William Henry Larrabee

“ Being a remarkably timid creature, it takes fright, loses its presence of mind, and gets hopelessly entangled. "Now and then a dugong is found wrapped round as with the folds of a hammock, and the net has to be cut away piecemeal. As often as not, the dugongs thus drown themselves by frantic efforts to escape, but where a partial entanglement permits them to follow their instinct and come to the surface, they are taken alive. ”

“ Darwin has kept on with his investigations, in flower-pots in his room, in his garden, and in the field, and has detected the work of the worms wherever anything will grow—in meadows and table-lands, in cultivated places and in woods, on mountains fifteen hundred feet high in Scotland, nearly twice as high at Turin, seven thousand feet above the sea on the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India, and on the slopes of the Himalayas—effecting the transformation of the hard, cold earth, and the raw leaves into fine, fruitful soil. ”

“ On a nearer approach, each of the thickets is seen to consist of cylindrical stems a foot or two thick, which, closely crowded together below on a common root—offshoots from a creeping stem—diverge as they rise, and bear on slight, nodding branches dense tufts of the most delicate foliage. These gigantic trees are nothing but grasses. Like all grass-holms, their great hollow reed-stem is divided into joints ”

“ Consumption, the scourge of the old country, finds an unfriendly atmosphere in Queensland, where I have known consumptives, landing with the disease to all appearance hopelessly advanced, become in a few years healthy if not robust, yet, even there, the most marvelous effects are attributed to dugong-oil in cases of rheumatism, and wasting as well as ordinary consumption. ”

“ The animals are then tracked up, and strong nets, presenting a wall specified in one instance as fourteen feet high and a hundred and fifty yards long, are placed so as to intercept them as they go browsing up to their feeding-grounds. The dugong, in happy innocence, eats greedily of the succulent growths, clearing its way in the most workmanlike manner, when it is suddenly stopped by this strange barrier. ”

“ THE importance of trees to the earth and to life does not need to be insisted upon. The condition of treeless regions is almost a demonstration that without them the soil would not be tillable and life would not be endurable. It is, therefore, natural that they should have at all times shared the special regards of men; and that not only-particular species, but individual trees, should in their times and places have been hallowed with a sacred, historical, legendary, romantic, or mythical interest. ”

“ It is easy to say, as some have done, that the creatures are too insignificant to accomplish so extensive a work; but the facts adduced by Mr. Darwin convey a striking lesson in the principle that nothing is so minute that it can be despised. ”

“ Its skin is much like that of the hippopotamus, and is very sparsely covered with hair. Its fore-limbs are set far forward, are more free in their motions than those of the cetaceans, and may be used as claspers, flexed over the chest, for swimming or dragging the animal along the bottoms, or up the banks of the rivers in which it feeds, and to assist in the prehension of food. The finger-bones may be felt through the skin, with which they are connected; but no evidence of digital organs is outwardly visible, except the rudimentary nails on the edges of the flippers. ”

“ The most remarkable feature of the plant is afforded by the numerous air roots which branch out from the trunk and ramify again, lower down, fastening themselves in the earth when they reach the ground, and forming buttresses to support the main stem. The tree looks as if it were walking on stilts.
The entrance to the Botanic Garden of Peradenia is through a noble avenue of India-rubber trees. This tree, which is known to us of the north only by puny specimens in greenhouses, grows in these tropical regions to a giant's stature, of a size comparable to that of our largest oaks. ”

“ The adaptation by which a limb, originally destined to grow free and bear foliage, has been converted into a living stick of timber, is a strange one, and affords a new illustration of the power of nature to fit itself to circumstances. ”

“ The dugong-hunting season at Moreton Bay, where the animals are supposed to resort from tropical seas to give birth to their young, lasts through the winter weather. The submarine pastures upon which they feed, says a writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," "lie at a depth of from eight to fourteen feet, and the favorite grounds are banks protected from the sea, in bays and straits. They graze in company, and feed down the herbage so close that they leave a well-defined track to indicate their movements. ”

“ Nevertheless, although the dugong is by nature mild-mannered, and innocent of the wiles by which a Greenland whale sends a boat spinning into the air with all bands, the men prefer to give the netted individual a wide berth. ”

“ This animal has become the object of a thriving industry, the chief seat of which is at Moreton Bay, Queensland. Every part of the creature is marketable, and the pursuit and capture are easy and safe—too much so, probably, for the permanence of the trade. The flesh is eatable as beef, veal, or bacon, either of which it may be made to resemble; the head can be cooked into a delicious brawn; the flippers, a good deal boiled, make capital soup ”

“ I have eaten it in each form, and can testify to its excellence, and to the way in which it has been palmed off upon knowing men as prime fillets of beef, cutlets of veal, and rashers of superior bacon. If the dugong is not properly fat, it is turned chiefly into bacon; should it, however, present a layer nearly two inches thick, the snow-white fat is used for a more important purpose. The lean flesh, beef-like in the mature and veal-like in the young animals, is eaten fresh or salted for food. ”

“ Another remarkable adaptation of leaf-forms is exemplified in the Brazilian plant called the Bauhinia, the leaves of which are deeply cleft into two lobes, and given a form which is graphically described by the name Unha de boi, "ox-hoof," which the Portuguese give to the plant. At daybreak, the leaves are borne with both lobes spread out horizontally; as the sun rises in the sky, the lobes rise, and are drawn toward each other, till, in the more sensitive species (Bauhinia Braziliensis) , they are completely doubled up, with their backs in contact. ”

“ It is, indeed, a great shame to attack them wantonly, for no animal is more gentle and inoffensive, or more easily domesticated; but their flesh is excellent food, being much like pork, and is, moreover, allowed by the church to be eaten as fish on fast-days, and must, therefore, be considered legitimate prey for man. ”

“ Darwin, "are probably not aware how much they owe to worms for the preservation of many ancient Objects. Coins, gold ornaments, stone implements, etc., if dropped on the surface of the ground, will infallibly be buried by the castings of worms in a few years, and will thus be safely preserved until the land at some future time is turned up." The remains of ancient buildings seem also to have been buried effectively, in large part, through the action of worms. ”

“ Darwin remembers doubting whether he should live to see the larger flints covered with vegetable mold and turf. But the smaller stones disappeared before many yens had elapsed, as did every one of the larger ones after a time; so that after thirty years, or in 1871, a horse could gallop over the compact turf from one end of the field to the other, and not strike a single stone with his shoes. ”

“ They also facilitate the downward passage of roots of moderate size, which are nourished by the humus with which the burrows are lined. Many seeds owe their germination to having been covered by castings; others, buried more deeply, lie dormant till they are brought under conditions favorable to germination. "The plow," says Mr. Darwin, in conclusion, "is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed, and still continues to be thus plowed, by earth-worms. ”

“ Hence, if the leaf is equally exposed to the morning sun and the afternoon sun, it will naturally tend to assume a position of equilibrium between the two forces, by turning one side toward the morning, the other side toward the evening, sun. ”

“ By triturating this earth, by subjecting its minerals to the action of the humus acids, and by periodically exposing the mold to the air, they prepare the ground in an excellent manner for the growth of fibrous-rooted plants and for seedlings. The bones of dead animals, the harder parts of insects, the shells of land-mollusks, leaves, twigs, etc., are before long all buried beneath the accumulated castings of worms, and are thus brought in a more or less decayed state within reach of the roots of plants. ”

“ The acacias, which are very abundant, and appear in three hundred species, are many of them, as well as some other leguminous plants, distinctly marked from similar plants in Asia, Africa, and America, by having not veined leaves but phyllods, or leaf -like structures, in which the petiole becomes so much developed as to assume the appearance and perform the functions of a leaf. ”

“ THE sea is inhabited by three families of mammalian animals, which, though they may be so "very like a whale" as to have been sometimes spoken of together as cetaceans, are quite distinct in their structure and habits, and show evidences of distinct origin. They are the cetaceans, including the whales, dolphins, and porpoises; the pinnipeds, including the seals, sea-lions, and walruses; and the sirenians, including the manatees and dugongs. ”

“ Worms have no eyes, and are measurably indifferent to light; yet they can distinguish night from day, and are quickly affected by a strong light, and after some time by a moderate light shining continuously upon them. They do not much mind a moderate radiant heat, but are sensitive to cold. They have no sense of hearing, but are extremely sensitive to vibrations in any solid object. Worms in pots, which had paid no attention to the sound of a piano, when placed on the piano instantly drew into their holes when the notes were struck. ”

“ A A, general level of the field. The underlying brick rubbish has not been represented. Scale one half inch to one foot.
When the stone was removed, an exact cast of its lower side, forming a shallow crateriform hollow, was left, the inner surface of which, except where the base had been in contact with brick rubbish, consisted of fine black mold. The turf-covered border, which sloped up to the stone, consisted of fine vegetable mold, in one part seven inches thick, and was evidently derived from worm-castings, several of which had been recently ejected. ”

“ The big trees of California are equaled among the trees of modern, and, so far as is known, of ancient, periods only by a few Australian eucalyptuses. Many of the most remarkable specimens of vegetable growth are familiar by description; others are added to the list, from time to time, as new quarters of the earth are more thoroughly explored and their forests more closely examined, or seen with eyes keener in observation. ”

“ It is worth mentioning, too, before passing from the flesh of this animal, that the meat from the calf is always the best, and that it is recommended by the faculty to consumptive persons, by reason of its undoubted strengthening qualities. ”

“ The black fellows, who love occupation of this kind, if any, peer over the gunwale of the whaleboat into the clear water, and are unerring authorities, telling at once when the monsters passed that way though it were a week previously, and giving a shrewd guess as to their present whereabout. ”

“ They are unlike anything that is known in any other animal, and their use is largely a matter of speculation. Mr. Darwin thinks they are partly excretions of the excess of lime contained in the leaves which the animal eats, and that they otherwise aid digestion by affording a neutralizing agent against the acids of its food. ”

“ The castings are not always ejected on the surface of the ground, but are often lodged in any cavity that may be met in burrowing. The burrows run down, sometimes perpendicularly, generally a little obliquely, to a depth of three, six, and even eight feet, and are usually lined with a thin layer or plaster of fine, dark-colored earth which the animals have voided, in addition to which a lining is made, near the mouths, of leaves, also plastered. ”

“ It grows to be sometimes as long as seventeen or twenty feet, but generally, not more than from eight to twelve feet, and to weigh from one to three or four tons, having a body the shape of an elongated barrel, slightly flattened above and below, with two fore-limbs, but no sign of hinder extremities, and an horizontally flattened or spatulate tail of about one fourth the extent of the body. ”

“ The whole of the internal structure in the herbivorous cetacea differs as widely from that of the carnivorous cetacea as do their habits; the amount of variation is as great as well could be in animals of the same class existing in the same great deep. ”

“ The dugongs that are found alive in their captivity struggle desperately. As a rule 5 they are as harmless as vegetarians are usually supposed to be, the only known breakers of the peace being a couple of bulls fighting over a sweetheart, or a frantic mother maddened by danger to her offspring. ”

“ The dugong, still floundering, is therefore hauled ashore, and a long knife applied to the throat puts an end to its career." Harpooning has been practiced, and is much liked by the blacks, but is discountenanced because it tends to drive away the animals. ”