Books: The Writings of John Burroughs
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John Burroughs >> The Writings of John Burroughs
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"The wild hawk stood, with the down on
his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the
prey."
It takes a sure eye, too, to see
"The landscape winking thro' the
heat"--
or to gather this image:--
"He has a solid base of temperament;
But as the water-lily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Though anchor'd to the bottom, such
is he;"
or this:--
"Arms on which the standing muscle
sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little
stone,
Running too vehemently to break
upon it,"--
and many other gems that abound in his poems. He does not cut and
cover in a single line, so far as I have observed. Great caution
and exact knowledge underlie his most rapid and daring flights. A
lady told me that she was once walking with him in the fields, when
they came to a spring that bubbled up through shifting sands in a
very pretty manner, and Tennyson, in order to see exactly how the
spring behaved, got down on his hands and knees and peered a long
time into the water. The incident is worth repeating as showing how
intently a great poet studies nature.
Walt Whitman says he has been trying for years to find a word that
would express or suggest that evening call of the robin. How
absorbingly this poet must have studied the moonlight to hit upon
this descriptive phrase:--
"The vitreous pour of the full moon
just tinged with blue;"
how long have looked upon the carpenter at his bench to have made
this poem:--
"The tongue of his fore-plane whistles
its wild ascending lisp;"
or how lovingly listened to the nocturne of the mockingbird to have
turned it into words in "A Word out of the Sea "! Indeed, no poet
has studied American nature more closely than Whitman has, or is
more cautious in his uses of it. How easy are his descriptions!--
"Behold the daybreak!
The little light fades the immense
and diaphanous shadows!"
"The comet that came unannounced
Out of the north, flaring in
heaven."
"The fan-shaped explosion."
"The slender and jagged threads of
lightning, as sudden and fast amid
the din they chased each other
across the sky."
"Where the heifers browse--where
geese nip their food with short
jerks;
Where sundown shadows lengthen
over the limitless and lonesome
prairie;
Where herds of buffalo make a
crawling spread of the square miles
far and near;
Where the hummingbird shimmers--
where the neck of the long-lived
swan is curving and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the
shore when she laughs her near
human laugh;
Where band-neck'd partridges roost
in a ring on the ground with their
heads out."
Whitman is less local than the New England poets, and faces more to
the West. But he makes himself at home everywhere, and puts in
characteristic scenes and incidents, generally compressed into a
single line, from all trades and doings and occupations, North,
East, South, West, and identifies himself with man in all straits
and conditions on the continent. Like the old poets, he does not
dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up
by the great sciences, as astronomy and geology, but upon life and
movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history
here and there,--the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk
swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron,
the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese,
the sharp-hoofed moose, the mockingbird "the thrush, the hermit,"
etc.,--to help locate and define his position. Everywhere in
nature Whitman finds human relations, human responsions. In entire
consistence with botany, geology, science, or what not, he endues
his very seas and woods with passion, more than the old hamadryads
or tritons. His fields, his rocks, his trees, are not dead
material, but living companions. This is doubtless one reason why
Addington Symonds, the young Hellenic scholar of England, finds him
more thoroughly Greek than any other man of modern times.
Our natural history, and indeed all phases of life in this country,
is rich in materials for the poet that have yet hardly been
touched. Many of our most familiar birds, which are inseparably
associated with one's walks and recreations in the open air, and
with the changes of the seasons, are yet awaiting their poet,--as
the high-hole, with his golden-shafted quills and loud continued
spring call; the meadowlark, with her crescent-marked breast and
long-drawn, piercing, yet tender April and May summons forming,
with that of the high-hole, one of the three or four most
characteristic field sounds of our spring; the happy goldfinch,
circling round and round in midsummer with that peculiar undulating
flight and calling PER-CHICK'-O-PEE, PER-CHICK'-O-PEE, at each
opening and shutting of the wings, or later leading her plaintive
brood among the thistle-heads by the roadside; the little indigo-
bird, facing the torrid sun of August and singing through all the
livelong summer day; the contented musical soliloquy of the vireo,
like the whistle of a boy at his work, heard through all our woods
from May to September:--
"Pretty green worm, where are you?
Dusky-winged moth, how fare you,
When wind and rain are in the tree?
Cheeryo, cheerebly, chee,
Shadow and sun one are to me.
Mosquito and gnat, beware you,
Saucy chipmunk, how dare you
Climb to my nest in the maple-tree,
And dig up the corn
At noon and at morn?
Cheeryo, cheerebly, chee."
Or the phbe-bird, with her sweet April call and mossy nest under
the bridge or woodshed, or under the shelving rocks; or the brown
thrasher--mocking thrush--calling half furtively, half archly from
the treetop back in the bushy pastures: "Croquet, croquet, hit it,
hit it, come to me, come to me, tight it, tight it, you're out,
you're out," with many musical interludes; or the chewink, rustling
the leaves and peering under the bushes at you; or the pretty
little oven-bird, walking round and round you in the woods, or
suddenly soaring above the treetops, and uttering its wild lyrical
strain; or, farther south, the whistling redbird, with his crest
and military bearing,--these and many others should be full of
suggestion and inspiration to our poets. It is only lately that the
robin's song has been put into poetry. Nothing could be happier
than this rendering of it by a nameless singer in "A Masque of
Poets:"--
"When the willows gleam along the
brooks,
And the grass grows green in sunny
nooks,
In the sunshine and the rain
I hear the robin in the lane
Singing, 'Cheerily,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Cheerily, cheerily,
Cheer up.'
"But the snow is still
Along the walls and on the hill.
The days are cold, the nights forlorn,
For one is here and one is gone.
'Tut, tut. Cheerily,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Cheerily, cheerily,
Cheer up.'
"When spring hopes seem to wane,
I hear the joyful strain--
A song at night, a song at morn,
A lesson deep to me is borne,
Hearing, 'Cheerily,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Cheerily, cheerily,
Cheer up.' "
The poetic interpretation of nature, which has come to be a
convenient phrase, and about which the Oxford professor of poetry
has written a book, is, of course, a myth, or is to be read the
other way. It is the soul the poet interprets, not nature. There is
nothing in nature but what the beholder supplies. Does the sculptor
interpret the marble or his own ideal? Is the music in the
instrument, or in the soul of the performer? Nature is a dead clod
until you have breathed upon it with your genius. You commune with
your own soul, not with woods or waters; they furnish the
conditions, and are what you make them. Did Shelley interpret the
song of the skylark, or Keats that of the nightingale? They
interpreted their own wild, yearning hearts. The trick of the poet
is always to idealize nature,--to see it subjectively. You cannot
find what the poets find in the woods until you take the poet's
heart to the woods. He sees nature through a colored glass, sees it
truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole of
the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a bird, a sunset, have no hidden
meaning that the art of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet
shall interpret them differently, and interpret them rightly,
because the soul is infinite. Milton's nightingale is not
Coleridge's; Burns's daisy is not Wordsworth's; Emerson's bumblebee
is not Lowell's; nor does Turner see in nature what Tintoretto
does, nor Veronese what Correggio does. Nature is all things to all
men. "We carry within us," says Sir Thomas Browne, "the wonders we
find without." The same idea is daintily expressed in these
tripping verses of Bryant's:--
"Yet these sweet sounds of the early
season
And these fair sights of its early
days,
Are only sweet when we fondly listen,
And only fair when we fondly gaze.
"There is no glory in star or blossom,
Till looked upon by a loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes,
Till breathed with joy as they
wander by;"
and in these lines of Lowell:--
"What we call Nature, all outside
ourselves,
Is but our own conceit of what we see,
Our own reaction upon what we feel."
"I find my own complexion
everywhere."
Before either, Coleridge had said:--
"We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone doth Nature live;
Ours is the wedding-garment, ours
the shroud;"
and Wordsworth had spoken of
"The light that never was on sea or
land,
The consecration and the poet's
dream."
That light that never was on sea or land is what the poet gives us,
and is what we mean by the poetic interpretation of nature. The
Oxford professor struggles against this view. "It is not true," he
says, "that nature is a blank, or an unintelligible scroll with no
meaning of its own but that which we put into it from the light of
our own transient feelings." Not a blank, certainly, to the
scientist, but full of definite meanings and laws, and a storehouse
of powers and economies; but to the poet the meaning is what he
pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul. To the man of
science it is thus and so, and not otherwise; but the poet touches
and goes, and uses nature as a garment which he puts off and on.
Hence the scientific reading or interpretation of nature is the
only real one. Says the SOOTHSAYER in "Antony and Cleopatra:"--
'In Nature's infinite book of secrecy a
little do I read."
This is science bowed and reverent, and speaking through a great
poet. The poet himself does not so much read in nature's book--
though he does this, too--as write his own thoughts there. Nature
reads him, she is the page and he the type, and she takes the
impression he gives. Of course the poet uses the truths of nature
also, and he establishes his right to them by bringing them home to
us with a new and peculiar force,--a quickening or kindling force.
What science gives is melted in the fervent heat of the poet's
passion, and comes back to us supplemented by his quality and
genius. He gives more than he takes, always.
V
NOTES BY THE WAY
A NEW NOTE IN THE WOODS
THERE is always a new page to be turned in natural history, if one
is sufficiently on the alert. I did not know that the eagle
celebrated his nuptials in the air till one early spring day I saw
a pair of them fall from the sky with talons hooked together. They
dropped a hundred feet or more, in a wild embrace, their great
wings fanning the air, then separated and mounted aloft, tracing
their great circles against the clouds. "Watch and wait" is the
naturalist's sign. For years I have been trying to ascertain for a
certainty the author of that fine plaintive piping to be heard more
or less frequently, according to the weather, in our summer and
autumn woods. It is a note that much resembles that of our small
marsh frog in spring,--the hyla; it is not quite so clear and
assured, but otherwise much the same. Of a very warm October day I
have heard the wood vocal with it; it seemed to proceed from every
stump and tree about one. Ordinarily it is heard only at
intervals throughout the woods. Approach never so cautiously the
spot from which the sound proceeds, and it instantly ceases, and
you may watch for an hour without again hearing it. Is it a frog,
I said, the small tree-frog, the piper of the marshes, repeating
his spring note, but little changed, amid the trees? Doubtless it
is, yet I must see him in the very act. So I watched and waited,
but to no purpose, till one day, while bee-hunting in the woods, I
heard the sound proceed from beneath the leaves at my feet.
Keeping entirely quiet, the little musician presently emerged,
and, lifting himself up on a small stick, his throat palpitated and
the plaintive note again came forth. "The queerest frog ever I
saw," said a youth who accompanied me, and whom I had enlisted to
help solve the mystery. No; it was no frog or toad at all, but
the small red salamander, commonly called lizard. The color is
not strictly red, but a dull orange, variegated with minute specks
or spots. This was the mysterious piper, then, heard from May till
November through all our woods, sometimes on trees, but usually on
or near the ground. It makes more music in the woods in autumn
than any bird. It is a pretty, inoffensive creature, walks as
awkwardly as a baby, and may often be found beneath stones and old
logs in the woods, where, buried in the mould, it passes the
winter. (I suspect there is a species of little frog--Pickering's
hyla [footnote: A frequent piper in the woods throughout the
summer and early fall.]--that also pipes occasionally in the
woods.) I have discovered, also, that we have a musical spider.
One sunny April day, while seated on the borders of the woods, my
attention was attracted by a soft, uncertain, purring sound that
proceeded from the dry leaves at my feet. On investigating the
matter, I found that it was made by a busy little spider. Several
of them were traveling about over the leaves, as if in quest of
some lost cue or secret. Every moment or two they would pause, and
by some invisible means make the low, purring sound referred to.
Dr. J. A. Alien says the common turtle, or land tortoise, also has
a note,--a loud, shrill, piping sound. It may yet be discovered
that there is no silent creature in nature.
THE SAND HORNET
I turned another (to me) new page in natural history, when, during
the past season, I made the acquaintance of the sand wasp or
hornet. From boyhood I had known the black hornet, with his large
paper nest, and the spiteful yellow-jacket, with his lesser
domicile, and had cherished proper contempt for the various
indolent wasps. But the sand hornet was a new bird,--in fact, the
harpy eagle among insects,--and he made an impression. While
walking along the road about midsummer, I noticed working in the
towpath, where the ground was rather inclined to be dry and sandy,
a large yellow hornet-like insect. It made a hole the size of one's
little finger in the hard, gravelly path beside the roadbed. When
disturbed, it alighted on the dirt and sand in the middle of the
road. I had noticed in my walks some small bullet-like holes in
the field that had piqued my curiosity, and I determined to keep an
eye on these insects of the roadside. I explored their holes, and
found them quite shallow, and no mystery at the bottom of them. One
morning in the latter part of July, walking that way, I was quickly
attracted by the sight of a row of little mounds of fine, freshly
dug earth resting upon the grass beside the road, a foot or more
beneath the path. "What is this?" I said. "Mice, or squirrels, or
snakes," said my neighbor. But I connected it at once with the
strange insect I had seen. Neither mice nor squirrels work like
that, and snakes do not dig. Above each mound of earth was a hole
the size of one's largest finger, leading into the bank. While
speculating about the phenomenon, I saw one of the large yellow
hornets I had observed quickly enter one of the holes. That
settled the query. While spade and hoe were being brought to dig
him out, another hornet appeared, heavy-laden with some prey, and
flew humming up and down and around the place where I was standing.
I withdrew a little, when he quickly alighted upon one of the
mounds of earth, and I saw him carrying into his den no less an
insect than the cicada or harvest-fly. Then another came, and after
coursing up and down a few times, disturbed by my presence,
alighted upon a tree, with his quarry, to rest. The black hornet
will capture a fly, or a small butterfly, and, after breaking and
dismembering it, will take it to his nest; but here was this hornet
carrying an insect much larger than himself, and flying with ease
and swiftness. It was as if a hawk should carry a hen, or an eagle
a turkey. I at once proceeded to dig for one of the hornets, and,
after following his hole about three feet under the footpath and to
the edge of the roadbed, succeeded in capturing him and recovering
the cicada. The hornet weighed fifteen grains, and the cicada
nineteen; but in bulk the cicada exceeded the hornet by more than
half. In color, the wings and thorax, or waist, of the hornet were
a rich bronze; the abdomen was black, with three irregular yellow
bands; the legs were large and powerful, especially the third or
hindmost pair, which were much larger than the others, and armed
with many spurs and hooks. In digging its hole the hornet has been
seen at work very early in the morning. It backed out with the
loosened material, like any other animal under the same
circumstances, holding and scraping back the dirt with its legs.
The preliminary prospecting upon the footpath, which I had
observed, seems to have been the work of the males, as it was
certainly of the smaller hornets, and the object was doubtless to
examine the ground, and ascertain if the place was suitable for
nesting. By digging two or three inches through the hard, gravelly
surface of the road, a fine sandy loam was discovered, which seemed
to suit exactly, for in a few days the main shafts were all started
in the greensward, evidently upon the strength of the favorable
report which the surveyors had made. These were dug by the larger
hornets or females. There was but one inhabitant in each hole, and
the holes were two or three feet apart. One that we examined had
nine chambers or galleries at the end of it, in each of which were
two locusts, or eighteen in all. The locusts of the locality had
suffered great slaughter. Some of them in the hole or den had been
eaten to a mere shell by the larvæ of the hornet. Under the wing
of each insect an egg is attached; the egg soon hatches, and the
grub at once proceeds to devour the food its thoughtful parent has
provided. As it grows, it weaves itself a sort of shell or cocoon,
in which, after a time, it undergoes its metamorphosis, and comes
out, I think, a perfect insect toward the end of summer.
I understood now the meaning of that sudden cry of alarm I had so
often heard proceed from the locust or cicada, followed by some
object falling and rustling amid the leaves; the poor insect was
doubtless in the clutches of this arch enemy. A number of locusts
usually passed the night on the under side of a large limb of a
mulberry-tree near by: early one morning a hornet was seen to
pounce suddenly upon one and drag it over on the top of the limb; a
struggle ensued, but the locust was soon quieted and carried off.
It is said that the hornet does not sting the insect in a vital
part,--for in that case it would not keep fresh for its young,--but
introduces its poison into certain nervous ganglia, the injury to
which has the effect of paralyzing the victim and making it
incapable of motion, though life remains for some time.
My friend Van, who watched the hornets in my absence, saw a fierce
battle one day over the right of possession of one of the dens. An
angry, humming sound was heard to proceed from one of the holes;
gradually it approached the surface, until the hornets emerged
locked in each other's embrace, and rolled down the little
embankment, where the combat was continued. Finally, one released
his hold and took up his position in the mouth of his den (of
course I should say SHE and HER, as these were the queen hornets),
where she seemed to challenge her antagonist to come on. The other
one manuvred about awhile, but could not draw her enemy out of her
stronghold; then she clambered up the bank and began to bite and
tear off bits of grass, and to loosen gravel-stones and earth, and
roll them down into the mouth of the disputed passage. This caused
the besieged hornet to withdraw farther into her hole, when the
other came down and thrust in her head, but hesitated to enter.
After more manuvering, the aggressor withdrew, and began to bore a
hole about a foot from the one she had tried to possess herself of
by force.
Besides the cicada, the sand hornet captures grasshoppers and other
large insects. I have never met with it before the present summer
(1879), but this year I have heard of its appearance at several
points along the Hudson.
THE SOLITARY BEE
If you "leave no stone unturned" in your walks through the fields,
you may perchance discover the abode of one of our solitary bees.
Indeed, I have often thought what a chapter of natural history
might be written on "Life under a Stone," so many of our smaller
creatures take refuge there,--ants, crickets, spiders, wasps,
bumblebees, the solitary bee, mice, toads, snakes, and newts. What
do these things do in a country where there are no stones? A stone
makes a good roof, a good shield; it is water-proof and fire-proof,
and, until the season becomes too rigorous, frost-proof too. The
field mouse wants no better place to nest than beneath a large,
flat stone, and the bumblebee is entirely satisfied if she can get
possession of his old or abandoned quarters. I have even heard of
a swarm of hive bees going under a stone that was elevated a little
from the ground. After that, I did not marvel at Samson's bees
going into the carcass or skeleton of the lion.
In the woods one day (it was November) I turned over a stone that
had a very strange-looking creature under it,--a species of
salamander I had never before seen, the banded salamander. It was
five or six inches long, and was black and white in alternate
bands. It looked like a creature of the night,--darkness dappled
with moonlight,--and so it proved. I wrapped it up in some leaves
and took it home in my pocket. By day it would barely move, and
could not be stimulated or frightened into any activity; but an
night it was alert and wide awake. Of its habits I know little,
but it is a pretty and harmless creature. Under another stone was
still another species, the violet-colored salamander, larger, of a
dark plum-color, with two rows of bright yellow spots down its
back. It evinced more activity than its fellow of the moon-
bespattered garb. I have also found the little musical red newt
under stones, and several small dark species.
But to return to the solitary bee. When you go a-hunting of the
honey-bee, and are in quest of a specimen among the asters or
goldenrod in some remote field to start a line with, you shall see
how much this little native bee resembles her cousin of the social
hive. There appear to be several varieties, but the one I have in
mind is just the size of the honey-bee, and of the same general
form and color, and its manner among the flowers is nearly the
same. On close inspection, its color proves to be lighter, while
the under side of its abdomen is of a rich bronze. The body is
also flatter and less tapering, and the curve inclines upward,
rather than downward. You perceive it would be the easiest thing
in the world for the bee to sting an enemy perched upon its back.
One variety, with a bright buff abdomen, is called "sweat-bee" by
the laborers in the field, because it alights upon their hands and
bare arms when they are sweaty,--doubtless in quest of salt. It
builds its nest in little cavities in rails and posts. But the one
with the bronze or copper bottom builds under a stone. I
discovered its nest one day in this wise: I was lying on the ground
in a field, watching a line of honey-bees to the woods, when my
attention was arrested by one of these native bees flying about me
in a curious, inquiring way. When it returned the third time, I
said, "That bee wants something of me," which proved to be the
case, for I was lying upon the entrance to its nest. On my
getting up, it alighted and crawled quickly home. I turned over
the stone, which was less than a foot across, when the nest was
partially exposed. It consisted of four cells, built in succession
in a little tunnel that had been excavated in the ground. The
cells, which were about three quarters of an inch long and half as
far through, were made of sections cut from the leaf of the maple,--
cut with the mandibles of the bee, which work precisely like
shears. I have seen the bee at work cutting out these pieces. She
moves through the leaf like the hand of the tailor through a piece
of cloth. When the pattern is detached, she rolls it up, and,
embracing it with her legs, flies home with it, often appearing to
have a bundle disproportionately large. Each cell is made up of a
dozen or more pieces: the larger ones, those that form its walls,
like the walls of a paper bag, are oblong, and are turned down at
one end, so as to form the bottom; not one thickness of leaf
merely, but three or four thicknesses, each fragment of leaf
lapping over another. When the cell is completed, it is filled
about two thirds full of bee-bread,--the color of that in the comb
in the hive, but not so dry, and having a sourish smell. Upon this
the egg is laid, and upon this the young feed when hatched. Is the
paper bag now tied up? No, it is headed up; circular bits of
leaves are nicely fitted into it to the number of six or seven.
They are cut without pattern or compass, and yet they are all
alike, and all exactly fit. Indeed, the construction of this cell
or receptacle shows great ingenuity and skill. The bee is, of
course, unable to manage a single section of a leaf large enough,
when rolled up, to form it, and so is obliged to construct it of
smaller pieces, such as she can carry, lapping them one over
another.
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