Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ Sometimes, in turning around in his small cage, the neck is twisted or a bone snapped. In travelling on a railway, the roof window has to be kept shut, or the first low bridge would catch the head of the animal. He is not ill-tempered, as a rule, but having his eighteen feet of height jammed under a ten-foot roof makes him peevish. Sometimes he refuses to eat, and sometimes he turns vicious and attacks his keeper with his hammer of a head. So, although he looks so gentle, with his mild and beautiful eyes of a deer, you should never go very near a giraffe's cage. ”

“ A mother has only one baby at a time, an ungainly spotted calf that is almost as helpless as a baby camel. When the herd is alarmed and starts to run a baby may be left behind and be captured. Full grown giraffes are sometimes caught with the cow-boy's lariat, but there are few rough riders who can throw a lariat loop twenty feet high and drop it over a giraffe's head. Great care must be taken to give the plunging, frightened animal plenty of rope, or he may give a sudden jerk and break his long neck. ”

“ In just two things the giraffe is like the camel. He can close his nostrils against blowing sand, and he can go a long time without water. This is not because he has water pockets in his stomach. He simply seems to need much less water than other animals. Finally, the giraffe's long neck, high shoulders and short body, that form one curved slope from ears to tail, are quite unlike those of any other animal on earth. He is three times the height of a six-foot man, and towers five or six feet above the biggest African elephant.
As an animal, the giraffe is half-way between the ox and the deer. ”

“ Crawfish's little brain.
Mother Nature doesn't "cross bridges" until she comes to them; that is, she takes care of the business of every day without bothering herself too much about what she is going to do a long way ahead. ”

“ The crawfish seems to have started, as a baby, to divide his stomach into three rooms. When he gets to be a bossy cow, eating clover in the pasture, he really does divide it into four stomachs, as you know. The cow stops the food that needs the most digestion in the first stomach. The food that needs less grinding stops in the second stomach. Real fine, partly digested food, like bran-mash, goes straight through, "by express," into the third stomach. All of the food finally goes into the fourth and last stomach. The first stomach rolls the coarser food into little balls. ”

“ The plants have no true bark, or rings of growth. Most of them live only one season. Their seeds are fertilized by pollen carried by the wind, as in palms and pines, and like them are borne on stalks or spikes. A head of wheat or an ear of corn is something like a pine cone, but the seeds are covered and protected. This class of plants gives us a great variety and quantity of grain foods, for men and animals and birds.
Last of all, Nature made plants with the two-leafed seeds, net-veined leaves, hard-wood stems that always show rings of growth, stiff bark, beautiful flowers and fruit. ”

“ It isn't easy to take a herd of giraffes unaware. The only chance the lion has of catching one, is to spring on him while drinking. Even then a giraffe has been known to kick a lion to death. With five minutes' start the swiftest Arabian horse cannot overtake a giraffe. ”

“ In every upward step taken by plant life there is a story, just as interesting as the stories of the cell, the fungi, the green algae, the liver-worts, the mosses and the ferns. It would take a big book to trace all of these steps. ”

“ Seethe tiny stems crowded in that cup, like flowers in a vase. Every yellow petal is a funnel that is folded around little seed-making hairs and knobs, powdered with yellow pollen grains. Try to count the ripe seeds on a gray, gauzy globe of dandelion. Watch them fly and scatter in the air. The seeds are not only well covered, but they have feather wings. You know how hard it is to kill dandelions out of grass. If you cut off the tops, new tufts of leaves spring up. ”

“ Crawfish seems to be a little careless about the way in which he carries his heart. You see, he has it away up on his back, between his shoulder blades, as it were. But, then, in changing and shifting parts in animals, Mother Nature seems to be a good deal as your mama is with the Spring house cleaning; she can't get everything into the right place at once. But Mr. Crawfish has made the four hearts that he had when he was an angle worm into one heart, and that's a very great improvement.
Now here is a curious thing; the earthworm has four hearts, the crawfish has only one. You have only one ”

“ As it is much more dangerous to cut an artery than a vein, your arteries are better protected than your veins. For instance, there are veins on the back of your hand, which is always bumping into things, but you have an artery on the inside of your arm and wrist where you seldom get hurt. Mr. Crawfish seems to know he must be more careful of his artery than of his vein. Look at the picture and see where he puts his artery. ”

“ If closely pursued, a giraffe can escape through a jungle of thorn bushes where men and horses cannot follow, and come through without a scratch. His skin looks to be thin and tender, but it is really so tough and so thick in places that soft lead bullets often flatten out on it. ”

“ Like the bison, or what we call the American buffalo, the grizzly bear, the African elephant, the Bengal tiger, the kangaroo, and many other wild animals, the giraffe has been hunted so long that he is rapidly disappearing. ”

“ You know, while she was going along thinking of everything but where she was going, she tripped and fell.
And the eggs—!
Mother Nature always has her mind on her day's work. She says: "Give us this day our daily duty, and the doing of it will keep us happy and get us ready for the next duty." ”

“ In the crawfish there is a big front stomach, you see, like the first stomach of the cow, that we call the paunch. In the chicken it is the crop. Next comes the grinding mill in the northeast room, which works like the chicken's gizzard. Beyond this is the back room stomach that opens into the long, worm-like hallway that runs clear down to the tail. ”

“ So, having many different and very tough things to grind up and digest in their stomachs, they must have a big, strong mill to do it with. Like all fighting animals, they are large eaters. When men spent much of their time in fighting, they spent the most of the rest of it in eating strong meats and drinking strong drinks—which made them want to fight still more. And so they went from bad to worse, just as the crawfish and the lobster do, and died, at last, "with their boots on." Few of the lobsters die in their beds.See that little northeast room of the crawfish's stomach? ”

“ The palm, in some ways, is simpler than the pine. It has less bark, and its stem does not branch. Its bark often seems to be mere bundles of loose, dry fibres left by leaves that fell as the stem grew upward. These leaf scales are easily stripped off, and the fibres are so long and strong that they can be woven and twisted. ”

“ Everything in nature, among plants and animals, grows slowly, just as a baby does. It takes a baby a year to grow strong enough to stand alone, sometimes. A further time is needed for baby to learn to walk, and twenty-one years for him to grow to a man. ”

“ If you dig out the roots some rootlets or root-tips remain to start new plants. And every flower head grows and scatters dozens of seeds. The thistles are just as bad. This family gives us some beautiful flowers, some plants that are useful, but a great many that are troublesome weeds, that we have to rout out year after year. Of all the plants those that bear composite flowers make the best fight for life, and win out under the hardest conditions. ”

“ But the crawfish and the lobster and all their near relations, eat various things. They eat little fish, scales and all; pieces of each other, shell and all, when they get to fighting, for they are cannibals. ”

“ Their seeds are not only covered, they are often buried in fruit pulp, or hidden in pods and shells.
Very likely you think the crown-bearers are the highest of all plants. That is because you think of them as the most useful to human beings. But they are not more useful than many of the grasses and palms. By "highest" in plants and animals, is meant those that are most useful to themselves. It is the first business of every living thing to eat and grow and reproduce itself. ”

“ Very wild and shy, they trust to their heels for safety. They live in herds of from a dozen to fifty on the high dry plains of Central Africa, below the desert and east of the tropical forests. Their only enemies are lions, who lie in wait for them in the brush along river banks, and Arab hunters on horses. ”