Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ Winter is the time of the year for finding bird's nests, for the owners no longer need them. The oriole often hangs its purse of a nest, seventy-five feet in the air, from the limb of an elm. Robins and blue birds are fond of apple trees and maples. Little wood owls like the hollows of oaks. The crow picks out a lofty perch in a cotton-wood or pine tree to survey this interesting world. You can find holes the woodpeckers have drilled to drag out grubs, and cocoons tucked away in the ridges of the bark. ”

“ The music is often very dreadful, but the monkey is very funny. His tiny wrinkled face is so comical. It looks like that of a wise little old man who has seen a lot of trouble. Like a good clown in a circus, a monkey doesn't have to do anything to make people laugh—except just be a monkey. He is so wonderfully agile, quick and clever. He mimics everything people do. ”

“ He has a gray face and a black nose, but has long hind legs so he leaps something like a kangaroo. When he is happy he shows it by grinning, and when he is hurt tears come into his eyes. In his home in the Amazon forests it rains torrents sometimes, as if the bottom had fallen out of the clouds. When caught in such a storm, a troop of these squirrel monkeys huddle together in the thickest tree they can find, and put their tails around each others' necks for company and comfort. ”

“ By and by, Mother Nature made little boys and girls who can read, and understand this story of life.
It is very important to have a backbone, something to stand up with. You saw that in the great world of plants, when the simple yeast cell was slowly changed into the noble forest trees. All animals with a backbone are put into one class, called vertebrates. Those without backbones are called invertebrates.
Man is the most wonderful of all the animals, but even he isn't as clever in everything as are many of his humble relatives. He cannot swim like the fish, nor fly like the bird. ”

“ There wasn't another wild rose anywhere in the neighborhood. Roses are something like human babies. They do not like the smoky air of cities. You can coax garden roses to bloom in front door yards and parks, but wild roses stay outside, where the air is pure and sweet.
When winter came, and the gray weed-stalks rustled their dry seed-cases in the wind, the rose seemed the only live thing in the waste place. ”

“ Dragon Fly. It has no sting and is harmless to man. It feeds on insects which it catches while on the wing. When dragon flies alight, which isn't often, for they seem tireless, they keep their wings outspread. The damsel flies fold their slender wings down their darning-needle backs, in the shyest way, as if they didn't want to be noticed. Their name comes from the French—demoiselle—which means young lady. One of the damselflies is so gray and modest that it is called marsh nun.
All these are insect feeders, both in the winged and in the larva stage. ”

“ The fly will go all over a tree and poke its flexible wire egg-layer into countless holes. This clever creature eats very little, but spends most of its time laying eggs in the larva of moths, butterflies and beetles.
Sometimes you may see an insect that looks like a small dragon fly, but that flaps its four gauze wings, in flying. It lays eggs in tiny sand deserts in the woods, on river banks and sea shores. An innocent looking flier it is, but its larva is a true beast of prey—the cunning,flesh-eating ant-lion. ”

“ The spider, the ant, the bee and the fly are all ring-jointed, but have no shell. When she got up to insects, Mother Nature dropped the bone or shell idea, to make better brains and senses. The bee, the ant, and the spider have such large brains, in proportion to their bodies, that they are a wonder to men. ”

“ It ought to be, for every member of the family makes the earth fragrant and cheerful with their bouquets of blossoms. The rose is so sweet, so innocent and beautiful that we borrow its name for little girls, as we do of the blossoms of the violet and the lily. ”

“ He has no cheek pouches, but heaps as many nuts as he can carry in his two front arms, as you carry packages. But he can keep other monkeys from taking his nuts when he climbs, for he uses his long, curly-tipped tail for a fifth hand. With five hands for grasping the South American monkey is a wonderful trapeze performer. The tree-squirrel climbs faster, the flying squirrel leaps farther, the bat clings better with his wing-hooks, but no other animal can climb, leap and swing, and go across a wide forest, forty feet from the ground without once coming to the earth. ”

“ But just watch him on a tree or a perch, or clinging to the wires of his cage. He's as much at home in a tree as a bird or a squirrel.
Even if a monkey cannot talk, he can tell you very plainly where he lived when he was at home—that is, whether he is an Old World monkey from over the ocean, or a New World monkey from South America. The monkeys in a Zoo always come to the netting when visitors appear, for they are very curious and want to see everything that is going on. ”

“ It supports a great weight of thick limbs, irregular and crooked. Clear up to the knotted twigs, and tough brown leaves that often hang on all winter, the oak has a stubborn look. It dares the winter winds to do their worst. And it looks so old, so wise, such a scarred hero of a thousand fights. The old Norse sea kings and the brave English once worshiped the oak tree. It gave them ship timbers that could stand the strain of wind and waves. Many ancient peoples thought dryads, or wood spirits, lived in oak trees. ”

“ On very hot midsummer days there often seems to be nothing on the wing but these glitter-winged dragons of the air, and their swarms of little victims. Some of them skurry to shelter in the water weeds if a cloud blows up, but others love to frolic with the wind, and will even go out over white-capped waves on the sea shore. ”

“ He differs most of all in his power to reason, and to think and to care for the happiness of others. He has a sense of right and wrong, of honor, of justice, of unselfishness, of fair play, of pity. These are the social and moral powers that, alone, make human beings far above all the other animals.
But these fine feelings, too, began far back with the first animals that cared for their babies. Long before Mother Nature got up to human beings, she made ants and bees live and work in colonies, and birds care tenderly for their nestlings. ”

“ The South American monkey that you will see oftenest with the organ man is a small, rusty brown animal about as big as a toy terrier. He has a curved hair-covered tail, good thumbs, a rather pleasant whistling chatter, and a care-worn anxious face, as if he expected nothing in life but bad news. ”

“ The brown howler is bad enough, but the red howler makes the night hideous with his cries. They screech as if all the animals in the forest were eating each other up. Some zoos won't have Little-old-man-howler, as he is called, at all. ”

“ A foot has a long sole and short toes, usually, and the toes cannot grasp and hold things. A hand has a nearly square palm, fingers much longer than toes, and a thumb. In the best kind of a hand the fingers and thumbs have three joints each, and can all be brought together in many positions, and even closed into a fist. All four of a monkey's feet, that he walks on, are really hands, with grasping fingers and more or less perfect thumbs. That is why a monkey is so clumsyon the ground. Usually he walks on the outside edges of the palms with the fingers and thumbs curled in. ”

“ Select any little fellow who comes up to you and give him peanuts, one at a time, as fast as he can take them. If he is an Old World monkey he will stow those nuts away in cheek pouches like a squirrel. He can put a surprising number away, for those pouches stretch and stretch like little rubber balloons. Look at him carefully. His nose, of course, is flat, but the two holes are near together. And when he goes up to a bar to eat his nuts, he does not use his tail in climbing.
A South American monkey's nostrils are far apart. ”

“ In the winter the bark of orchard fruit trees are warm reds and browns and purplish grays, very bright and clean, like wild rose canes. The trunk of an old apple tree may be gray and scaly, butthe higher branches and twigs are bright. ”

“ Another South American monkey is the Saki. He has a ruddy back, and an almost human habit of cupping a hand and dipping up water when he wants to drink. He is so delicate that he seldom lives long in captivity, so you may never see him. But you are sure to see the spider monkey. He has such long slim arms and tail, and such a small body that he looks like a big, hairy spider. ”

“ Just what is a monkey?
In the big cage in a menagerie or zoo, there are a dozen or more varieties of monkeys as unlike each other as a fox terrier is unlike a St. Bernard dog. Some monkeys are as small as chipmunks, and others are as large as cocker spaniels. There are monkeys with long curly tails, with straight tails, bushy tails, stub tails, and no tails at all. Some have very hairy, and others nearly naked faces. There are dog-faced and purple-faced monkeys; monkeys with white cheeks, with turned-up noses, with tufted ears, with whiskers, mufflers and bonnets. ”

“ He has little stumps of thumbs that are of little use to him, and he is not as agile as many other monkeys. A mama spider monkey likes to sit down and cuddle her baby in her arms.So many of the Old World monkeys have only little stubs and lumps of thumbs that scientists put them all into one family called the colobus or cut-off-thumb monkeys. If you see a monkey with a very fine, long-haired silky coat, particularly if he has cheek pouches and makes no use of his tail, look for shrunken little thumbs. ”

“ The frost does not harm the smallest leaf-bud baby in its cradle, but it often grips and breaks the hearts of big trees.
Winter is the best time for studying the cone-bearers. Perhaps you call all of these trees pines. Many people do. Only one of their family is a pine, and you would never pick that one out for a Christmas tree. It has long, stiff, needle-like leaves that grow in clusters of from two to five. The clusters grow so close together that they spread in fan-like sprays. The pines, of which there are several varieties, have upright cones of thick, over-lapping, woody scales. ”

“ These marmosets and squirrel monkeys have some of the noisiest neighbors—the howling monkeys. They begin howling at sunrise, keep it up until the next sunrise, and then take a fresh start. The woods ring and echo with their howls. They travel all the time through the high branches of the trees, the males leading, and the mother monkeys following, each with one or two babies clinging to her neck with fingers and tails. They swing by their tails and catch the next limb with a hand. ”

“ A living body, of a plant or an animal, is a web. It is made up of single cells, multiplied and woven together. Mother Nature uses the same kind of cells, put together in different ways, to make leaf, stem, bark, flower and fruit, in the tree. ”

“ A monkey in captivity is happier in a cage with a number of other monkeys. "The more the merrier" is the rule in monkey land. Nearly every kind of small ape lives in a monkey village in the trees, when he is at home. There is a wise old male for a chief. He and the older males keep trespassers away from a chosen feeding place, and he leads them to a new home when they move. Early in the morning and late in the evening, seems to be play-time in a monkey town. ”

“ How much the apple blossom looks like the wild rose. It has five pink petals set in a rosette. It has a little forest of pollen hairs, too. When the petals fall the seed case swells and closes at the top and leaves, at the flower end, five little dry, brown sepals. The leaves of the apple tree are furry on the under side, the bark of the tree is smooth and bright, and the wild apples—the hawthorns andcrabapples have thorns. The apple tree is a very near cousin of the rose, nearer, very likely, than the strawberry. ”

“ Having made brains and sensitive nerves, Mother Nature began to use bones again. But when she made ring bones along the back of the fish, she dropped behind in brain power. A fish isn't nearly as bright as an insect. A reptile is a little brighter than a fish, a bird—you know how "smart" a crow is? ”

“ When he first comes into the world, man is the most helpless of all animals, and he remains helpless the longest. But that is an improvement. It was a great thing in the history of life when animals began to think about their babies, and about taking care of them. Little insects born as creeping larva, are able to take care of themselves as soon as they come out of the cocoon. But they never get very far, and they soon die. It is only when animals begin to spend a part of their lives learning things of their mamas—as spiders and ants and bees and birds do—that they amount to much. ”

“ The seeds inside are like little stones wrapped in spiny hairs, so they pass right through the birds unharmed, and are planted far away. In this way the wild rose has been scattered by birds over many parts of the northern world, from very cold countries almost to the hot tropics, and far up mountain sides. ”

“ It is the best umbrella in the world, in a storm, and it is thought to be the safest shelter, for it is seldom or never struck by lightning.
Bare maples are always graceful. The rock maple is a sturdy, compact tree, with its smooth trunk and rounded head. ”

“ Mother Nature at Her Loom Big boys and girls, when they finish high-school, have to write graduation essays. One of the subjects they often choose to write about is "The Web of Life is Strangely Woven." They like to tell how life is made up of different things, all woven together: Joy and sorrow, health and sickness, work and play are woven in and out into one web. ”