Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ A shepherd or collie dog is the best, for she is trained to care for sheep. She nurses them, fondles them and seems as proud of them as a mother. But in a few months they grow so big and rough that she looks at them in wonder and alarm, as a hen looks at a duckling she has hatched to take to the water. ”

“ In the story about land you saw what a big part water plays in this world of ours. Every drop of rain that falls takes up just as much dust as it can carry on its tiny round back, and hurries away with it. It washes the dust and smoke and bad smells out of the air, and leaves it pure and clean. It washes the dust from all plants and makes them bright. It would give you a merry shower bath if you stood in it. It washes the houses and the streets. You can see muddy water running down the gutters. How clean everything is, even the pebbles in the road, after a bright, hard rain. ”

“ The lion crouches back in a corner and growls. If he should spring the trainer has the chair up, legs out, before his face, and Mr. Lion gets a bumped head and a blow on the nose—his tenderest spot. Very slowly he learns to trust his master and to fear him, too. Sometimes a lion seems to grow fond of his trainer. ”

“ Vapor is always going up. Most of it goes up from the ocean, the lakes and rivers. Three fourths of our big world is covered with water, you know. The sun warms the top layer of water and turns it into vapor. Every leaf and blade of grass on the land has water in it. The sun steals this water, too. Sometimes it takes so much and gives so little back again that the grass turns brown, and the leaves wilt. Every animal and plant drinks water and breathes it out again from the lungs, or gives it to the air through little holes in the skin called pores. ”

“ Really, the dandelion might be chosen for our national flower. It grows everywhere; it blooms from April until frost, and it is hard to conquer, once it gets a foothold. It's root goes deep and lives over winter. You may cut the plant off, burn the ground over, or plow it up, but the smallest root tip sends up a new plant. Every seed globe scatters it far. ”

“ Hailstones are made in quite a different way from snow flakes. Snow falls only in the winter, but hail storms come in summer, on hot days. Weather men think that when rain drops are formed in clouds, and are all ready to fall, they are suddenly pulled up much higher, into freezing air. The rain drops freeze but do not burst. Then they fall through other rain clouds, and more water freezes on the balls of ice. They are tossed up and down until they become so heavy that they drop like bullets. They drop so fast that they pass through the warm air near the earth without melting. ”

“ The fungi all have one very bad habit. They don't earn their own living. They live on other plants, and even on animals. But they like dead or dying things best. Around old trees and fallen logs you will find toad stools and mushrooms. There are two ways in which you may know the fungi. They live on some other living, or dead and decaying, plant or animal, and they are never green. They do not have stems or roots or leaves or flowers or fruit or seeds. Any tiniest cell of a fungus, if put into the right soil will grow and multiply cells, just as the yeast plant does in the batter. ”

“ Just as the ocean is a great tank for making vapor, so the mountains and woods and cold countries are big storage houses for snow; much of the summer rain is lost. It runs off at once into streams, or is soon taken up again by the sun, in vapor. But snow lies for months, in cold, high, or shaded places. In the spring it melts slowly and soaks into the fields. It takes snow a long time to get into rivers. It gives plants and seeds water just when they need it, to help them grow. A farmer can get along in a dry summer, if there has been a wet winter. ”

“ He lies on the bank of a stream waiting, as pussy waits at a mouse hole, for some timid antelope, whose only safety is in his heels, to come down to drink. Then he springs with a roar. The way he roars in a zoo isn't anything to what he can do in the roaring line at home. ”

“ Farmers and gardeners fight these enemies all the time. They spray plants and trees with poisons. They plow land in the fall, to turn up buried cocoons to the frost. They plant trap strips to catch the larva, and burn the strips. In gardens they pick off grubs and caterpillars by hand. They cutdown trees and limbs and burn them. All the year around these enemies, too small, often, to be seen, too high to be reached, too hidden in the earth, in the fruits, the bark, the hearts and roots of plants, to be found, are fought. But all that human beings can do, is to keep them in check—sometimes. ”

“ Few spiders could hurt you seriously, but their bites paralyze flies and other small insects.
From the two to eight little eyes in her head, to the same number of spinnerets in her tail, from the deadly jaws to the sensitive, clawed and bristled and padded foot, the spider is a wonderful little creature. She is as clean as Mrs. Fly, washing her face and brushing her hairy body and legs vigorously. She keeps her web clean and every thread mended. And she cares for her babies as tenderly as a mother bird. ”

“ Then they roll into rain drops and fall.
As oceans are the great vapor tanks, so mountains are the chief rain makers. The tops of mountains are very cold, and they are so high up in the air that the vapor clouds bump right into them and turn to rain. In the winter the air is so cold that the rain, in falling, freezes into snow. Wide river valleys, islands and sea coasts, get a great deal of rain and snow, too, if the winds blow over them from the ocean. If the wind blows away from the land, so that it gets no rain, that land becomes a desert. ”

“ The whole mass is in motion. Mama says the yeast ferments, but that is just another name for growing, for yeast plants. There, the secret is out. Mama made a garden. The flour and water and sugar are soil. In the soil she scattered yeast plants-just as a farmer scatters wheat seeds in a field. The yeast is a water plant and will grow in warm water alone, but it will grow faster if given the starch in flour. And it likes sugar, too, just as you do. It uses these things to grow on and, in using them, it changes them. ”

“ Summer is the leafy season. But the time to begin to study leaves is in the early spring. On nearly all trees the leaf comes as soon as the blossom falls. The first leaves are very small, and they are not green but pink, red, yellow, gray or white. They have been wrapped up in bed clothes all winter. It takes several days of warm sunshine for them to turn green and to grow up. The leaf of the red maple tree, true to its name, is red. On the sugar maple it is a yellow-green, on the silver maple a shining green-white. When they grow to full size these maple leaves all have much the same form. ”

“ So the trainer watches and watches, never quite trusting even a lion that he has brought up from a cub.
Lion cubs are the cunningest babies. They really look and act more like puppies than kittens. They are as fat and clumsy and woolly as Newfoundland puppies. In Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, a keeper takes a family of three or four lion kittens out onto a grass plot for a romp. Crowds and crowds of people watch them tumble over each other. They are not born blind as tame kittens are, but they are just as helpless, and for a long time cannot even lap milk from a saucer. ”

“ These eggs first turn into simple little animals with paddles all around them, like the infusoria, and they swim around by themselves, for awhile, before a number of them settle down together to form a sponge. They are like boys that go out into the world awhile to learn what it is like, and then join other boys and go into business together. ”

“ You can find these monster babies on every lawn, in every garden and park and farm, on the grass, on small plants and big trees; buried in soft fruits and hard grains, and in tunnels they have bored in roots and stems and tree trunks. ”

“ The number of species, or kinds of insects is far, far beyond all other living creatures put together. Some scientists say there may be a million species. They all lay countless eggs. One scientist says that a young cherry tree may have ten million plant-lice on it. In one year the codling moth has put worms into ten million dollars worth of apples, and the Hessian fly has destroyed one hundred million dollars worth of wheat in our country. All the insect pests put together cause a loss on our farm crops, orchard fruits and garden products of five hundred million dollars in some years. ”

“ But if you are patient, you will be sure to find some that are perfect, six-pointed stars. The points will be veined and fringed like the petals of a flower. All snow flakes should be six sided or pointed crystals. Most of them are torn by the wind, or get their points knocked off by falling against other flakes. ”

“ Garden Spider won't come to see you and buzz by the hour. If you go to see her she'll tell you plainly that she doesn't care for society. It takes all her time to build her house, earn her living, and bring up her babies. She isn't asking favors of anyone, and she'll be obliged to you if you won't stand around and scare flies away. ”

“ Haven't you seen house-spiders let themselves down from ceilings by these silk cords? Once started a web thread seems to be pulled from the spinner as fast as she travels.
The spider is not an insect, as are the fly, the ant, the bee and butterfly. She has eight legs, while insects have but six. Her body is in two parts instead of three. Her legs are jointed like a lobster's, and like the lobster and crab she is a fierce fighter, and hunter. If a leg is torn off in a fight she is usually able to grow another one. ”

“ The root of the dandelion is round, rough, tapering from crown to tip, almost black on the outside, brittle but tough, hollow in the middle, giving it strength with lightness, and with many root-hair water suckers. The leaves grow in spreading, flattened circles from the crown, with the flower stems set around the inner circle. Rain, falling on leaves and flowers, drains right into the hollow root. ”

“ On each toe is a little curved toe-nail, as sharp as a little sickle. Pussy keeps her claws inside her pretty, soft fur mittens most of the time. But she can push them out as quick as a wink, pull them back again and scratch exactly like a lion. Under the toes and the balls of the feet are soft, naked cushions, so pussy makes no sound when she walks. All the wild cats—the lions, tigers and leopards, the jaguars, panthers and lynxes have feet just like the house cat's.
Now look at pussy's head. She has upright, outward-turning ears. She must hear well because she hunts at night. ”

“ But a number of them are crowded into one head, and the seed are ray-feathered for flight. Like the dandelion, the golden-rod grows everywhere on good or poor soil. It sends down a stout root that fights for its life, and it makes countless seeds.
The composite flowers are the highest in the plant world because they can live and grow, and make and scatter the most seed under the hardest conditions. They are not at all concerned about being useful to men. Nearly one-eighth of all the plants on the globe are composites, but many of them are troublesome weeds. ”

“ She learned that habit thousands of years ago when all cats were wild, and she never quite gets over it, no matter how tame she seems. She will try to hide her babies, too, On farms, where there are fine hiding places, mother cats will make a den under the barn floor, in the haymow, or in a hollow log up in the woods. If you try to follow her to find her kittens she will mislead you in the cleverest way. The mother lion carries her kittens by taking the loose skin at the back of the neck between her teeth, just as the house cat does. ”

“ Some African travellers say that if a man meets a lion, all he has to do is to stand still and look him square in the eyes and Mr. Lion will back away, then turn tail and run. I wouldn't like to put that to the test, would you? But a lion is used to seeing animals run from him in fear. It might puzzle him to see a man stand still and stare at him. Wild animals are a good deal like human beings in that. They are afraid of what they don't understand.
Travellers say the lion isn't nearly as brave as the tiger, nor as noble as he looks. ”

“ Cotton plants have three enemies—the cotton-boll weevil, the cotton worm, hatched from a moth egg, and the cotton stainer, a little red beetle. The chief enemy of corn is the cut worm. The army worm marches from field to field, millions strong, destroying grasslands. Grasshoppers come in clouds and leave bare fields behind them. On the bark of fruit trees a leech of an insect sucks unseen, under the black speck disc of the San José scale. The tree dies and the pest spreads through an orchard. The tent caterpillars often take entire limbs of fruit and shade trees. ”

“ Every part of the plant has that bitter taste, very strong in the old roots, just a hint in the young leaves. In the country, people often gather the young leaves of dandelion with mustard and curly dock leaves, and cook them for greens. They are better than spinach. The French use their dent-du-lion leaves for salad, as we use lettuce. Indeed, lettuce is a cousin of the dandelion, so is chicory or endive, another salad plant They both have that slightly bitter taste and milky sap. ”

“ So long as they have wings few insects eat much, and most of them live only a short time. But the females are busy laying eggs. That little gray moth, half an inch across the wings, that you see hovering over the pink apple blossoms, lays an egg that hatches into the apple worm. The fat white grub eats its way through, spoils the apple and crawls out. It spins a rough cocoon, just the color of the tree, and under a scale of bark. There it lies all winter, coming out as a moth, in the spring, to lay more eggs in the blossoms, to spoil more apples.All insects go through this larva stage. ”

“ Now, nature might have made one kind of cell and magic jelly for the fungi, and another kind for green plants, but she didn't. She seems to like to see how many different things she can make of a few simple things. All the plants and animals begin to grow in a little cell of protoplasm. So, when we understand the fungi, the simplest of all plants, we have learned the A. B. C.'s of life. Knowing the letters, we can spell the words and read the story of the living world. (See Fungi, Yeast, Mould, Mildew, Rust, Smut, Mushrooms, Toadstools, etc.) ”

“ She beats the batter with a big spoon to scatter the yeast plants all through the soil and to beat in air, too.All living things need air, you know. Yeast plants want their food warm just as the baby does; but they grow best in the dark, so mama covers the bread pan. The yeast plant is that little round cell filled with the magic jelly, protoplasm. It likes to float around in a warm bath. In some strange way it soaks food through its thin cell wall and grows larger. When it is grown up, it sprouts another little bud of a cell filled with jelly. ”

“ Big green caterpillars feed on the tomato, and grape vines. A moth makeswormy apples and pears, but the curculio, a weevil beetle, punctures the skins of plums, cherries and peaches, and pushes an egg down to the stone. The currant worm strips the bush fruits of leaves. The slug of the saw fly destroys roses, and little, green, plant-lice, or aphides, suck the juices of rose bushes, fruit trees and hop vines. ”

“ When you see a tree with a leaf that would lie in a three to five inch circle, but that is cut down part way into five lobes, you would be safe in thinking that tree a maple. The lobes of the red maple are sharply notched and parted. In the sugar or rock maple, the leaf lobes and partings are more rounded. It is a darker, smoother leaf, too, and grows more thickly on an evenly balanced, round-headed tree. The red maple has straggling branches, and the leaves are thin so light sifts through them, giving the tree an airier look than any other maple. ”

“ Sometimes vapor clouds cannot get above the earth. You know the steam from the boiling clothes could not get out of the kitchen until you opened a window at the top. If the air lies very heavy above it and does not open a place for vapor to go up, it lies on the earth. Such low clouds are called fogs. You remember the kitchen walls dripped with vapor, making the room damp? Thick fogs make people and plants almost as wet as rain. Fogs are oftenest seen over the ocean, lakes, river valleys and swamp land. Sometimes they cover miles of sea, and shut in ships with milky white curtains of vapor. ”

“ There's one thing that lions can't do that cats can. They can't climb trees. But tigers, leopards, panthers and all the other big,wild cats are great climbers, so it must be that lions have lived so long where there are few trees that they just forgot how to climb, The lion has forgotten to have stripes, or spots, too. His coat is of a uniform yellowish-brown, the color of sand and dry grass. All the other wild cats, and many tame ones, have beautiful markings. The tiger is banded in black and reddish fawn. The leopard is covered with big black polka dots on a golden fawn ground. ”

“ When petted he will purr as if he had a whole swarm of bees in his throat. But trainers never forget that the tamest lion is always dangerous. He is sly and treacherous, too. Without an instant's warning he may forget all his lessons and turn on his best friend. ”