There is a very romantic gorge running from the base of the Jura, near Montagny, to the village of St. Croix, about half-way up the slope of the range. I well remember wandering through it one summer afternoon with a party of friends, and our amusing ourselves, as we walked along, by breaking off bits from the brittle rocks forming the walls of the precipitous chasm, and examining the shells which fell from them as they crumbled under our touch. Resting afterwards on the mountain terrace above, while we ate our lunch of bread and cheese, and looking across the plain of Switzerland to the Alps, it was difficult to believe that the ocean had ever washed over that fertile land, and had broken against the base of the very range on which we sat.
In the series of chapters I propose to write for “Our Young Folks,” I shall attempt to explain, as far as modern geology teaches it to us, how these changes were brought about; what agents have been at work fashioning this earth on which we live, building it up or wearing it away, heating it in the great furnace of nature, cooling it gradually till a crust was formed upon its surface. We shall see that vapors condensed, and oceans slowly gathered about this world of ours, that gradually land was lifted above the face of the waters, that after a while life stirred on those newly baptized shores, and that at last the earth, so carefully prepared for this end, became inhabited, but not by beings of exactly the same kind as those which live upon it now.
True, there were corals and strange old star-fishes mounted on stems, and spreading their fringed cups like flowers in the water; there were shells endless in number, infinite in variety; there were crustacea, that is, animals resembling our shrimps, crabs, and lobsters; and there were fishes also, — but neither fish nor shrimp nor shell nor star-fish was our familiar acquaintance of to-day. In their general structure they were the same, so that the naturalist recognizes them at once; but that structure was presented under singular, old-fashioned forms, very unlike their representatives now.
All the earliest animals were marine, for the very good reason that in those days the world was wholly ocean and low sea-shore. There was neither forest nor field; no very wide expanses of surface were raised above the water, and the dry land was not yet prepared to receive its myriads of inhabitants. But the beaches were ready; their sands and shallows swarmed with a busy, crowded life; and let me remind you again that, when we split some bit of inland rock, and find it full of shells, broken fragments of crustacea, or star-fish, we do but break in upon one of the little colonies which had their homes upon those primitive shores, lived and died upon them as our animals of the same kind live and die upon our sea-shores to-day.
Hall of Fossil Plants and Invertebrate Animals exhibit case in the Museum of Natural History, featuring “Silurian Sea Scorpion” fossil, Washington, D.C. Photo of gelatin silver print, 1961.
Nor is it strange that we find small fragments of rock thronged with these remains, while large masses in their immediate neighborhood do not contain any. We see the same thing on our beaches now; many of these animals are naturally gregarious; others are brought together by the fact that in certain very limited localities they find exactly what they need to sustain existence. How often, in looking for sea-anemones, or star-fishes, or crabs, we find them crowded into some little corner they have chosen for their home, while we may hunt for them in vain over all the neighboring space.
Gradually I hope to make you acquainted with some of these early animals, and to show you that not only the earth, but the beings living upon its surface, have been different at successive periods. We must, however, always remember that there has been a connection between the past and present; that the period to which we ourselves belong, and all those preceding it, are chapters of one and the same story, intelligently linked from first to last. We know it but in part; many of the pages are so torn and defaced that it seems impossible to decipher them, and some are wholly missing. And yet, bit by bit, the students of nature are putting the broken record together, and puzzling it out for us.
We will not, however, go back at once to the ancient world and its inhabitants, in our talks about Natural History. What is near and familiar is more readily understood than what is strange and distant; a special fact is more easily explained than a wide, comprehensive view. So I will begin, not with the great features of the world’s history, but with a very small portion of its present surface.
In my next chapter I will tell you something of the peninsula of Florida. We shall see with what silent, quiet patience the ages have added this single outlying State to our continent, and we shall then be better prepared to understand the more general phenomena affecting the outline and character of the whole earth.
Agassiz, Elizabeth CAbot Cary. “The world we live on.” Our Young folks 5, No. 1 (january 1869): 38-41.
Contexts
By the time of this chapter’s appearance, Agassiz had published her own natural history texts and contributed to her husband’s expedition journals and publications. There was widespread interest among white Americans in expeditions to explore, study, and map locations throughout the country; for example, the Folsom-Cook exploration of the upper Yellowstone and the Powell Geographic Expedition along the Green and Colorado rivers set out later in 1869.
Original illustration by John Harley from Our Young Folks, p. 536.
I PROMISED to write you, my young friends, from the Florida Reefs, and I perhaps I cannot do better than to give you the narrative of a single excursion, — one which you would have enjoyed as much as we did, could I have invited you to share our holiday. Do you remember that in a former chapter I spoke of a channel lying between the Reef and the Keys, called the “Ship Channel”? I told you that it made a very quiet anchorage, and that, when there was a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, vessels were very glad to find shelter in this channel, and wait till the blow was over.
This was our case. We had started from Key West some days before, on board the steamer Bibb, for a cruise in the Gulf Stream off the Florida coast. We were intending to make soundings, — that is, to ascertain the depth of the water in certain parts of the Stream, and to see what was the strength and direction of the currents, and at the same time to dredge on the ocean bottom for any animals which might be living there.
I say we, because I was looking on, and so it seemed to me as if I were helping, which is the way with a great many people who stand and look on and feel as if they did all the work. But in truth I did nothing at all, except to follow the operations with a great deal of interest, as I dare say you would have done; watching, especially when the dredge came up, to see what beautiful things it brought from the ocean depth. The dredge is a strong net fastened upon an iron frame, so heavy that it will sink very far in the water, and when loaded may fall even to a depth of several thousand feet. Being thrown over the side of the vessel it drags on the bottom, and scoops up whatever comes in its way.
I wish you could have taken a peep with me sometimes into the glass bowls, where, after the contents of the dredge were assorted, we kept the living animals. Sometimes you would have seen corals which you would surely have taken for flowers rather than animals. Their pure white cups, occasionally mounted on shells, were so frail and delicate that you would scarcely believe them to be hard till you touched them. Their soft tentacles gently stirring in the water only confirmed the deception. Here you have a picture of some of them, but you do not see their tentacles, because all their soft parts die and shrivel up when they are taken from the water. When the tentacles are spread out in the living animal they form a delicate fringe, extending beyond the edge of the cups, and are in constant motion. When drawn in, they lie folded like a colored lining against the inner side of the cup.
Original illustration by John Harley from Our Young Folks, p. 536.
Then I should have shown you little shrimps of a bright red color, with large blue eyes, and tiny cuttle-fishes [1], and crimson, orange, or purple sponges, and feather stars as many tinted as the rainbow. Or look at this minute sea-urchin who has come up in a bit of rock, where he just fits into a little hole which he has worn for himself. That is the way he makes his house. I wonder whether when he grows bigger, as all young folks must do, he will enlarge his house to suit his dimensions. Now he is packed into it so snugly that there is no room to spare.
We had often beautiful sea-anemones also, though these did not usually come up in the dredge, but were caught when we made boating excursions to the land or to the shoals of the reef. Sometimes the body was orange color, while the tentacles were bright green; in other cases the whole animal was green; in others, pink or red. I remember two crimson ones which interested us especially, because they lived for many days, and we used to watch them. One day, some exceedingly small fishes, not more than a third of an inch in length, were caught in the hand-net, and chanced to be thrown alive into the glass bowl where these anemones were kept. They had not had anything to eat for some time, and I suppose they felt hungry, for presently I saw one of the anemones spread out his soft, treacherous feelers. Instantly one of the little fishes seemed to be stranded against them, entangled, no doubt, in the web of invisible cords thrown out from their lasso cells. I do not remember whether I told you about these singular weapons of theirs, when explaining the structure of the sea-anemone. Their tentacles are covered with little cells in which threads or whips, so delicate that they cannot be seen by the naked eye, are coiled up. When they desire to catch any prey they throw out these whips by hundreds, and no doubt the poor little fish was caught among them. At all events, it lay for a moment upon the tentacles, a slight quiver showing once or twice that it was not quite dead, and presently the tentacles closed in with it and drew it down to the mouth, where it soon disappeared. The other sea-anemone, observing that his companion was dining so sumptuously, followed his example and also helped himself to a fish, which disappeared after the same fashion. For some days after that our anemones looked remarkably well and thriving. Evidently their hearty meal agreed with them. Such were a few of our specimens, but indeed there was no end to the pretty things which we collected daily.
Unfortunately, however, our work was interrupted by what is called a “norther” in these regions; that is, a very strong blow from the north. We were very glad to take shelter behind the reef, in a harbor called “The old Rhodes,” which is entirely shut in by keys, as all islands about the Florida coast are called, and is therefore very quiet. We had been prisoners here for several days; we had exhausted all the excursions which could be undertaken in small boats in the neighborhood, and therefore we were delighted to wake up one morning after a heavy rain, and find that the sea had gone down, the sun was shining brightly, and the surface of the water was without a ripple. Glad to be once more on our way, we left old Rhodes, and, proceeding down the reef, anchored before Carysfort Lighthouse.
*”I owe this sketch to the courtesy of Colonel Blunt, of the U. S. Corps of Engineers” (Agassiz 539).
You must know that the Carysfort Light is a beacon famous on the reef, partly because its ray penetrates so far that sailors recognize it at a distance of more than twenty miles, and feel safe, for they know that, guided by its light, they can avoid the dangerous shore; and partly because its foundations strike fast and deep into one of the most beautiful and extensive fields of coral growth known on this or perhaps on any other coast. This field we wanted to see, and therefore we anchored very near the lighthouse. It is a singular structure, rising, as you see, directly from the ocean, without a foot of land about it; for you must remember that our coral field is under the sea. The light is lifted on a solid shaft a hundred feet above the surface of the water. This shaft is strengthened on the outside by an iron framework of columns slanting outward, and the rooms occupied by the keeper are built in between the shaft and the outside columns at about half height, standing perhaps some forty or fifty feet above the water.
After breakfast we rowed to the lighthouse, and, arriving under the columns, stepped from our boat on to a perpendicular ladder somewhat steep to climb, which brought us to a rough flooring. From this point there was a spiral staircase, by which we reached the rooms of the lighthouse-keeper. He was glad enough to see us, for he and his two assistants live a lonely life out on the reef, with no soul to speak to except each other, and nothing to do but to trim and feed the lamp on which so many lives depend, and watch the sails go by. He was an old man, who had led a seafaring life himself, and he told us that forty years ago he was wrecked on the very spot where Carysfort Light now ‘stands. I dare say that sometimes, when he lights up his huge lantern at dusk, and sets the lamp revolving within the great glass lenses which multiply its brilliancy a hundred-fold, he remembers the night when, if such a glowing eye had shone upon his track, he would have been saved from great disaster and loss.
This was not the only lighthouse we had visited on our cruise. A few weeks before we had stopped at one which was built on a rock in the ocean, so barren that Carysfort itself, with no land at all about it, seemed to me cheerful in comparison. I mention it because I think you will be surprised to hear that on this desolate rock there lived a family of children with their father and mother. Do you not think it must be a sad life? And yet they looked bright and happy, though they never have any other children to come and play with them, never see a green field or a flower, and never know what it is to run and play at will as children do on land, because the rock is so small, and is pierced with so many holes and caverns, that their parents fear to let them go about alone. I wished I had had some playthings, some pretty books or pictures, for them. But as it was, instead of my giving them anything, they loaded me with presents, bringing me, in a shy, affectionate way, all the pretty shells and stones which are their substitutes for playthings, and insisting upon my accepting them. But let us go back to Carysfort. I am forgetting the subject of our talk in telling you about those solitary little people anchored so far away from all your amusements and pleasures.
After we had talked with the lighthouse-keeper for a while, he invited us to step out upon a sort of ledge or balcony which runs around his rooms on the outside, and is protected by a railing. From this perch we looked down into the sea, and I want you to look down with me. If you do not, I am afraid you will hardly believe what I tell you.
As far as the eye could reach, the coral field stretched out around the lighthouse, and so transparent was the water, that we saw the ocean bottom as we might have seen a garden spread out beneath us. This comparison may, however, mislead you, and I think I have perhaps misled you already, when in a former chapter I compared the appearance of a growing coral reef to a shrubbery of waving, many-colored plants. When I wrote that I had never seen, and hardly expected to see, a coral reef, and I described its appearance as I had understood it from the descriptions of others. But Nature is not poor in invention. She does not simply repeat the grace and loveliness of her fields when she spreads her ocean floor with a beauty all its own. And though I confess that there is something in the branching, leaf-like growth of the corals, as well as in their motion and color, which reminds one of plants, yet I think there is a glory of the sea as there is a glory of the land, and they are not the same.
Original illustration by John Harley from Our Young Folks, p. 540.
The coral field consisted, in a great degree, of what are called leaf-corals (Madrepora palmata). They often, though not always, grow in spirals, their broad, flat branches rising tier upon tier, one above the other. Looking down upon them, I understood where the animals living upon the reef make their homes and find a shelter. Between the almost level floors of these expansions, which often stretch for many yards in circumference on one single stock, there are hundreds of protected recesses, little holes and shady nooks and corners, which seem, I dare say, like large caves to the small animals which inhabit them.
Numbers of fishes were playing among these spreading branches. Darting, shooting, winding in and out between the corals, seen one moment, hidden the next, chasing one another as if in a game of hide-and-seek, or following in shoals of twenty or thirty, as if bound on some special errand, they all seemed as busy and as happy as birds in a wood. Most of them were very brilliant in color. In some, the whole body was of the most vivid blue, others were blue and black, others, again, red and green, others black banded with yellow, and one, the most beautiful of all, was a bright canary color on the lower side, and dark violet above. Now and then some large fish, a garupa [2] or a barracuda, or even a shark, would pass by, and then all the smaller fry scattered, hiding themselves under the coral, and were seen no more till their enemy was out of sight.
We passed a couple of hours in the lighthouse, watching this strange and beautiful spectacle. We then returned to the ship for lunch, but started again in boats in the afternoon, for the purpose of floating over the whole expanse of the reef, and collecting coral. This was, if possible, more interesting, for, being almost on a level with the water, we could see every object beneath it with even greater distinctness than from the lighthouse, though at that height we had, of course, a more extensive view.
Original illustration by John Harley from Our Young Folks, p. 542.
I have mentioned especially the leaf-coral, because that was the most conspicuous at first sight; but there were many heads of brain-coral, or Mæandrina, of Astræa, commonly called Star Coral, and of Porites, ranging in size from little tufts not bigger than your fist to enormous masses from six to ten feet in diameter. There were many also of the more delicate branching kinds, known as finger-corals, and great numbers of the so-called sea-fans. These latter resemble plants so much, that in seeing them you cease to wonder at the frequent comparison of coral-beds to gardens or shrubbery. The broad expansions of the leaf-coral spread horizontally, and are perfectly rigid and motionless, the soft parts of the animals composing the mass being very small in comparison to the solid portions of which the whole structure is built. The fan-corals, on the contrary, are elastic and flexible. They stand upon the ocean bottom on a sort of root, or at least upon a solid base which resembles a root, and their spreading leaves rise lightly in the water and wave with its motion as if stirred by the wind. They are of many colors, — various shades of brown, green, and purple, the latter being especially predominant. Mingled as they often are with a kind of vegetable coral called coralline, resembling sea-weed, and with the bright red, purple, or orange-colored sponges which abound along the Florida coast, you may well be reminded, when looking down upon them, of a brilliant flower-bed.
We could not have had a better day for our excursion than the one we had chosen. It happened to be a season of spring tides, so that the ebb tide was remarkably low. In some places large masses of coral were left exposed, and indeed there were portions of the reef over which one might walk, not dry shod certainly, but springing from one coral stock to another. Other portions were still covered, even at the lowest tide, by six or eight feet or even three or four fathoms of water. I am sure that all the boys who read this would gladly have shared in the fun of that afternoon. We had three or four boats, and the greater part of the ship’s company were in them. All had come dressed for aquatic adventures, and soon there was scarcely a man left in the boats. In every variety of rough and picturesque costume, they were stalking about on the reef, — sometimes wading up to their waists or their shoulders, sometimes swimming in the deeper places, sometimes diving after a desirable specimen. Armed with boat-hooks, crow-bars, logs of wood, or whatever else they could lay their hands upon, all were engaged in dislodging the more solid and heavier masses, or in breaking off the delicate fans and the finger-corals. It was a play-day for all. I doubt if ever before the reef had resounded to such gayety, — the shouts and laughter of the men echoing on every side as they plunged and tumbled about in the water. Now and then the mirth was varied by cries of another kind, when some one, by mistake, laid hold of the sharp spines of a sea urchin, or got a sting from the so-called sea-worm. But these incidents were not numerous, and, after all, raised a laugh in the end.
At last, when all were fairly tired out with work and play, we returned to the vessel, rowing back in the sunset over a sea so calm that no ripple, except those made by our oars, broke its surface. Such was our day at Carysfort Reef, and if I have told my story well, I think you will admit that it was one to be pleasantly remembered. In my next article I shall tell you something of the different kinds of coral when alive, as I saw them during our cruise, and explain the reefs and keys of Florida more at length.
Original illustration by John Harley from Our Young Folks, p. 543.
End illustration by John Harley.
Agassiz, Elizabeth CAbot Cary. “A Day on carysfort reef.” Our Young folks 5, No. 8 (August 1869): 536-43.
[1] Cuttlefish are small invertebrates (just over an inch to 20 inches long) with eight arms and two tentacles attached to their heads. There are over 120 species of these tiny cephalopods (a group that also includes octopuses, squid, and nautiluses) all over the world.
[2] This is most likely an anglicized version of the Portuguese word “garoupa,” or grouper. Groupers are among the most common fish in the Florida Keys.
Contexts
Carysfort Reef, like several others in the Keys, is named for a British warship that ran aground at that section of reef. The Florida Keys reefs were dangerous to the increasing ship traffic of the 18th and 19th centuries. An industry grew around salvaging ships and their goods. For a time, Key West was the wealthiest U.S. city per capita. Dry Tortugas and Carysfort had lightships (anchored boats with lanterns on their masts) by 1825 and 1826, respectively, but ships still ran aground.
In 1851, the U.S. Coast Survey, which had begun overseeing mapping of the Keys reefs, had Louis Agassiz examine potential lighthouse locations. This return trip to Carysfort that Elizabeth Agassiz describes happened between two expeditions she planned. She traveled to Brazil in 1865, managed the trip, and kept a journal that she would later combine with Louis’s notes and publish. Later, she negotiated Louis’s involvement in the Hassler Expedition to the Straits of Magellan. Agassiz became the first president of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, which would later become Radcliffe College.
Resources for Further Study
Carysfort Reef is one of the many reefs that are now part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), one of the National Marine Sanctuaries that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manages.
Carysfort Reef is one of the Florida Keys’ Sanctuary Preservation Areas, which protect the threatened elkhorn, star, and brain corals — North America’s only living barrier reef. These shallow corals are popular with snorkelers and scuba divers and were historically frequented by fishers, but overuse contributed to the reef’s decline. Permanent mooring buoys now prevent damage from boat anchors, and sanctuary staff closely monitors activity along the reef. NOAA leads an ongoing partnership for Mission: Iconic Reefs, which manages coral outplanting in an effort to restore reefs within FKNMS.
Charles E. Burchfield. Sunlight on Corn. Watercolor on paper, 1916, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College, NY. Public domain.
In the year 1914 all the children schools of Cumberland county, N. J., were given the privilege to enter a contest. The girls were to sew, patch or bake and the boys to grow corn or sweet potatoes.[1] As I liked to work out of doors I entered the corn contest. The rules were that the boys should do all the work themselves; the girls were to do all except the plowing. We were to have one-tenth of an acre and find our own seed.
When I first asked my father for a piece of ground he said, “I can not spare it.” But at last he consented to give me a plot next to the woods, if I could get one-tenth of an acre from it.
One night after school I went down and measured off my ground. On the nineteenth of May I took my old friend, Harry (the horse), whom I had worked in the field before, and went down to my farm, as I called it. There I worked until I had an even seed bed, after which I marked it out and fertilized it. On the next day I planted my corn putting three grains in a hill and covering it with a hoe.
I paid it daily visits and when it was about two inches high I replanted it and hoed the hills which were up. From then on I hoed and cultivated my crop and kept it free from grass until it grew too large to be attended. As it was a dry season that year, the stalks next to the woods did not grow to their full height.
I also had visitors to come and see my corn. This gave me more courage to go on as all the other girls and boys in Fairfield township had given it up. Mother and father had also tried to discourage me, but I kept on.
I did not cut it down until November. I then measured my highest stalks which were from fifteen to sixteen feet. On the day before the contest I stayed home to get my corn ready. Mother and father coaxed me not to take it away, but I did.
After selecting ten of my largest and best ears of corn, I put them in a basket and went to Bridgeton with one of my neighbors, as father would not take them. After arriving in town I carried my corn up to the Court House.
The next day I went to school and in the afternoon my teacher received a telephone message which said I had won a prize. I was very happy indeed; mother and father were surprised.
On Saturday went to the Bridgeton Library annex where things were being exhibited and saw my corn with a prize tag on it which made me feel very proud. I then went to the Commercial League room where the prizes were distributed. I received my prize and went home very happy and full of courage to try again.
The amount I cleared for my corn was $12.00–$5.00 for my fodder, $4.00 for my seed and $3.00 for my prize.
I am going to try again this year and I think all boys and girls who have the privilege of learning to farm should do so–for there is nothing better than life on a farm.
STEVENSON, HELEN. “HOW I GREW MY CORN.” THE CRISIS 8, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1914): 273-74.
Cover of the State of New Jersey’s Department of Public Instruction’s Leaflet No. 3: Corn Growing (1914).
[1] In February, 1914 the Department of Public Instruction from Trenton, N.J. published an elementary agriculture manual on corn growing. This document’s foreword references “the widespread interested aroused at the present time by the organization of ‘Corn Clubs’ [that] makes a study of corn one of the best ways of introducing agriculture in the elementary grades of the public schools of the State.” The section “Suggestions for Girls’ Participation in the Study of Agriculture” speaks directly to Helen Stevenson’s experience: “The girls may do exactly the same work as the boys . . . Not a few girls will prefer this plan and some of our girls have grown corn quite as successfully as boys.”
Contexts
Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.
In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”
The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
fodder: Food for cattle, horses, or other animals.
Resources for Further Study
After the Civil War (1861-1865) and the subsequent abolition of slavery, former slaves were notoriously promised “forty acres and a mule” as a compensation for their unpaid work during slavery. Ultimately, this attempted redistribution failed and by the end of the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) lands were returned to their previous white owners.
A timeline of interactions between black farmers and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 1920 to 2021.
TED-Ed short animation on the history of corn. Indigenous peoples from southern Mexico domesticated corn about 10,000 years ago. Today, this crop accounts for more than one tenth of our global crop production!
Albert Lubaki. Untitled. Watercolor, c. 1929, Fabrice Gousset/Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris. Public Domain.
At daybreak Monday morning we had finished our breakfast by candle light and with staff in hand we marched northeast for Lukunga. [1]
In two days we sighted the Mission Compound. Word had reached the missionaries (A. B. M. U.) that foreigners were approaching, and they came out to meet and greet us. [2] We were soon hurried into their cool and comfortable mud houses. Our faithful cook was dismissed, for we were to take our meals with the missionaries.
Mr. Hoste, who is at the head of this station, came into our room and mentioned that the numerous spiders, half the size of your hand, on the walls were harmless. “But,” said he, as he raised his hand and pointed to a hole over the door, “there is a nest of scorpions; you must be careful in moving in or out, for they will spring upon you.”
Well, you ought to have seen us dodging in and out that door. After supper, not discrediting the veracity of the gentleman, we set to work, and for an hour we spoiled the walls by smashing spiders with slippers.
The next morning the mission station was excited over the loss of their only donkey. The donkey had been feeding in the field and a boa-constrictor had captured him, squeezed him into pulp, dragged him a hundred yards down to the river bank, and was preparing to swallow him.[3] The missionaries, all with guns, took aim and fired, killing the twenty-five-foot boa-constrictor. The boa was turned over to the natives and they had a great feast. The missionaries told us many tales about how the boa-constrictor would come by night and steal away their goats, hogs, and dogs.
The sand around Lukunga is a hot-bed for miniature fleas, or “jiggers.” [4] The second day of our stay at Lukunga our feet had swollen and itched terribly, and on examination we found that these “jiggers” had entered under our toe nails and had grown to the size of a pea. A native was called and with a small sharpened stick they were cut out. We saw natives with toes and fingers eaten entirely off by these pests. Mr. Hoste told us to keep our toes well greased with palm oil. We followed his instructions, but grease with sand and sun made our socks rather “heavy.”
The native church here is very strong spiritually.
The church bell, a real big brass bell, begins to ring at 8 A. M. and continues for an hour. The natives in the neighborhood come teeming by every trail, take their seats quietly, and listen attentively to the preaching of God’s word. No excitement, no shouting, but an intelligent interest shown by looking and listening from start to finish.
In the evening you can hear from every quarter our hymns sung by the natives in their own language. They are having their family devotions before retiring.
Our second day’s march brought us to a large river. Our loads and men were ferried over in canoes. Mr. Lapsley and I decided to swim it, and so we jumped in and struck out for the opposite shore. On landing we were told by a native watchman that we had done a very daring thing. He explained with much excitement and many gestures that the river was filled with crocodiles, and that he did not expect to see us land alive on his side. We camped on the top of the hill overlooking N’Kissy and the wild rushing Congo Rapids. It was in one of these whirlpools that young Pocock, Stanley’s last survivor, perished.
In the “Pool” we saw many hippopotami, and longed to go out in a canoe and shoot one, but being warned of the danger from the hippopotami and also of the treacherous current of the Congo River, which might take us over the rapids and to death, we were afraid to venture. A native Bateke fisherman,[5] just a few days before our arrival, had been crushed in his canoe by a bull-hippopotamus.[6] Many stories of hippopotami horrors were told us.
One day Chief N’Galiama with his attendant came to the mission and told Dr. Simms that the people in the village were very hungry and to see if it were possible for him to get some meat to eat.
Dr. Simms called me and explained how the people were on the verge of a famine and if I could kill them a hippopotamus it would help greatly. He continued to explain that the meat and hide would be dried by the people and, using but a little at each meal, would last them a long time. Dr. Simms mentioned that he had never hunted, but he knew where the game was. He said, “I will give you a native guide, you go with him around the first cataract about two miles from here and you will find the hippopotami.” I was delighted at the idea, and being anxious to use my “Martini Henry” rifle and to help the hungry people, I consented to go.[7] In an hour and a half we had walked around the rapids, across the big boulders, and right before us were at least a dozen big hippopotami. Some were frightened, ducked their heads and made off; others showed signs of fight and defiance.
At about fifty yards distant I raised my rife and let fly at one of the exposed heads. My guide told me that the hippopotamus was shot and killed. In a few minutes another head appeared above the surface of the water and again taking aim I fired with the same result. The guide, who was a subject of the Chief N’Galiama, sprang upon a big boulder and cried to me to look at the big bubbles which were appearing on the water; then explained in detail that the hippopotami had drowned and would rise to the top of the water within an hour.
The guide asked to go to a fishing camp nearby and call some men to secure the hippopotami when they rose, or else they would go out with the current and over the rapids. In a very short time about fifty men, bringing native rope with them, were on the scene and truly, as the guide had said, up came the first hippopotamus, his big back showing first. A number of the men were off swimming with the long rope which was tied to the hippopotamus’ foot. A signal was given and every man did his best. No sooner had we secured the one near shore than there was a wild shout to untie and hasten for the other. These two were securely tied by their feet and big boulders were rolled on the rope to keep them from drifting out into the current.
The short tails of both of them were cut off and we started home. We reported to Dr. Simms that we had about four or five tons of meat down on the river bank. The native town ran wild with delight. Many natives came to examine my gun which had sent the big bullets crashing through the brain of the hippopotami. Early the next morning N’Galiama sent his son Nzelie with a long caravan of men to complete the work. They leaped upon the backs of the hippopotami, wrestled with each other for a while, and then with knives and axes fell to work. The missionaries enjoyed a hippopotamus steak that day also.
Before the chickens began to crow for dawn I was alarmed by a band of big, broad-headed, determined driver ants.[8] They filled the cabin, the bed, the yard. There were millions. They were in my head, my eyes, my nose, and pulling at my toes. When I found it was not a dream, I didn’t tarry long.
Some of our native boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built a fire and slept inside of the circle until day.
We scraped the acquaintance of these soldier ants by being severely bitten and stung. They are near the size of a wasp and use both ends with splendid effect. They live deep down in the ground and come out of a smoothly cut hole, following each other single file, and when they reach a damp spot in the forest and hear the white ants cutting away on the fallen leaves, the leader stops until all the soldiers have caught up. A circle is formed, a peculiar hissing is the order to raid, and down under the leaves they dart, and in a few minutes they come out with their pinchers filled with white ants. The line, without the least excitement, is again formed and they march back home stepping high with their prey.
The small White Ants have a blue head and a white, soft body and are everywhere in the ground and on the surface. They live by eating dead wood and leaves.[9]
We got rid of the driver ants by keeping up a big fire in their cave for a week. We dug up the homes of the big black ants and they moved off. But there was no way possible to rid the place of the billions of white ants. They ate our dry goods boxes, our books, our trunks, our beds, shoes, hats and clothing. The natives make holes in the ground, entrapping the ants, and use them for food.[10]
The dogs look like ordinary curs, with but little hair on them, and they never bark or bite. I asked the people to explain why their dogs didn’t bark. So they told me that once they did bark, but long ago the dogs and leopards had a big fight, the dogs whipped the leopards, and after that the leopards were very mad, so the mothers of the little dogs told them not to bark any more, and they hadn’t barked since.[11]
The natives tie wooden bells around their dogs to know where they are. Every man knows the sound of his bell just as we would know the bark of our dog.
There are many, many kinds of birds of the air, all known and called by name, and the food they eat, their mode of building nests, etc., were familiar to the people. They knew the customs and habits of the elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo, leopard, hyena, jackal, wildcat, monkey, mouse, and every animal which roams the great forest and plain, – from the thirty-foot boa-constrictor to a tiny tulu their names and nature were well known.
The little children could tell you the native names of all insects, such as caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, locusts, mantis, honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, goliath beetles, stage beetles, ants, etc.
The many species of fish, eels and terrapins were on the end of their tongues, and these were all gathered and used for food. All the trees of the forest and plain, the flowers, fruits, nuts and berries were known and named. Roots which are good for all maladies were not only known to the medicine man, but the common people knew them also.
SHEPPARD, WILLIAM HENRY. “ANIMAL LIFE IN THE CONGO,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 135-42. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
[1] Lukunga is a district of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital.
[2] ABMU is the acronym for the American Baptist Missionary Union, an international missionary society founded in 1814.
[3] Boa constrictors are endemic to the Americas, not Africa. The biggest snake in Africa is the African Rock Python, which can reach a length of 20 to 30 feet.
[4] The chigoe flea, commonly known as jigger, causes a painful infestation that included borrowing under the host’s skin. Originally from the South America and the Caribbean, jiggers spread to Africa at the end of the 19th century.
[5] The Teke or Bateke people are a Bantu Central African ethnic group mainly located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The word “teke” means “to buy.”
[6] Male hippopotami are called bulls and female hippopotami are called cows. They are very territorial.
[7] The British Empire adopted the Martini-Henry rifle in 1871 and kept it in service for 47 years. This firearm is sometimes referred to as a weapon of Empire.
[8] Driver ants, which belong to the genus Dorylus, hunt together for prey in massive swarm raids. Due to their ferocity, they effectively “drive” many animals before them.
[9] White ants are not ants at all, but termites, social insects that build large nests and, due to the damage the cause to wooden structures, are widely classified as pests.
Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Unknown. Single Termite Mounds or in Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Monthly. Public Domain.
[10] Yes, termites are edible! A good source of protein, fat and minerals, they probably figured in our ancestors’ diet and many people eat them today.
[11] The Basenji is a very old breed of dog hound native to central Africa. Although known as “the barkless dog,” they do produce yodel-like vocalizations.
Contexts
Sheppard’s essay was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
cur: A dog: now always depreciative or contemptuous; a worthless, low-bred, or snappish dog. Formerly (and still sometimes dialectally) applied without depreciation, especiallyto a watchdog or shepherd’s dog.
Visit the collection of William Henry Sheppard’s papers a the Presbyterian Historical Society’s website.
Texts written by and about Sheppard at the Log College Press’s website, which collects writings from American presbyterians from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Students at Chilocco Indian School. Date unknown. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.
Travelers tell us that the wolves of Mexico have a strange way of catching the wild horses. These horses have a great speed. It is almost impossible for a single cowboy to catch one. The cowboys, when they wish to run them down, have relays of pursuers. First one set of cowboys will chase the horses, then another, and another, until at last the horses are caught by the lasso. But it is only when they are completely tired that they are caught; therefore it would be impossible for the wolves to catch them unless they used strategy, for the flight of the wolves is no so swift as that of the horses.
This is the way the wolves kill the wild horses of the Mexican plains. First, two wolves come out of the woods and begin to play together like two kittens. They gambol about each other and run backward and forward. Then the herd of horses lift their startled heads and gets ready to stampede. But the wolves seem to be so playful that the horses, after watching them for awhile, forget their fears, and continue to graze. Then the wolves in their play come nearer and nearer while other wolves slowly and stealthily creep after them. Then suddenly the enemies surround the herd and make one plunge, and the horses are struggling with the fangs of the relentless foes gripped in their throats.
Anonymous. “How Wolves Catch Wild Horses.” Indian School Journal 6, no. 10 (April 1910): 30.
[1] Here is some commentary. Turn this text red in the color settings if it isn’t already. You will need to name your anchor blocks in the block settings by clicking on it and assigning an ID. I like using the format note-x where x is the number of the note you’re on. Then, add the note number in brackets to your text where you want it to go, highlight the number, and link to #note-x.
[2] Here is some commentary. Turn this text red in the color settings if it isn’t already. You will need to name your anchor blocks in the block settings by clicking on it and assigning an ID. I like using the format note-# where # is the number of the note you’re on.
Contexts
Located in north-central Oklahoma near the Kansas border, the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School (also known as the Haworth Institute, the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, and the Chilocco Indian School) began taking students in 1884, enrolling 150 from seventeen tribes that first year. Enrollment had more than doubled by 1895, with students coming from various tribes, including the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Pawnee tribes. The Oklahoma Historical Society notes that “significant enrollment from the so-called ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ did not occur until after 1910 but by 1925, Cherokee constituted the largest single tribal affiliation at the school (26 percent of approximately nine hundred students).” Following World War II and the expansion of public education, the school enrolled mostly students who lacked access to such education.
Like most federally funded Indian schools, Chilocco sought to assimilate Native children into white society. Also like other schools, it stressed “industrial” education—manual and domestic labor—over academic pursuits, aiming to train them as workers for white families. Education at Chilocco was notably militaristic; students attended weekly Christian religious services, also intended to weaken their ties to family and tribe. In the 1950s, student numbers peaked at around 1300, and the school closed in 1980. This sketch highlights animals’ intelligence, a popular topic for American writers of all ages and ethnicities throughout the time period The Envious Lobster encompasses.
Resources for Further Study
Archuleta, Margaret L., Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled), eds. Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000.
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled). “Chilocco Indian Agricultural School.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society.
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina. (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled). They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1995).
