Julia McNair Wright

“ In its favorite haunt, the Santa Lucia River, the mermaid’s babies are born among the lily-leaves, and in that green and pleasant nursery, the clean white sand for their bed, the fragrant lilies rocking on the water, the butterflies and dragon-flies darting out and in among the shadows, and the birds singing and sporting above them, they live for several weeks. When they are quite small their mothers carry them around in their flippers if they seem tired or do not go fast enough, but the manatee baby can swim as soon as it is born. ”

“ If we watch a giraffe in a menagerie, we shall remark the beauty of its silky, spotted coat, the gentleness of its large, eager eyes, its two short horns covered with skin, its ears turned backward, its long, dark tongue, with which it constantly licks its lips and nostrils. Timid and mild, the giraffe shows vexation only by pawing the ground rapidly with its fore hoofs; it will bend its stately head to accept an apple or a carrot from a little child, and seems to forget the days when it wandered through the African forests, and browsed on fruit and leaves from the tops of the trees. ”

“ The sun rises; the white petals bend together, and, rocked on the parent pool, the Victoria regia sleeps.
But as night draws on again the royal lily awakes. Now it is in its perfection; the perfume is more subtle; the petals take a flush of the palest pink; it rocks on the water and queens it through the night. And so with a few waking and sleeping nights and days, the royal lily’s life is done. [62] When the splendid blossoms and the vast green leaves have perished the seed boxes or pods of the plant rise above the water and ripen, and the Indians call them water maize, and eat them. ”

“ You could not see a more beautiful climber. The short hind legs, crooked claws, long forearms, are just suited to tree life, for clambering safely and lightly from bough to bough. The sloth, thanks to its claws, is as safe hanging back downwards as a bird is safe in its nest. Those weak eyes are suited to the soft shadows of the leaves; the subdued light on the tree is just right for it.
The sloth is a vegetable feeder; as it climbs about the tree it nibbles off the sap leaves and the delicate new bark and twigs ”

“ The big blue jay dares not rob a kingbird’s nest. The kingbird will chase a jay, a crow, even an eagle, or a hawk. His bill is sharp and strong, and as he flies under or over his enemy, he darts at him, and drives his bill into him with a peck.
He is so fierce only when he has a young brood to defend. At other times he is quiet enough. When his young brood is in the nest, he feels so proud that he seems to think himself the lord of all birds. ”

“ During how many ages has this lavish sunlight stored up coal for our use, that coal which flames in our grates and stoves, glows in our gas-lights, and drives the engines of our age of steam!
That lesser light which rules the night, the silver moon, not only serves to inspire poets and artists, and to light so many otherwise dark hours, but with mysterious attraction controls the tide in ebb and flow. ”

“ Fold after fold of the wings shakes out; ring after ring of the body stretches to its proper length; the joints of the legs come to their right shape and firmness. From all the body of the insect a mist seems to pass away; and the colors of the fly come out, and red, blue, green, gold, shine in beauty. ”

“ In a fight with a lion or tiger, the elephant keeps its proboscis held aloft, out of harm’s way, waving it like a banner, and sounding an alarm, and uses its tusks for a weapon, wherewith to gore or toss its foe. It also tramples on its enemies, and crushes them with its enormous weight. With its tusks the elephant also uproots trees when it wishes to secure dainty leaf-food, too high up to pull down with its proboscis. ”

“ The higher we rise above the earth, the darker becomes the color of the sky, until it hangs like a pall of unspeakable blackness. Why is this? Why is light not light? Why this absolute darkness among so many, many suns? It is simply lack of dust! There must be something to throw back and scatter the rays of light before it can be visible. Unless far up in stellar space there is dust, star-dust, a whirl of motes or stones to seize and throw back the light, then all must be very dark. ”

“ The moon has no atmosphere; no rain falls on her barren surface; no clouds move above her; no tempests howl in her caverns; no snows crown her volcanic peaks; no sunsets shine in gorgeous colors; there are no violet and crimson skies at dawn. The moon is the kingdom of eternal calm, and sleep, and stillness. If any blow disturbs the lunar surface, it is from the fall of meteors rained upon it through space. It is [Pg 77] to our atmosphere we owe the glories of the clouds, the beneficence of waters, the magic of frost changes, the rush of storms, the balmy breezes, the sky. ”

“ The wonders of the heavens were among the primary subjects of human thought. The rising and setting of the sun, and his splendid way through the sky; the milder beauty of the moon; the marshalled hosts of the stars aroused the admiration, interest, even worship, of the earliest representatives of our race. Men concluded that the heavenly bodies were gods or men, who for great deeds had been taken to shine in deathless glory in the skies. With enlarging ideas they understood that the stars are worlds, but they had no means of determining how large or how distant they might be. ”

“ The frost and rain of the past winter have washed away the sand and light soil which had hidden them. Why! these are shells, not pebbles. Stone shells, fossil shells! See how perfect every delicate fluting is, how sharply the hinge of the long-perished bivalve is defined. Some are of a delicate pale gray, others almost white; but long ago in the Silurian seas perhaps they shone in brown and yellow, red, pink, buff, and maroon, as gaily as the scallop shells of to-day, which in shape they much resemble.
What is this lump of stone covered with little star-shaped knobs? ”

“ Again, we shall go down to the still ponds, where lilies float on the water and dragon-flies swim in the air.
Wherever we go, let us keep our eyes open and our minds awake to the lessons of Nature. Then we shall be able to learn what beauty and wisdom lie hid, even in such humble things as flies and worms. We shall find much to delight us in beetles; and be as happy as kings while we search out the secrets of airy hunters and marvellous little fishes. ”

“ The next theme of study was the solar system, under the laws governing which our world exists, part of which it is, and upon the members of which, the sun and the moon, we are so dependent that without them life on our globe would be impossible. That magic power whereby the plant world grows and ripens its fruits abides in the sunlight. It is the sun’s heat which raises water from the earth in vapor, which returns to us in showers and dew. It is that same forceful heat, poured out on vast continents, that gives rise to the winds that cool our summers and speed the sails of our commerce. ”

“ This bird makes its nest in a tree, but fashions a little arbor for itself, among the grasses. Into its grass palace it brings all the pretty things it can find. Shells, bright stones, bits of cloth, glass, bones, flowers, are all brought to its little play-house. Would you not love a bird which had such pretty ways?
Of all the birds in our own land, none is more splendid than the cardinal bird of the South. He has a crimson beak and plumes. His song is very sweet. He is a brave bird, and very kind and polite to his mate. It is very cruel to kill such a creature for its feathers. ”

“ Meanwhile among and around about these coral towers, cuttle-fish and nautili darted, while mailed crustaceans chased each other, fought and frolicked and devoured each other. See, we have another fossil in the rock, the beautiful stone lilies; they must have a chapter to themselves; and here again are lamp shells and other and different mollusks of the Silurian time. Here they were crowded, swimming and playing in these living coral bowers. How they were dashed by thousands upon this beach of sand! ”

“ The harvest mouse is the smallest and perhaps the prettiest of all the rodents. Its back is tan color, brightening on the sides and legs, while all the under part of the body is snow-white and silky. It is not much over an inch long, has bright eyes, and a long, hairy tail; it lives upon grain, and constructs one of the prettiest of nests for a home. Laying together, with their long leaves, three or four stalks of wheat, oats, or barley, the harvest mouse weaves of grass and leaves a round, beautiful nest, about as large as that of a titmouse. ”

“ Do not some flowers turn each day to follow the path of the sun? Does not the wild ivy run over the ground? Then there is a plant in the desert that moves to find water. It gets loose from the sand. It bends up into a circle or wheel. Then the wind rolls it along, until it reaches a moist place where it can live. There it roots again.”
“A plant is a living thing without blood.”
“Its sap, or juice, is its blood. It serves the plant as blood serves man. The sap is as much the blood of the plant as the white fluid in the jelly-fish, the insect, or the barnacle, is blood for them. ”

“ At night, and during rainy days, butterflies hide, as they do in cold weather. They seldom fly abroad before nine in the morning. Between four and five in the afternoon they begin to steal off to bed. They are out in full force in those bright, hot noon hours, when the flowers are at their best. Happy butterfly, he flits about in the sun and drinks honey all the time of roses! ”

“ Young ants, like young people, wish to set up for themselves in new homes. They spread their fine wings. Off they fly! Since there is not room in the old hill they will build a new one.
They swarm as the bees do. As they rise high from the earth, they drift off on the wind. Very many of them tire out and die, or are blown into the water, and are drowned. A few live and settle on places fit for a new ant-hill.
It is the mother or queen ant who chooses the new home. When she has found the right place, what do you think she does? She takes off her wings, as she does not care to fly any more. ”

“ As you touch its grassy bank you stand in the modern age of the present earth-building time. As you travel down the creek, the successive beds or stages of earth-building are laid bare, one after another, until at the end of five miles you stand on the lower-Silurian stratum of this burial-ground. Take a pamphlet, fold the first leaf over one half, the next a little less, and so on for thirteen pages, and you have a pattern of the manner in which the spring and autumn torrents flushing the brook have laid bare the rock strata, and shown them as they lie here closely crowded upon each other. ”

“ The moon is in our minds associated with peace, silence, rest; the silver radiance causes no pain to the eyes, and like charity, while revealing objects, it adds to their beauty, and subdues defects. Much that by the light of day seems harsh and ugly appears picturesque and fascinating in the delicate splendor of the moonlight. ”

“ Within forty-eight hours the globe would be covered with a deluge of rain, and buried in piles of snow, owing to the condensation of all the moisture in our suddenly chilled atmosphere, while more than Arctic cold would freeze the oceans to their depths. In this reign of cold and darkness all animal and vegetable life would perish. All the planets of our system would share the same fate, and as the light with which they shine is reflected from the sun, they would become invisible, rolling on through space in total darkness. ”

“ Thus we see the moon to be a dumb, dead, deserted planet, wheeling on in its orbit around the earth, and carried with the earth in its greater orbit around the sun. Silvery sweet and fair, this queen of the night is a planet that long, long ago passed its childhood and its prime, and fell, in its old age, a prey to fire. ”

“ The next specimen in our wonder grove comes from Africa, the famous and beneficent rain tree. This is a tall and beautiful tree, with widely spreading branches, gifted with the astonishing power of extracting water out of apparently the driest soil and atmosphere. While the earth seems absolutely parched, and the air is like the breath of a furnace, the blessed rain tree draws from somewhere abundant moisture, which it distills in a heavy shower from its leaves, saturating all the earth beneath. ”

“ While scores hatch, only tens grow up; for the spade-foot tadpoles devour one another, and are so greedy that very few survive. These few are most ravenous in their appetites. A spade-foot tadpole will seize a grasshopper, and being too small to swallow over half his prey, will calmly lie waiting for the swallowed half to digest in order that he may gulp down the remainder. As soon as a spade-foot tadpole becomes a “hopper,” getting four legs and losing its tail, it leaves the pond and indulges its digging instincts. ”

“ The Milky Way is a gigantic cluster of suns, and if each sun has its planetary system about it, each system rides like a shining archipelago in these seas of space. Earth and all other planets, being dark in themselves, do not count in these burning distances. So then our sun is but a star, and the Milky Way is made up of millions of such stars. More than this, our sun is one of the many stars that compose this wonderful band of light. ”

“ When the world was wrapped in a mantle of seas, before the first continent thrust its rocky ridges above the waves, no doubt those warm waves swarmed with busy life. “The waters brought forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life”; and to-day, as in all previous ages, the sea is the headquarters and busy home of living things. In every zone the waters teem with animal organisms, so numerous that we doubt whether the sands on the shores, or the stars that fill space equal them for multitude. ”

“ If it gets caught in a place where its wide wings cannot turn, it can fly backwards and get off safely. In a place where the wings might be injured by striking against leaves or branches, it flies out in this way.
When dragon-flies are dead, the great beauty of their bodies passes away. They fade and grow dull, as when they first came from the pupa-case. The scarlet, yellow, blue, or green turns to a dull drab. So you cannot keep them as well as you can keep beetles. It is life that gives the dragon-fly its splendid beauty. ”

“ The Old Man of the Meadow is, in his way, like a quiet country gentleman. He roams about the fields, and likes to sing, and is fond of moonlight. He likes the shade, and the cool, still places under the green herbs. ”

“ I know you now—bone of contention among the scientific, most unexpected in your behavior, specimen of the order Urodela, spotted Amblystoma, oh, why cannot you have at least one simple and easy name, Mexican axolotl!
A curious little child of Mexico is this denizen of the lakes of that warm southern land—a mild, silent, unhandsome, small beast, given to surprising people. The chief peculiarity of the creature is that it obstinately refuses ever to grow up, and remains in the larval state, instead of properly putting on the form of an adult. Nature’s perpetual child! ”

“ The nest is shaped like a ball, and has a small opening on one side. In this nest the tiny mother places her little ones. She climbs up the wheat stems by means of her sharp claws, but comes down as one slides down a rope, holding on by one hand. This round nest is the summer home of the harvest-mouse. By the time the grain is ripe, some wise instinct teaches her to remove her household to a new dwelling. She either makes a burrow in the ground, or builds a nest in a corn-crib or hay-rick. ”