Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ In that wild garden were four varieties of clover—the white, creeping clover of blue-grass lawns; the pinkish purple-headed clover of farm meadows; the tall, shrub-like sweet clover, with tassel blossoms of white, and a blood-red clover, with pointed heads like pine cones. The crimson clover is a foreigner. Grown all over Europe, it is not often seen in America. In that wild garden it was a well-born emigrant among hardy and rough American weeds. ”

“ They keep the cubs hidden there for weeks and months after they are born, for bear babies are as blind as kittens, as naked as little birds, and perfectly helpless at first. They are fed with milk at their mother's breast, so she stays with the cubs while papa bear goes foraging for food for her. Mama Bear is as cross—as a bear. You know that's as cross as any one can be. She will try to kill anyone who comes near her babies.
All wild animals are fond of their mates and babies, and will fight for them. But there are few that are as brave and loving as the polar bears. ”

“ Part I—Flowers I. A Wild Garden and its Tenants This is the story of a wild garden that was found near a public school on the edge of a big city. None of the children had the tiniest garden, and they were not allowed to pick flowers in the park, even to use in the school room for nature study. So this wild garden, where they could pick armsful of flowers, where they could pull plants up by the roots, where they could gather seed cases and cocoons, and watch insects at work, was a wonder and delight. ”

“ Still, that little living cell has a skin or thin wall around it, and it is filled with a drop of magical jelly. The jelly is alive. What is it to be alive? A bit of sponge can soak up water, but it cannot use it, or make anything out of it. A silk worm eats mulberry leaves, grows larger on this food, makes a silk cradle to go to sleep in, and hatches out into a butterfly that lays more silk worm eggs. To be alive, is to eat and grow, and turn the food into something else and, don't forget this, make more living things like itself. ”

“ A plant or an animal is more wonderful than a watch. A watch runs down, and has to be wound again. But plants and animals have little live wheels that wind themselves, and keep going as long as they live. And before they die they start other plants and animals just like themselves—or even a little better—to going.
To understand it all you will have to go a long way back. There couldn't have been a watch until there was a wheel, then another wheel to turn on that, and a spring to make them turn. So there could never have been a plant or an animal until there was a little living wheel, or cell. ”

“ This animal is called the jungle bear because he sleeps in the shady jungle all day, and also the sloth, because he is so sleepy and moves about so slowly, and also the honey eater. He and the sun bear, who loves the sun as the jungle bear loves the shade, have long upper lips that look as if they had been stung by angry bees, and stretchy rubbery tongues. They can push this lip and tongue into an ant's nest and suck up a whole village with a greedy noise you can hear yards away, They eat bees and ants, ants' eggs, rice plants, fruits, honey and even flowers. ”

“ The big white polar bear, who weighs as much as an ox, doesn't pay any attention to anybody. He just prowls and prowls in an uneasy, lonesome way about his pit, until you feel sorry for him. His thick fur and fat body make him uncomfortable, very likely. When, on a hot day, a keeper gives him a ton of ice to lie on, he seems happier. If he turns his big paws up you can see that he is rough-shod, with hairy bristles all over the soles of his feet, for travelling on ice and snow. ”

“ Then, if a traveler from a strange country should bring you a little brown seed, a green leaf, a pink blossom, a bit of the wood of the apple tree and of the bark, and a juicy red apple to eat, and should tell you that they were all parts of one plant and had grown out of each other, and were made from one common food, what would you think? ”

“ When frost came and killed the blossoms, the garden was a feeding ground for birds that ate the scarlet hips of the wild roses and the seeds of weeds.One sunny day of Indian summer, late in October, some boys digging for pupas of beetles that had gone to sleep in the ground, found a nest of field mice, and caught a glimpse of a chipmunk on a rotting stump. ”

“ A glass of water taken from the muddy river, to show how the fine particles worn from the stones, settle down on the bottom as a layer of mud. You see the story of land goes around a circle. Mother earth is all the time tearing down and building up. She doesn't mind spending millions of years in grinding a mountain into mud and sand; pressing these into stone, and lifting the rock layers into mountain chains again. ”

“ Running water is a busy miller. It grinds earth to mud, and rocks to sand. Then, when it gets down to low ground, where it flows more slowly, it drops all this heavy matter along the river banks, in the river bed, and far out into the ocean. The gravel drops first, then the sand, then the mud. If you dig a well in the valley you will find a layer of loam on top, then sand, then gravel, on a bed of stiff clay or rock. If you scoop out a river bed you find things in the same order. In the ocean you find the gravel near the shore. It hurts your bare feet when you go in bathing. ”

“ They all belong to one family, as you can easily see from their clumsy bodies, shuffling walk, shaggy coats and bear-y faces. But, in many ways, they are as different from each other as white, black, brown and yellow people. ”

“ Wild animals are so strange and interesting. In every pond and creek there are animals that are just as strange. You don't have to buy a ticket to see them, as you do for a circus. But you can see a great many more of them, and all of them a great deal better, if you have a good microscope. ”

“ They are all fed and made to grow on just one food— milk. Then, maybe you'd be able to believe that the apple tree might be a really, truly story.
And that would help you understand that all living things—plants and animals—the baby and the apple tree, all of them came from seeds, and are sort of far-away cousins to each other. Isn't it pleasant to think that we are related to butterflies and birds and apple blossoms? Only children, and a few very wise grown people, can understand how this can be. Children can imagine things. ”

“ As the cells of plants change into roots or leaves or bark, when leaves or roots or bark are needed, so all the different parts of animals, from the amoeba up to man, have been made to grow by the work they, have to do. The amoeba uses all parts of itself for the same purposes. There is no part that always does the walking—so it has no legs or feet. The legs and feet which the amoeba makes, as it wants them, are called " false feet." It has no stomach that always stays a stomach, because there is no part that it always uses to digest its food. ”

“ In that lonely waste of frozen land and water, a polar bear family seems almost human in their close affection. In the winter the mother and cubs stay in the warm cave, but the father cannot sleep all winter long as the land bears do. ”

“ Just think what might happen, if we were as many times brighter than an amoeba as we are times larger!
For see what it does:
If it wraps itself around a piece of food that is too big for it— if it "finds its eyes are bigger than its stomach" as little boys do sometimes—it just unwraps itself from the food and glides away. Sometimes it seems not to like the taste of things, for, having wrapped itself around something, it holds it awhile and then lets go of it again without eating it. Some of the little animals it eats have shells. ”

“ Wild Bear can smell a hunter and his gunpowder a mile away, and he gets out of a dangerous neighborhood as fast as he can travel.
He can travel fast, too. For all he is so clumsy he can run as well as he can climb. But he is not built for jumping, or for turning easily and quickly. Old hunters know this, so when a bear chases them they sometimes escape by turning sharp corners, or by zigzagging. This puzzles a bear and wears him out. Hunters never climb big trees, for the bear can go right up after them. ”

“ But when it wants to eat it doesn't make a mouth, and put food in this mouth, as you might suppose. Whenever it touches the food on which it lives, it simply wraps itself around it like a little boy trying to carry a big watermelon. ”

“ Away up in Alaska where the biggest gold brown bear of all lives, and the glacier bear on the ice rivers, the summers are short and hot. There mosquitoes breed by millions on the vast swamps. The tip of a bear's nose is quite naked, moist and sensitive, like a dog's. He needs it that way for smelling. ”

“ Now, every step that was taken forward from the little cell full of protoplasm, lives in some form today. So we can follow the story of life, step by step. You can find the beginning of it in a loaf of bread. When your mama makes bread—no, mama doesn't make bread, she helps bread make itself, by—but that's another story. (See Cell, Cell-Doctrine, Protoplasm, Biology.) ”

“ Frost is a regular little wedge and hammer. When water freezes in a crack in a rock it swells, or expands, and splits the rock into pieces. The roots of all plants and trees split the soil, too. Burrowing animals like muskrats, foxes and snakes make little caves that often fall in. Earth worms and beetles honeycomb the ground with tiny tunnels. Finally men loosen the soil by plowing and building. ”

“ Beside what we call the wild fruit trees—all trees and low plants, too, bear fruits, for fruits are seeds, you know—there are the honey locusts, the horse chestnut and buckeye trees, and many crown-flowering shrubs, in American forests. ”

“ The earth under them was lifted a little, or dropped a little. One volcano poured out melted rock, or lava and granite, and buried a city. Some seacoasts are slowly sinking, some rising. Small islands come up or disappear. The valleys are being filled up, the mountains worn down by water, wind, frost, men, animals and plants. Tons and tons of mud and sand are being carried out to the ocean every day, to be turned into stone again. Sea animals are dying, and dropping their bones and shells to the ocean floor. ”

“ The water scours the river beds deeper, and carries as much earth as it can out into the ocean. What becomes of the good soil that is washed into the ocean? It has been ground to powder or melted to paste.
A piece of rock showing the remains of little sea animals which are contained in the rock. Water is very heavy. A little boy or girl cannot carry a wooden pail full of it very far. Every pint of water weighs a pound. The ocean is deep. There are hills and valleys and mountain ranges on the ocean floor, just as there are on land. Some places are as deep as our mountains are high. ”

“ In Northern Japan a people called Ainos fatten bear cubs for food. When small they play with the children, and are not shut up until they become big and rough. They are as playful as puppies. Hundreds of years ago' trained bears were led by chains about the old walled cities of Europe, and made to dance and tumble and pull carts. Very likely bears, and many other wild animals, were tamer in the days when there were fewer people and bigger forests. ”

“ The black bear is so bright that the Indians called him "brother." They never killed one purposely. The little Puritan boy was right in thinking that she would come down backwards as did the brown bear in the woods of England. Both of these land bears do many things like boys. They can stand up on their hind legs and "box" with the fore paws, as if they were trained in a school gymnasium. ”

“ Do you notice that the grape has both of its flowers, the seed cup and the pollen threads, set in one blossom? This is the first one of the kind we have found. The catkin bearers, the maples, the elms and all the nut trees have two kinds of flowers. One is a pollen maker that falls as soon as the yellow food is scattered. The other is an egg blossom that is fed, and stays on the tree awhile to ripen the seeds. ”

“ One of these single-celled animals is called the amoeba. That is a Greek word that means "change." The amoeba can change its shape whenever it wants to. If you could put on a pair of wings as easily as the amoeba can make feet, you could do what every boy has wanted to do—fly like a bird. Whenever the amoeba wants to move in a certain direction, little legs push out from that side of its body and draw the rest of the amoeba after it. Whenever it wants to go in another direction it draws in these legs and makes legs on the other side. ”

“ The oxygen which it needs comes out of the air just as does the oxygen which we need. You know there is air in the water.
Next above the amoeba are little animals called in-fu-sor'ia. These, under the microscope, look like caps or bells, with little hairs all around them. They remind us of the little whips that help to make the spores in the liver-wort, as if to say that plants and animals are related. These infusoria go thrashing around in the water just as the whip-tailed cells of the liver-wort do, using the hairs to swim with, just as the liver-wort cells uses these whips. ”