Charles Darwin – CommonPlace Nature

The Effect of Nature As a Whole: “Where Town and Country Meet” by James Buckham (1903)

Birds, book review, Books, Native Plants, Natural History, Spirituality No Responses »

Jul 282023

If we are seeking God in nature, we shall not find him so readily by analysis as by synthesis; not by minute study of individuals and par ticulars, but by free, joyous acceptance of the effect of nature as a whole. So, I think, we shall be justified in leaving our note books at home in September, and just abandoning ourselves to the influence of nature upon the spirit. Something better may come out of that than the discovery of a new plant or the identification of a long-sought bird.

There is nothing spectacular about the works of James Buckham, or his life, for that matter. As far as I have been able to find out online, there is precious little biographical information about him (no Wikipedia entry!) and no photograph or other image of him. The closest I could find was a picture of his gravestone. He was born on November 25th, 1858 in Burlington, Vermont, and died only 49 years later, on January 8th, 1908, in Melrose, Massachusetts. In-between the two, he was well educated, obtaining a BA and MA. Evidently he planned a future in the theological seminary, but voice-related problems sent him into journalism instead. In 1895, he married Mary Bingham of Hyde Park, Vermont. After 18 years of journalism, he left the field to become an essayist, poet, fiction writer, and nature writer. As far as I have been able to tell, he published only two works about nature in his lifetime: “Where Town and Country Meet” and “Afield with the Seasons” (review coming soon). His cause of death is unknown.

Buckham’s book “Where Town and Country Meet” is a pleasant volume but nondescript compared to many of its time. The cover features only the title at the top and the author name at the bottom, gold-embossed on gray-green cloth. There are no illustrations of any kind, unless one counts the decorative insignia on the title page above. And there is little that is striking about the volume. It is a pleasant read, certainly. Like many other nature writers of his time (and not surprisingly, considering his theological bent), Buckham views nature experiences as opportunities for appreciating the wonders of God’s creation. This outlook leads him to extol “the impressions of nature as a whole”, in the passage above and in this one, from a page earlier:

One is not much disposed to observe minutely, I think, on a September tramp. The last of the birds and the last of the flowers may challenge a somewhat languid interest, but for my own part I like to take things in the mass, in the aggregate, when nature’s long season of emphasized indivi ualism is on the wane. For months we nature-lovers have been burdening our brains and note-books with observations of concrete life in a thousand different forms. Innumerable birds, flowers, insects, trees, plants, and four-footed creatures have confronted us at every step and stimulated curiosity and study. Now the birds have mostly departed, the flowers are a few and sedate company, the insects are frost-killed or driven into retirement, and I for one am tired of particularizing, and am glad to go back for a time to those free, buoyant, youthful impressions of nature as a whole. Instead of pulling to pieces single flowers I want to let my eye range over a whole living field of them, assembled in a carpet of purple and gold. I do not care to ask their names. I simply want them to make an impression of beauty and harmony and joy upon my spirit.

To speak of this as any sort of proto-ecological thinking would clearly be excessive. Yet, given the many writers of his time (Bradford Torrey being a fine example), nature experiences mostly involved identifying and watching birds, flowers, or the two in alternation. To pause and appreciate nature taken altogether I found refreshing.

That said, Buckham could also appreciate the particulars of an Eastern woodland. Here is his joyous tale of wandering the land in early springtime:

I had scarcely entered the woods when in the crumbling, disintegrating snow I found the wiry, nervous, wandering tracks of a ruffed grouse, which had evidently been abroad that very morning, far earlier than I, to seek a breakfast of leaves and berries on the knolls uncovered by the heat of the sun. I followed the winding trail for some distance, but finally it so turned, and doubled, and intertwined with itself, that I lost my clue and had to give it up.

Everywhere, from the trustworthy record of the snow, it appeared that the squirrels had been on the move likewise, passing from tree to tree with long, joyous leaps, the vigor of spring already in their veins. Many rabbit tracks through the thickets showed where the cottontails also had chased each other, like those black lovers in midair. All this awakening and new activity seemed a part of the glad expectation of spring.

The skunk-cabbage was thrusting its spearpoint up through the black loam along the brook earliest of all the wild sod breakers. I found the alder-buds swelling beneath their scales, and the catkins of both alders and willows already visible. There was bright green cress in the bed of the brook, and a few spears of green grass lifted themselves out of the loam in a shel tered, sunny corner of the swamp. Chickadees were lisping their faint dee-dee-dee in the hemlocks; jays were screaming lustily among the dwarf oaks ; and a yellow-hammer sent forth his clarion challenge from the hillside. Everywhere the decomposing snow was black with myriads of tiny, sput tering snow-lice, that darted hither and thither like sparks out of a fire. Surely, spring was in the air and underfoot! It was good to be abroad at the first whisper of her coming.

Buckham’s joy here is palapable and contagious. Reading his gleeful observations, I am sorely tempted to put down the book and step outside — into the steamy heat occf a climate-collapse summer heatwave in Georgia. The more I read these works from a hundred years ago or more, the greater my sorrow that the relative constancy of weather — and the relative abundance of many animal species — are both rapidly becoming things of the past.

Although the book focuses primarily on nature’s beauty as an experience of God, I do not want to leave readers thinking that he entirely lacked a scientific perspective or grounding in natural history. Inspired by Thoreau, he dined on thawed, wild apples, pronouncing them delicious indeed:

Beyond the golf links, on a hillside where scattered birches and scrub pines were growing, I came upon a stunted wild apple tree, the ground under which was thickly strewn with frozen and thawed apples. Immediately there occurred to me Thoreau’s enthusiastic praise of the spicy cider of thawed wild apples. Gathering my hands full of the russet fruit, I sat down upon a rock to taste this primitive nectar (as Thoreau recommends) “in the wind.” It was indeed delicious–not so tart and bitter as the juice of the wild apple in its sound state, but distinctly sweetened and ameliorated by the frost; a kind of spicy wild wine, innocent as water, refreshing to the palate, and wholesome and medicinal to the entire body. I gathered more and more of the wild apples, and sucked their cool nectar until my thirst was slaked. It was a real discovery, this new winter drink, and I would heartily pass on Thoreau’s recommendation of it to other ramblers.

In other passages, Buckham remarks on evolution by natural selection as a guiding biological principle. And most intriguingly, he writes about the urban heat island effect — I had never guessed this phenomenon was already recognized back in 1903! He notes how cities in summer reflect “abnormal conditions through which man artificially intensifies a phenomenon of nature. A hot wave raises the temperature of New York City from five to ten degrees above that of the surrounding country; but it is an adventitious supremacy, due to intercepted air, heated bricks, and blistering pavement.” (I have to admit that Buckham lost me there on the “adventitious” part.)

Still, these passages are exceptions to the general rule. This is a book whose audience was clearly those of a somewhat religious bent, laboring in urban workspaces (mostly executive offices, I would guess) but craving a taste of nature just beyond the city limits. Buckham does well at evoking such experiences in text. The result is a truly pleasant read, if a bit bland at times. Still, it is good to celebrate the poetic in nature, and that is how I will close out this post:

I am thoroughly in sympathy with those who think that too much exact knowledge takes something of the romance and poetry out of our acquaintance with nature. There must be a certain indefiniteness, a certain hazy quality, in our knowledge of the outer world we must not, in a word, know nature too well or we shall miss that elusive charm which pervades the poetry of Wordsworth, for instance. I am not sure but that we should be more appreciative nature lovers if we did not feel obliged to identify and mentally catalogue every creature and plant we see and every song or cry we hear.

A Degenerate Branch of the Carnivora: “More Little Beasts of Field and Wood” by William Everett Cram (1912)

book review, Books, Natural History, Prehistory 1 Response »

Sep 192022

Clearly, the lynx in the drawing above is looking surprised, perhaps even shocked. Maybe this is because it was drawn in such an odd way — it almost looks like it belongs on ancient Chinese porcelain instead of a page of a nature book from a hundred years ago. Or maybe it is because it has just read the most proposterous attempt at the application of Darwinian evolutionary theory (mixed with Lamarck) imaginable. But I won’t tell you myself — I’ll let William Everett Cram share his rather deranged hypothesis, and you can make of it what you will:

Are hares and rabbits rodents or are they merely a degenerate branch of the carnivora forced by circumstances during some long forgotten period of hardship and poor hunting to adapt themselves to a vegetable diet? I have studied the question from one point of view and another until fully convinced that this is the true solution of many a vexed point concerning them. On more than one occasion I had been asked by people of more than common intelligence if I believed it possible for cats and rabbits to interbreed. My questioner in each instance felt perfectly certain that cases under observation bore sufficient proof to settle the matter beyond all ordinary doubt. Now while classed among the rodents, hares and rabbits have always been in a group by themselves. All other rodents are characterized by their incisors; two pairs of strong, chisel-like teeth for gnawing. In the hares and rabbits the under jaw is furnished in this manner, but in the upper jaw these are replaced by four small and comparatively weak teeth that resemble the front teeth of a flesh eater quite as much as they do the typical incisors of a rodent. In very young specimens there is yet another pair of even smaller teeth both in the upper and lower jaw beside the permanent ones, and it is a fact worth noting that in kittens and very young rabbits the dentition is more nearly alike than in adults. Now in pointing out the most insurmountable barrier to any possible relationship between cats and rabbits one would naturally indicate the distinguishing character of their teeth; yet while classifying animals by dentition we must not lose sight of the fact that the variation of the teeth was undoubtedly caused by the use and disuse of different teeth incident to the nature of the food the animal lived upon, and that we have no way of knowing just how long a period is required to bring about this modification. That the rodents became separated very far back in the history of animal life is a self-evident fact well borne out by sufficient testimony of fossil remains of the different ages, but let us suppose that the ancestors of our hares and rabbits were not included among the earlier rodents. Consider the possibility that at some much later period when the cat family had attained to something like its present stage of development, an island cut off from the mainland, should in the absence of native carnivora become overrun with mice, lemmings, and other small and defenceless animals; then that during a period of excessively cold winters a number of the smaller varieties of wildcats or lynxes driven southward by the cold or scarcity of food should find a way across the ice to this island, where, finding the hunting so good, they would remain until cut off from the mainland by the melting of the ice. Here they would breed and multiply until their numbers were increased to such an extent that at last the small animals that they had been living upon would be completely exterminated. Now in cases of this kind there are two courses which animals may follow according to the laws of Nature, for when the supply of food is cut off no animal will give up its hold on life without a tremendous struggle. The larger and stronger of these cats would begin to prey upon the smaller and weaker ones, while these in their turn would be under the necessity of feeding upon whatever they could get, and long before the last of the mice and insects had vanished would be tasting and nibbling at grass and berries and mushrooms, as cats, weasels and foxes will ever do in times of famine. Now the law of the survival of the fittest works unceasingly and is ever ready at just such an opening to step in and work surprising changes; use and disuse are its most potent factors; only a very small proportion of the cats on the island could possibly survive through many seasons of such privations, and these few would be the ones best able to adapt themselves to the changed conditions, viz. certain of the larger ones that proved strong and active enough to succeed in killing a sufficient number of their weaker brethren, and those among the smaller ones that managed to survive on a vegetable diet and at the same time maintain that swiftness and agility which formerly had enabled them to catch more than their share of the rapidly diminishing supply of mice and insects and “other small deer,” and must now insure their safety from being caught and eaten in their turn. The kittens of these few survivors would unquestionably have a somewhat better chance than their parents, one of Nature’s foremost laws being that the coming generation must be cherished, even at the expense of the one that went before; nourished for a time on milk (though the supply must necessarily be considerably shortened on account of the meager diet of their mothers), they would at a very early age learn to follow the example of the older ones and take to nibbling at such plants as had proved to be most nourishing to their race, in most cases quickly adapting themselves to a wholly vegetable diet. Then the law of use and disuse would step in. As generation succeeded generation of these small, grass-eating cats, the sharp two-edged canine teeth of their race (always inconspicuous in kittens) would grad- ually cease to be developed, while the incisors, which in a full-grown cat you may see as six small teeth set in a row between the projecting canines, would prove the more useful and in time would become the principal cutting or gnawing teeth, following the same law of development through need which ages before, we may suppose, built up the characteristic gnawing teeth of the true rodents. Other changes would of course be going on all the time. From constantly pushing through between the stems of bushes and thick grass (among which they would naturally find their safest hiding places) the round flat head of the cat tribe would give place to a narrow shape, which would have the added advantage of placing the eyes where they could see above and behind and on all sides at any time to forestall the possible approach of an enemy, whereas the eyes of a cat are set to focus directly in front in order better to see the quarry ahead, like those of a bird of prey. Following out along the same line we can see how the ears would grow longer to catch every faintest sound that might come down the wind, the hind legs longer for speed in running away, while the claws would lose their sharp tearing hooks through disuse; for the economy of Nature is such that only those essentials constantly in use may be long retained in perfection. Thus at the end of a few hundred thousand years (more or less) the inhabitants of our island would have evolved two separate types. Darwin says, ” Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from their parents (and a cause for each must exist), it is the steady accumulation, through natural selection, of such differences, when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important modifications of structure, by which the innumerable beings on the face of the earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best adapted to survive.”

Alas, poor Darwin — I fear you have been most tragically and wrongfully used. But Cram doesn’t even stop there. He continues with a meticulous comparison of bone structures, offered up as evidence of his bizarre claim. Of course, Lamarck’s peculiar notion of acquired characteristics doesn’t help the situation. Finally, he offers this final tidbit, to sway any remaining disbelievers (though he does at least acknowledge its dubious scientific value):

In this connection it is to be remarked as certainly a little singular (though hardly to be accepted as scientific evidence) that the flesh of cats and rabbits is said to be so very similar in quality, that innkeepers in Europe are not infrequently convicted of substituting the one for the other without any imposition being suspected by their guests.

Tastes like chicken, perhaps? Maybe there is another evolutionary connection there that he missed!

At this point, I feel compelled to recognize my own efforts to maintain a respectful tone and genuine tolerance for scientific speculation in the nature books that I have been reading, given that most of them were written 100 years ago or more. Certainly, our understanding of prehistory has considerably advanced since 1912. However, I cannot escape the fact that this idea is completely nuts.

I find it rather amusing, in light of Cram’s own odd thinking, that he is quite willing to point out the particular failings of other mammals — remarking, for example, on “the well-known stupidity of the individual opossum”. Meanwhile, the porcupine “exhibits both in physique and character the degenerating effects of too easy living.” Cram is particularly aghast at the porcupine’s housekeeping behaviors: “For a home, the porcupine takes possession of any chance cavern among the ledges or some prostrate hollow log, apparently never making the slightest effort towards improving the condition of things as he finds them.”

For all this, late in the book, Cram weighs in on the question of whether animals act entirely out of instinct, or whether they possess intelligence sufficient to act out of reason. Ultimately, he favors reason, offering this haunting image of connecting for a moment with a member of the more-than-human world (as David Abram puts it):

There are times…when to see the thing in the doing has a convincing power greater, to the observer at least, than any conclusion arrived at by the logical balancing of evidence against evidence; when the turn of a neck, the gleam of a woodland eye looking for an instant’s glance straight into your own, leaves you with a sense of “knowing without knowing how you know” that behind the glance that met yours was a thought, and that your image reflected in the eye of the wild thing that looked at you would remain as a memory to be puzzled over.

I will leave Cram here, in this thoughtful moment of poetic reverie, lest I give in to temptations to disparage him further. Suffice it to say that sometimes publishing a sequel to a book can be a grave mistake.

Beautiful Mysteries: “Eye Spy: Afield With Nature Among Flowers and Animate Things” by William Hamilton Gibson (1897)

Backyard Nature, book review, Books, Insects, Native Plants, Natural History, Spirituality No Responses »

Aug 272022

…A few more similar expositions of the beautiful mysteries of the common flowers which we meet every day in our walks, and which we claim to “know” so well, may serve to add something to the interest of our strolls afield. It is scarcely fair to assert that familiarity can breed contempt in our relations to so lovely an object as a flower, but certain it is that this everyday contact or association, especially with the wild things of the wood, meadow, and wayside, is conducive to an apathy which dulls our sense to their actual attributes of beauty. Many of these commonplace familiars of the copse and thicket and field are indeed like voices in the wilderness to most of us. We forget that the “weed” of one country often becomes a horticultural prize in another, even as the mullein, for which it is hard for the average American to get up any enthusiasm, and which is tolerated with us only in a worthless sheep pasture, flourishes in distinction in many an English or Continental garden as the “American velvet plant.”

Try as I may, I cannot shake the parallels from my mind. Every time I bring William Hamilton Gibson (1850-1896) into my thoughts, inevitably I also think of James Abram Garfield (1831-1881), 20th President of the United States. Both have three names (though Garfield’s middle name is usually abbreviated to A.); both have last names of two syllables, beginning with G; both were of roughly the same era; both were quite gifted — Garfield in politics, Gibson in art and writing; both sported similar beards; and both died tragically at a young age (well, younger than I am, a least). James A. Garfield fell to an assassin’s bullet just a few months into his Presidency; William H. Gibson died of a stroke from overwork just a few months before Eye Spy was published. Of the two, I think Gibson was likely the more light-hearted and playful; Garfield looks fairly serious in this photo. I greatly admire Garfield, but since this is a nature blog (and since Candace Millard already crafted a fabulous biography of him), I will focus solely on Gibson in this post, despite my innate need to associate them somehow.

Gibson was a gifted artist who closely observed the world around him — particularly what lay at his feet, in the form of both flowers and the insects associated with them. Employing the two skills in tandem, Gibson reveals in Eye Spy many mysteries pertaining to everyday nature in rural New England, where his studio was situated. “The beauty of the commonplace often requires the aid of the artist as its interpreter,” he remarks in an early essay in this volume. He then proceeds to share with readers, using careful drawings, how the lowly figwort (“a tall, spindling weed”) orchestrates visits by the tiny wasp that pollinates it. He reveals how “these queer little homely flowers” function as “mere devices — first, to insure the visit of an insect, and second, to make that insect the bearer of the pollen from one blossom to the stigma of another.”

I will not bother with the complexities of the process here, but you can read all about this sequence of images in Gibson’s essay, “A Homely Weed”.

One particularly noteworthy feature of this book is that, in keeping with Darwin’s evolutionary theory, Gibson examines flowers and insects together, in light of the “‘new botany’, which recognizes the insect as an important affinity of the flower–the key to its various puzzling features of color, form, and fragrance…” Gibson, though, goes beyond Darwin to imbue these relationships with spiritual significance, reflecting “the conscious intention of the flower as an embodiment of a divine companion to an insect.” Remarking on how botany has been transformed by Darwin’s work, Gibson exclaims in “Riddles in Flowers”: “What puzzles to the mere botanist! for it is because these eminent scholars were mere botanists—students and chroniclers of the structural facts of flowers—that this revelation of the truth about these blossom features was withheld from them. It was not until they had become philosophers and true seers, not until they sought the divine significance, the reason, which lay behind or beneath these facts, that the flowers disclosed their mysteries to them.”

Gibson’s volume (culled largely from previously-published essays) is a book full of magic and mystery, equally inviting to older children and adults. Some chapters focus on the mysteries of pollination, others on predation and parasitism. In one essay, a “mischief-making midge” lays an egg inside a stem or leaf, producing a gall. Three of Gibson’s accounts have a dimension of tragedy — parasitic wasps laying eggs inside caterpillars, cicadas, and grasshoppers, leading to their slow, inevitable death. Others exude joy and delight; in “The Dandelion Burglar”, a dandelion falls victim, not to an insect, but to a redstart thief — a “tiny, black bird with a rosy band in his tail” who steals the developing seeds of a recently-bloomed dandelion to line its nest. Yet other essays reveal to readers how to take spore prints from a mushroom, and how to increase the likelihood of finding multiple four-leaf clovers. My favorite essay in the book reports on the engineering feats of spiders, building bridges very much in keeping with the feats of human engineering. It is entitled “The Spider’s Span”, and I include it in its entirety below.

Observers who witnessed from day to day the construction of the great Brooklyn Bridge were often heard to remark, as they looked up with awe from the ferryboats beneath at the workmen suspended everywhere among the net-work of cables, “Those men look just like spiders in a web.” The comparison seemed irresistible, and the writer heard it expressed many times. But how few who gave utterance to the sentiment realized the full significance of the “spider” allusion, or for a moment reflected that the span itself was, in many particulars of its construction, but a parallel of an engineering feat of which the spider was the earliest discoverer. Yet among all the distinguished names engraved upon the memorial tablet upon the stone bridge-tower the spider gets no credit.
Day after day and week after week we might have seen, travelling back and forth against the sky, a wheel-shaped messenger reeling off its tiny wire. Night and day it was busy, each trip adding one more strand to the growing cable which was to support the great substructure below. And what was this travelling wheel called? “ The carrier,” or “traveller,” if I remember rightly. Why this obviously intentional slight and discourtesy when every field and wood and copse in the country—indeed, on the globe—showed its living example, and bore its myriadfold witness that the “spider” was the only legitimate and proper designation?
In the other most notable suspension-bridge, at Niagara, the time-honored methods of the spider were further and conspicuously recognized, but here again without any courteous engraven acknowledgment on the tablet of fame, so far as I have learned.
A kite was flown from the American shore, and reeled out so as to fall upon the Canadian side, and this initial strand was drawn across, and subsequently strengthened by the travelling reel. The ends of the added wires were firmly secured at their anchorage, and the completed cable at length re-enforced by guy-ropes.
What is the method of our spider? Ages before the advent of the human engineer he followed the same tactics which we now see him performing in every meadow, or even at our window-sill, or on the bouquet upon our table, linking flower with flower, window-sill with garden fence, bush with bush, tree with tree, with his glistening suspension-bridge spanning the stream, river, and meadow. This wiry thread that tightens across our face as we ride in our carriage, and leaves its tingling “snap” upon our nose, what is this but the model suspension cable of Arachne strengthened a hundredfold by the spider which has travelled back and forth over its course for hours perhaps, each trip leaving a fresh strand, one extremity being anchored on yonder oak in the meadow and the other on the church steeple? Such a cable twenty feet in length is a common challenge in our walks in the open wood road, even making a perceptible motion among the leaves and bending twigs on either side ere it yields to our advance. And to the walker who cares to investigate, a silken bridge a hundred feet in length is not a very exceptional find.
This bridge-building is not confined to any particular month or season, nor to any one species of spider. The autumn will afford us the best opportunity for observation. At that season the spider-egg tufts are turning out their baby spiders by the millions, each a perfect grown spider in miniature, and apparently as skilled at birth in the peculiar arts of its kind as its parents were in their ripe old age. Here is a troop of them upon this drooping branch of wild grape by the river brink. Its leaves are glistening in the loose, rambling tangle which marks their wanderings. They are evidently not satisfied with their present surroundings, and would seem desirous of getting as far as possible from the neighborhood of their cradle and swaddling-clothes. They are the most independent and self-reliant babies on record. They ask advice from no one—indeed their mother died a year ago, perhaps—but each determines to leave his brothers and sisters, to “see the world” for himself, and paddle his own canoe.
Fancy a first trial trip on a tight-rope from the torch of the Statue of Liberty to Governors Island! Yet such is the corresponding feat accomplished by this self-reliant acrobat, which a few days or perhaps hours ago was but an egg!
Here is one family of spiderlings upon the grapevine spray, for instance. They are hanging several yards above the water, and with an ocean, as it were, between them and the distant country upon which their hearts are set. But there is no hesitation or misgiving. Let us closely observe this eager youngster far out upon the point of the leaf. The breeze is blowing across the brook. In an instant, upon reaching the edge of the leaf, the spiderling has thrown up the tip of its body, and a tiny, glistening stream is seen to pour out from its group of spinnerets. Farther and farther it floats, waving across the water like a pennant. Two, three, five, ten, fifteen feet are now seen glistening in the sun. Now it floats in among the herbage upon the opposite bank, and seems reaching out for a foothold. In a minute more its tip has brushed against a tall group of asters, and clings fast, the loose span sagging in the breeze, and as we turn our attention to the spider, we see that he has turned about, and is now “hauling in the slack,” which he continues to do until the span is taut, when he anchors it firmly to the leaf, and without a moment’s ceremony steps out upon his tight-rope, and makes the “trial trip” across the abyss —a feat which Dr. McCook, the spider specialist and historian, has most felicitously compared to the similar trial trip of Engineer Farrington across the cable of the East River Bridge, a thrilling event which was witnessed by thousands of spectators from sailing craft and housetops.
Our spider has now reached the asters twenty feet away, and is doubtless busying himself by further securing the anchorage at this terminus. It is quickly done, for see, he is even now far out over the water on his return trip, arriving at the grape leaf a moment later. His strand is now three times as strong as at first, and will be many times stronger before he is satisfied with it. An hour later, if we care to go up-stream half a mile to the bridge, or half a mile below to the crossing pole, for the sake of examining those asters across the brook, we shall find our spiderling nicely settled in a tiny little home of his own. The glistening span is now like a tough silken thread, and is moored to the head of flowers by a half-dozen guy-threads in all directions, while in their midst, in the “nave of his tiny wheel of lace,” our smart young baby rests from his labors.
Such is the probable course which he would follow, unless, perhaps, his roving spirit, thus tempted, has further asserted itself, and not content with this exploit, he has concluded to span the clouds, and is even now sailing a thousand feet aloft in his “ balloon.”
As a bridge-builder he has had many successful imitators, but as a balloonist he is yet more than a match for his bigger copyist, Homo sapiens, as I shall explain in a subsequent paper [enitled “Ballooning Spiders”].

Sitting at the Feet of Nature: “Prose Pastorals” by Herbert Milton Sylvester (1887)

book review, Environmental conservation, Insects, Natural History, Spirituality No Responses »

Jul 022022

*The Emerald Pool* by Albert Bierstadt (1870)

A half-hour’s climb ends at the well-worn path that follows the steep descent to the edge of Emerald Pool, made famous by its portrait by Bierstadt… At first glance at the liquid emerald below, one’s inclination is to sit down upon the rude plank seat upheld between two huge spruces growing just above the Pool, so restful and so full of repose is this charming nook. It is a place above all others in which to dream and drowse. Strange fancies flit through the brain, and the world is forgotten. I am sitting at the feet of Nature, spellbound by the magic of her subtle influences. Above is the dark silhouette of the treetops against the sky, and below is a circular sheet of water, less than a hundred feet in diameter, unsurpassed in its natural beauty by any woodland pool I have ever seen, and so translucent as to reflect the minutest object above it. It is an emerald cup brimful of liquid amber. At its head, massive buttresses of granite stretch almost across the stream, to stay the torrent of the Peabody but a moment, that with tumultuous roar pushes through the narrow flume of these rocks out into the basin of deep, calm water, leaving a track white as the snow of winter. A few feet below the commotion of the cascade, the boiling, seething current is soon lost in faint and ever-widening ripples, tinged with every shade of green from dark to light, — to almost the paleness of sherry as they reach out toward the shallows at its lower edge, where they again escape in wild, broken leaps over the mountain roadway, paved with immense boulders, into the valley. An old gnarled wide-limbed canoe birch, dirty-white, spotted with blotches of sienna and umber, leans far out over the Pool, every limb and tiny twig of which is reproduced in reverse upon or within its polished surface, while around its ragged margin the tall shapely spruces keep stately watch over this jewel of the mountain, most beautiful when the sun pours down its strong vertical light, when the waters become transparent like crystal, and that are like a huge palette strown with rare colors of sky and wood.

Herbert Milton Sylvester (1849-1923) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his father held a management position of some kind in a cotton mill. When Sylvester was 10, his father related to a farm in Maine for his health. Sylvester spent the rest of his childhood there and at Bridgton Academy, a boarding school in rural Maine. After college (location unknown), he went into legal practice, serving in Portland for 13 years before relocating to Boston. While living there, he wrote Prose Pastorals (1887) and Homestead Highways (1888). True to its title, Prose Pastorals is a series of poetic vignettes, mostly reminiscences of Sylvester’s rural childhood in Maine. While not strictly nature writing (farm life figures prominently in some passages), the presence of Nature is woven throughout and is never far from the farmhouse door. “All out-of-door life is filled with poetry and charm,” he announces at one point early in the book. While he finds abundant nature in the farm fields, “It is in the woods,” he observes, “that I find the most perfect repose in nature.”

As a writer, he is perhaps a shade or two shy of profound, and some of his word images, in the style of the times, can be a bit flowery. His poetry, which infuses the book, is solid if some of the rhymes are a tad forced. It is easy to take him as a wealthy city dweller longing for the peace and quiet of his long-lost country life, and that sentiment is present here. Another theme running through the work is his spirituality, heavily influenced by Emerson’s concept of the Over-soul, the transcendent unity of nature of which we are all part. “The lover of Nature,” Sylvester declares,

must, of a truth, be a worshipper at God’s altars. Touch a single key of the piano, and the harp which stands beside will respond with perfect sympathy, but only that string of the harp which accords with that note of the piano will answer with its vibration. Men who are in sympathy with the great Tone constantly sounding throughout Nature will find their hearts unconsciously thrilled with a willing unison of purpose and desire, unconsciously answering its subtle harmonies, unconsciously obedient to the Infinite Hand which has so wonderfully laid the foundations of the grand cathedrals of the woods and mountains. The woods are filled with hosts of unseen worshippers, the mountains with countless altars whose smokes of incense are the white morning mists which lie so lightly along the tree-tops, hiding the battlements of gray, turretted stone and filling the skies with fleecy clouds. The leaping waters that jar the firmly-set rocks the feet of the ever-rising domes, with their tummult and deep reverberations, make the heavy diapson to which all other sounds are attuned. Nature’s grand melodies are ever pitched upon the same key-note. Nature knows no discord. From ocean depth and roar of breaking surf to the light treble of the shallows of the mountain brooklet the harmony is sustained and its rendering is faultless. God sounds the key-note in many a subtle touch of color, tone, and form, animate and inanimate, and wherever he finds a responsive heart there he finds a willing worshipper.

What rescues Sylvester, in my eyes, at least, is that there is another thread running through many of these pastoral pieces. He does not merely celebrate grand vistas and dramatic weather. He also bends down to the ground to explore the myriad invertebrates lurking in the forest leaf litter. He describes ant behaviors from close observations, and frequently mentions (and quotes) John Burroughs. Even Charles Darwin is mentioned a couple of times. He may find “poetry and charm” in nature, but what he notices also piques his curiosity and wonder:

Bird-life and insect-life are full of interest and fascination, and they tell charming stories of intellect and intelligence; and their movements are full of constant surprises, even to those who know them best. The big-bodied humblebee of the fields and meadows, his coat slashed with gold and black velvet, with pollen-covered wings, probing the pink-hewed tubes of the field-clover for their nectar, while the wind sways both bee and clover blossom to and fro like a child in a swing; the ant-carpenter sawing away diligently at a twig or leaf, making lumber for the building and finishing of his house; the gray field-spider setting his filmy trap for a dinner or a breakfast, or else dragging his prey into his funnel-shaped den to sup upon at his leisure, are all abundant in attractions, and are but two or three of the hosts of magicians who make the study of Nature so charming.

Humbled by the complexity of Nature, Sylvester embraces its study as a lifelong endeavor: “How much there is to see in these tramping-grounds of Nature, and how much there is to learn! The ground is written over in all directions with intelligible signs for men’s deciphering.” The passage quoted here, unfortunately, goes on to identify some of those who might seek to decipher these signs: the bee-hunter, the sportsman, the fox-hunter. Indeed, Sylvester admits to a bit of hunting and fishing; after extolling the magnificence of Emerald Pool, he casts a line into the waters and immediately catches a trout. He also shares his approval of crow-hunting, confessing that he finds no redeeming qualities in crows. But while Sylvester may have been too conventional in his leanings to bemoan disappearing birds or logged forests in his writings, he also appears to have avoided the naturalist’s worst vices of the day — shooting birds as specimens and collecting their eggs and nests. I would like to think that he may have felt some faint conservationist leanings, even if they never seem to arise in this book.

In this closing paragraph, I will share a few reflections on my reading experience. This is the third book I have read in a row (not counting the booklet by Minot) that had uncut pages in it, despite its age. In the other two volumes, I did not come across an uncut page until quite a distance into the work. In this case, though, I made it only 13 pages before the first one. According to a hastily scrawled note inside the front cover, the book was a gift from HRP to LS in July of 1887. Apparently, HRP was not a good judge of the reading material LS preferred. That said, reading the book was a tactile delight. The pages are gilt at the top, deckled at the edge, and constituted of high-quality, laid paper. The volume is covered in plain, dark blue cloth that has a pleasant softness in the hand. My copy is in remarkable condition; I was honored to be its first reader, only 135 years after it was originally published.

Spiders and Pitcher Plants: More Reflections on “Home Studies in Nature” by Mary Treat, 1885

Backyard Nature, book review, Books, Native Plants, Natural History 1 Response »

Jun 122020

Many other experiments I recorded which I will not inflict on the reader in detail.

AFTER A FEW ENCHANTING CHAPTERS ABOUT BIRDS, TREAT REVEALS HERSELF TO BE A HIGHLY DEDICATED, RIGOROUS FIELD BIOLOGIST. Treat begins the second section of her book, on the Habits of Insects, by observing that “I sometimes think the more I limit myself to a small area, the more novelties and discoveries I make in natural history. My observations for the past four summers have been almost wholly confined to an acre of ground in the heart of a noisy town” (Vineland, New Jersey). In that chapter and the ensuing ones, Treat reports on her careful observations of burrowing spiders, ants, and wasps. She reports discovering two entirely new species of spider on her acre in town, counting the numbers of burrows and regularly observing each one. She placed a number of spiders in jars, in order to study them more closely. In a rare humorous passage in the book, she explains how she kept them in captivity.

These spiders make very interesting pets. I capture them by cutting out the the nests with a sharp trowel or large knife, and have ready some glass candy jars from twelve to fourteen inches in heigh in which I carefully place them. I then fill in with earth all around, making the jar about half full, and cover the surface with moss, introducing some pretty little growing plants, so that my nervous lady friends may admire the plants without being shocked with the knowledge that each of these jars is the home of a large spider.

THROUGHOUT HER ACCOUNTS OF THE DAILY BEHAVIORS OF SPIDERS, WASPS, AND ANTS, SHE WRITES OF THEM WITH THOUGHTFULNESS AND RESPECT. At various points, she mentions the spiders’ “skill”, “wisdom”, and maternal “care”. “If anyone will closely observe the behavior of insects — especially ants, wasps, and spiders [evidently grouped with insects at the time] — he will not be at all startled or surprised with the announcement that these humble creatures have brains like our own.” Her writing reflects both a sense of fascination with insects and also a painstaking commitment to firsthand, rigorous study. And throughout her chapter on spiders and wasps, I encountered the most fabulous artwork, often flowing organically across much of a page, as in the case of the argiope spider web, below. (Her chapter on ants, however, was entirely devoid of illustrations.)

AFTER SHARING OBSERVATIONS OF BACKYARD INSECTS, THE THIRD SECTION OF TREAT’S BOOK COVERED STUDIES IN INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. Over five chapters, she details her observations and experiments involving bladderworts, butterworts, sundews, Venus flytraps, and pitcher plants. Many of her investigations included microscopy, such as this drawing of the underwater trapping mechanism of a bladderwort, complete with its mosquito larva victim:

SHE CLEARLY SPENT MANY TEDIOUS HOURS TRYING TO FEED HER BOTANICAL CHARGES. And she documented much of it in her essays, including time of day, type of food, and response of plant. At times, her writing veered toward the kind of prose found in scientific journals; she was clearly quite comfortable in her role as scientist, making new discoveries and, even, at times, contradicting Darwin: “In a letter bearing date June 1, 1875, Mr. Darwin says: ‘I have read your article with the greatest interest…. It is pretty clear I am quite wrong….'” I wonder how often that happened. This part of the book, I confess, was tough going, and I nearly nodded off a time or two. All the plant names were in Latin (common names were only mentioned once in passing if at all), and I began wishing her observations had been reduced to a simple table or two that I might pass over. At one point (quoted at the opening of this post), Treat even recognized the somewhat painful aspect of her reporting, by offering not to “inflict” more of them on her reader.

THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE SECTION, ON PITCHER PLANTS, HOWEVER, WAS ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING PARTS OF THE BOOK. In it, Treat reported her observations of numerous flies and cockroaches, all of whom appeared to become intoxicated after consuming some of the liquid exuded by the pitcher plant she was studying. She described them becoming disoriented, stumbling about, and being drawn to the pitcher plant’s open mouth, “as if fascinated by some spell.” Even the ones she rescued before they were entrapped did not live very long afterwards. Treat was convinced that the pitcher plant was drugging them with some sort of toxin, though she seemed a bit frustrated that she could not provide stronger evidence for it:

I have been asked by an eminent scientist if I can prove that the flies are intoxicated. I do not see how I can prove it. I am not a chemist, and cannot analyze the secretion. I can only give the result of my observations and experiments. I might get a large quantity of the leaves and make a decoction of the secretion and drink it; but I find the flies never recover from their intoxication, and my fate might be the same if I took a sufficient quantity.

AS SCIENTISTS NOW KNOW, IT WAS A GOOD THING THAT MARY TREAT DID NOT GO FURTHER IN TRYING TO PROVE THE PITCHER PLANT WAS DRUGGING ITS PREY. We now know that at least eight species in the genus Sarracenia (to which Treat’s pitcher plants belonged) produce the alkaloid coniine, a paralyzing neurotoxin that is most commonly known as the active ingredient in poison hemlock. Consuming it in substantial quantities can cause a burning sensation in the mouth, nausea, vomiting, confusion, rapid heartbeat, seizures, paralysis, and, of course, death.

THE LAST SECTION OF THE BOOK WAS DEDICATED TO PLANTS SHE ENCOUNTERED IN FLORIDA AND NEW JERSEY. Here, her personna of experimental scientist was replaced with that of an eager, open-eyed adventurer, finding spectacular flowering plants in the nearby wilds of New Jersey and Florida. Along the St. John’s River in Florida, she found a water lily that had been depicted in a work by Audubon but never actually described, and nearby she discovered an amaryllis that was entirely new to science. She spoke highly the botanically rich landscape of northern Florida, but declared that there was no more amazing place for botanizing than the New Jersey Pine Barrens. In the only passage in the book where she writes about environmental impacts of human “progress”, she interrupts her tale of floral discoveries to note that “…within a few years past it has been found that the pine-barrens of Southern New Jersey are quite fertile, and at no distant day they are destined to become the greatest fruit gardens in the Union. And then farewell to the rare floral treasures that no art can save.” I was surprised how resigned she seemed to the inevitability of that loss. Fortunately for all of us, reports of the fertility of the Pine Barrens appear to have been greatly exaggerated; a large portion of southern New Jersey remains forested to this day.

AND SO, AFTER A FINAL PARAGRAPH EXTOLLING THE VIRTUES OF NEW JERSEY’S PINE BARRENS FLORA AND A FEW PAGES OF INDEX, THE FIRST LEG OF MY JOURNEY ENDED. I closed the book, taking a last deep draught of the volume’s delightful “old book smell” (which you can read more about here). On the whole, it was a satisfying start to my adventures. I appreciate how Mary Treat succeeded remarkably as a scientist at a time when the profession was largely closed to women. She went head to head with the likes of Darwin, and won. As a popularizer of science for the common folk, I think she was a bit less successful. “Home Studies in Nature” is at best an uneven work. It is a collection of essays, so there really isn’t any structure or theme. Its audience is sometimes the everyday reader (particularly in the section on bird nests and behavior), sometimes the fellow scientist (when reporting on experiments with spiders and pitcher plants). I get the sense from her book that she was most at home (often quite literally) when carrying out meticulous fieldwork, making amazing discoveries just beyond her doorstep or through the lens of a microscope.

Living in the Past: Encountering Works from the Early Days of American Nature Writing

Backyard Nature, book review, Books, Native Plants, Natural History 2 Responses »

Jun 112020

“To the lover, especially of birds, insects, and plants, the smallest area around a well-chosen home will furnish sufficient material to satisfy all thirst of knowledge through the longest life.”

I HAVE DECIDED TO EMBARK ON A JOURNEY. It is not a journey marked by miles — in light of the recent pandemic, I have only been away from my home twice since mid-March, both times venturing only as far as our CSA Farm in Fairburn, less than ten miles from doorstep. It is, instead, a journey into the past (and as I write this, I hear faint strains of Jethro Tull, Living in the Past). Like Ian Anderson, I seek solace and shelter from an unsettling world, one that presses itself into my office and into my being practically every hour of every day. This journey is one into a Golden Age — not a utopia, certainly, but a time of promise and possibility — a time when nature writing in America blossomed, for lack of a better word. Will you join me on my travels? I have mapped out a path in books lined neatly along the upper shelf of my bookcase. Adventures await!

I HAVE GONE ON AN AMAZING JOURNEY BEFORE. It is chronicled already in this blog. Half a dozen years ago, I set out down Piney Woods Church Road, an unassuming byway a short distance from my front door. I walked over 350 miles on that trip. For one year, every day, I walked that patch of road, between my home street of Rico Road at one end and Hutcheson Ferry Road, a bustling path from the outside world to Serenbe, at the other. Every day, I carried my camera, and found new things to photograph and appreciate. I have been overseas many times now — Australia, New Zealand, Bolivia, Ireland, Belize, Malta — but the journey I am most enamored of, the one that taught me the most, is the one I took on foot, here in Georgia, along the same pathway of gravel and dust, past the front and back yards of neighbors, along fields of cattle and horses.

AT LONG LAST, IT IS TIME TO WANDER AGAIN. After my last travels, I fully expected to keep wandering. I envisioned myself a Dirt Road Pilgrim, walking the backroads of Chattahoochee Hills, taking more photographs and having more adventures. Somehow, that never happened. There was something magical, I think, about the level of commitment I had to make in order to take my first journey. Every day, for an entire year, I remained at home, faithfully recording the quotidian wonders of a space that was practically my backyard. And the thought of shifting to once a week, or even once a month, just didn’t seem the same. Oddly enough, it felt like more of an obligation than a calling. Instead, I waited. And now the waiting is finally over. My path has appeared — not one that begins at my front walk or even in the trace of a colored line on Google Maps, but in an ever-growing row of dusty, somewhat tattered volumes on a shelf.

IN THESE TROUBLED TIMES, I SET FORTH IN SEARCH OF HEALING. I seek to assuage the sufferings of myself and my world, to find moments of comfort and calm, maybe even to encounter flashes of wonder and hope. And I believe — I know — they can be found between the covers of aged, largely-forgotten texts. My quest will lead me back and forth across a span of one hundred years, between about 1840 and 1940, and into books whose titles I had until recently never heard of, by authors I had scarcely imagined even existed. Yes, there will be the occasional visit with an old friend — Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Burroughs, John Muir. But mostly I will be seeking the acquaintances of a lesser-known assortment of nature writers — some even contemporaries of Thoreau and Burroughs, most commemorated only in my Biographical Encyclopedia of Early American Nature Writers (edited by Daniel Patterson) and/or a brief entry in Wikipedia. Many of them are women. All of them have wonders aplenty to share. Will you join me?

FOR THIS JOURNEY, LIKE MY EARLIER ONE, I HAVE SET MYSELF A COUPLE OF RULES TO FOLLOW. I have committed myself, wherever possible, to reading original copies of each writer’s work. I believe that the magic of a book does not end with the words themselves. Ancient volumes, imbued with the power of story, call out to me, and I answer them to the extent that my meagre budget allows. I crave the feel of old paper, the brown blotches of old ink stains, the tattered spine, the library stamp, the gift inscription from perhaps 100 years ago or more. Ideally, I would limit myself to first editions, which have that beginning-magic to them even after many decades. Limited as I am to what used copies I can find for thirty dollars or less each (and sometimes a lot less), I will content myself with any old copy whose binding is still intact enough to read without causing further damage. Because I have opted to restrict my reading almost entirely to the forgotten, sometimes opportunities present themselves to obtain the holy grail of the antiquarian book fancier — the signed copy! In a few cases, though, I will have to content myself with whatever copy I can find. A first edition of Walden, for instance, costs more than my annual salary. But mostly I will travel through old books — and my accounts will include not only the words, but the experiences. I will do my best to bring you along on my journey. My second rule? (After all, I did refer to “a couple” of them.) My second rule is to dispense with the thought of a logical sequence to the books I will read. There is no chronology here, though I fully anticipate dialogue between the various authors (some of whom knew and corresponded with, or at least quoted, each other).

TO VARY MY TRAVELS A BIT MORE, I WILL SOMETIMES WANDER INTO MY BACKYARD. I may even set out down Piney Woods Church Road a time or two. My living discoveries — animal tracks, insects, flowers, tree leaves — these I will examine further at home, in light of some field guides that also happen to be some of the earliest published in America. These will include a guide to Southern Wild Flowers and Trees, by Alice Lounsberry, copyright 1901. I managed to win a first edition in an auction in which I was the only bidder (one of the perks of pursuing the obscure and supposedly “out of date”). I can’t wait to open it up and consider everyday nature through the lens of its images and text.

AND SO I BEGIN WITH MARY TREAT, WHO PUBLISHED “HOME STUDIES IN NATURE” IN 1885. I somehow managed to track down a first edition — probably the only edition, for that matter. Like most of these titles, this one is available now in reprinted form, usually printed on demand. But as far as I can tell, since obtaining my copy, no other originals have appeared on the market. That said, the book itself is rather plain: olive drab binding (which looks more yellow-green in the sunlight, in my photograph below), lettering in burgundy across the top, spine (what is left of it) in burgundy, too. A thick folded sheet of transparent plastic both protects my copy and, I suspect, helps prevent its falling apart.

THE BOOK ITSELF HAS HAD A SOMEWHAT ROUGH HISTORY. It was, at some point, known as “Number 808” and kept on the library shelf of the Richland County Training School. My Google search revealed that it was a Normal School (one that trained future school teachers) in the town of Richland Center, Richland County seat, in the backwoods of Wisconsin about halfway between LaCrosse and Madison. Apart from library stamps inside the front cover and on a library card pocket glued into the back, there is no other writing in the book — no choice underlined passages or random scrawl in pencil or ink. But it did take some beating — about a third of the spine is missing. Was the book popular? Were any readers inspired by it to share some of its ideas or messages with their own pupils?

BEFORE I OPEN THE VOLUME, A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ARE IN ORDER. Born in 1830 in Trumansburg, New York, she spent most of her formative years in Ohio before returning to New York State and marrying Dr. James Burrell Treat in 1861. The couple moved briefly to Iowa, then settled in Vineland, New Jersey. Beginning in her home’s backyard, and that of a cottage the Treats purchased on the St. Johns River in Florida, Mary Treat explored the natural world. She became renowned for her research and knowledge in entomology and botany (particularly in regard to carnivorous plants). Her botanical and entomological fieldwork took her to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and the wilds of Florida. Two species of amarilys (one of which she discovered) and two species of ants are named after her. She corresponded with scientists of her day who are still well known — Asa Gray and Charles Darwin, among others. While the public generally knew her as a popularizer of nature study (at a time when the Nature Study Movement was just getting underway), she also conducted experiments and published her findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Her first book for a popular audience, “Chapters on Ants”, came out in 1979 and was a collection of essays that had previously appeared in publications like Harper’s. Her second essay collection, “Home Studies in Nature”, came out six years later.

AT LAST, I BEGIN TO READ. After a brief introduction on encountering nature right where you are (including the quote at the beginning of this article), the book begins with a section on birds. There are a lot of bird books from the late 1800s. In fact, a large portion of the early environmental movement emerged from the popularity of birdwatching. Birding also spawned many titles, some of which await reading in my bookcase. Try as I will, I have not been able to connect with my inner ornithologist. I spent a summer working as a seabird interpreter off the Maine Coast, but what I most fondly recall from that time is the rocky, wave-battered coast, the blooming lupines, the strawberry festivals, and the endless used book sales (heaven!), not really the puffins (though I certainly found them adorable). So I was a bit apprehensive as the first chapter on Our Familiar Birds began.

ALREADY I CAN SEE THAT TREAT IS A DELIGHTFUL AND ASTUTE WRITER. I really enjoyed all four of her chapters on birds, including birds of Florida, birds in winter, and the architecture of birds’ nests. I was in awe of how patiently Treat worked on what she refers to as “domesticating” the birds around her, to the point that she could observe their habits closely and begin describing their characters. In so doing, she reveals the birds as living beings, not automatons acting by instincts only. While it is common now for us to ascribe intelligence to birds, in her day that was hardly the norm. In her chapter on birds’ nests, she shares about how different members of the same bird species can construct wildly varying nests — some skillfully crafted, others hastily thrown together. This provides evidence, she argues, that birds can reason and learn — abilities at the time that others would not have attributed to them. Specifically, she writes that

A close observer of birds cannot fail to see that they exercise reason and forethought, not only in the management of the young, but in many other things.

ALREADY, IN 1885, TREAT RECOGNIZES THE HORRENDOUS HUNTING OF BIRDS FOR SPORT. She even expresses a moment of regret that hunters themselves cannot legally be hunted. Compared to that person who shoots birds “from mere wantonness and sport of the chase, the hawk or owl, which takes a bird only to appease his hunger, towers above him in moral rectitude.” I would definitely side with the birds, too.

NEXT TIME, AN ADVENTURE WITH INSECTS. The next section of Treat’s book covers some entomological explorations. For now, I will close with one of my favorite illustrations in the book thus far, the Spanish bayonet in flower.