Agape

“ If you have never seen the plant before, you will be in a fever of excitement till you can reach the spot and actually take one of the strange pitchers in your hand to examine it. Nothing could be cleverer than the nicely arranged wiles of this uncanny plant for the capturing of the innocent—yes, and of the more knowing ones—of the insect world who come within its enchantment. No ogre in his castle has ever gone to work more deliberately or fiendishly to entrap his victims while offering them hospitality, than does this plant-ogre. ”

“ There are many different species of agaves (often called century plants) in the Southwest, several occurring in Big Bend. Plants of this group furnish many important products in Mexico, and were utilized by Indians in various ways. Among the products are fiber, food, drink (mescal) , soap and medicine. Agaves are grown commercially in more than 40 countries. These plants store up food in the root and leaf systems for many years, finally send up one fast-growing flower stalk, mature their seeds, and then die. ”

“ When there are young in the nest the old birds are very savage, darting down with angry cries on every one passing under the tree.
A Magpie makes a most entertaining and useful pet, though after a time it becomes very mischievous, and delights in pulling up freshly-set plants. I have known one, after watching, say, turnips or onions being thinned out, to go on with the thinning until not a plant remained.
Another bird used to watch the operation of setting young plants very intently, and as soon as one's back was turned commence pulling them all up. ”

“ The third group of winter birds consists of downy and hairy woodpeckers, chickadees, tufted titmice, brown creepers, nuthatches, and golden-crowned kinglets. They glean insect-eggs from the bark of trees as a large part of their winter food-supply and form an exceedingly important group. The enormous number of insect-eggs eaten by them every year is almost incalculable. Every 3 part of a tree—the trunk, the large branches, and small twigs—is scrutinized by these industrious members of the Life-Saving Army of our forests. ”

“ A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work: toc, toc, toc! ”

“ We all learn in everyday life how a hen will take care of a brood of chicks or how a bee will go from blossom to blossom to sip honey. Would it not also be interesting to see how a little bug the size of a pin head will burrow into the stem of an oak leaf and how the tree will grow a house around him that will be totally unlike the rest of the branches or leaves. That is an “oak gall.” If you carefully cut a green one open you will find the bug in the centre or in the case of a dried one that we often find on the ground, we can see the tiny hole where he has crawled out. ”

“ By thus alternately gliding, in rapid and often repeated rushes, over the ill-fated bird, they soon fatigue it, when it stretches out its neck, swims deeply, and makes for the shore, in the hope of concealing itself among the rank weeds. But this is of no avail, for the Eagles follow it in all its motions, and the moment it approaches the margin, one of them darts upon it, and kills it in an instant, after which they divide the spoil. ”

“ When she was full-grown she had no wings, no legs, and no eyes, but she had a very long beak, and could suck up a great deal of orange-sap. If you will listen and not interrupt, I will tell you how we Orange-dwellers grow. When we are hatched from our eggs we are all alike, brothers and sisters. We each have a plump little body, six legs, two eyes, and a sucking-beak to get food with. We walk about for a few days, and finally stop on some nice green leaf or juicy orange, and stick our beaks far in and go to sleep, or do something very like it. We never walk about any more. ”

“ There are enough kinds and colors and shapes of spiders to satisfy all tastes. But we like best and admire most the long-legged, agile, graceful Argiopes, and particularly her of the silver shield. Her full, firm body with its flat, shield-shaped back, all shining silver and crossed by staring black-and-yellow stripes, the long tapering legs softly ringed with brown and yellow, the shining black eyes on their little rounded hillock of a forehead, and the broad, brown under body with eight circular silver spots; all go to make our Argiope a richly dressed and stately queen of spiders. ”

“ The magpie hunts after the insects which, concealed beneath the bark of the tree, live upon its sap. The humming-bird, the fly-catcher, the soui-mangas, in tropical countries, purify the chalice of the flower. The bee-eater, in all lands, carries on a fierce hostility against the wasps which ruin our fruit. The goldfinch, partial to uncultivated soil and the seeds of the thistle, prevents the latter from spreading over the ground. ”

“ If this be conceded, then, indeed, we have a plentiful crop, nor need we any longer feel sceptical because the eagle, say—that bird of fierce energy—does not flash out like all the crown jewels together as it descends on its prey, or because the swift, whose vital force is, perhaps, even greater, leaves no train of jewelled light to die all day, behind it, on the air. ”

“ The eagle sits for thirty days, as do most of the larger birds; the smaller ones, the kite and the hawk for instance, only twenty. The eagle mostly lays but one egg, never more than three. The bird which is known as the “ægolios,”3109 lays four, and the raven sometimes five; they sit, too, the same number of days as the kite and the hawk. The male crow provides the female with food while she is sitting. The magpie lays nine eggs, the malancoryphus more than twenty, but always an uneven number, and no bird of this kind ever lays more; so much superior in fecundity are the smaller birds. ”

“ Some orders of insects, as for example the moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, bees, wasps, ants, and others pass through four distinct changes of form. They always follow the same order. Every generation, beginning with the egg, passes next to the larva (called caterpillar or incorrectly worm, or grub, or maggot) , on to the pupa, then to the adult. The egg of an insect is often a most beautiful object. With a hand lens, which every collector will surely need, one can see its delicate colouring, its pearl-like shell, its curiously carved or sculptured surface. ”

“ Beside the loch thou seest over yonder there grows a fir tree. On the top of the fir tree is a magpie's nest, and in the nest are five eggs. Thou wilt bring me those eggs for breakfast, and if one is cracked or broken, thy blood shall pay for it.'
Before it was light next day, the king's son jumped out of bed and ran down to the loch. ”

“ A few words respecting the excrescences they produce, may therefore assist our ideas of the proceedings of the valuable insect described above. Very few persons are unacquainted with oak-apples, or small roundish, flattened bodies growing on the leaves of the oak. These are sometimes tinged with brown, or pink, or pale yellow, so as to appear not much unlike very small apples, attached to the leaf. Each of these curious bodies is formed by a small fly of the same nature as that which forms the gall-nut. ”

“ And where each bird perched, there it was to build its nest. Then Mother Magpie found clay and bits of twigs and moss and grass—everything a bird could need to build a nest; and there is scarcely anything you can think of which some bird would not find very useful. When these things were all piled up before her she told every bird to do just as she did. It was like a great big kindergarten of birds playing at a new building game, with Mother Magpie for the teacher. ”

“ The Bee-eaters pass on: but there is no truce for the insect-world, for other deadly enemies, the Woodchat and Southern Grey Shrike, sit by on every bush, intent on impaling heavy-flying bee or beetle. From the alcornoques there resounds the shrieking maniacal laughter of the flame-coloured Spanish Woodpecker (Gecinus sharpii) as he flies heavily from tree to tree with rustling, undulated flight: then there is an occasional Azure-winged Magpie (Cyanopica cookii) , there are Wood-Pigeons and Turtle-Doves, Spotted Cuckoos, and Magpies in swarms. ”

“ The species of eagle that frequents the water, and lives on fish, was also present, and one was hovering at a considerable height above the hut, greedily watching for an opportunity to make a swoop; its hungry young elevating their heads from a nest that was in sight, in the naked summit of a dead pine. ”

“ At even the birds often turn to the west as they sing.
Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood was all a-hum with insects. The wasps were working at the pine boughs high overhead; the bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers; swarming on them, they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went wandering among the ferns in the copse and in the ditches—they sometimes alight on fern—and calling at every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. ”

“ The sunlight filtered through the leafy thickets awaking to song the forest birds. Magpies in spotless black and white flirted past, alighting near by with a hop and bound and twitch of the tail. Blue and white jays with rosy breasts shrieked through the trees, and a low-sailing hawk wheeled among the fields of ripening wheat, putting to flight flocks of twittering hedge birds. ”

“ No doubt there are experts to whom a wood-pigeon's nest is something apart and distinct from the nest of the magpie, but to your unsophisticated amateur a nest that is large may be anything—rook's, magpie's, pigeon's, or great auk's. To such an one the only true test lies in the eggs. Solvitur ambulando. Barrett laid the pill-boxes, containing the precious specimens he had found in the nest at the top of the hill, at the foot of the tree, and began to climb. ”

“ The eagle was destroying the chief bugbear of their existence—the sneaking greeny-yellowy murderer of their kind and eater of their eggs, whose colour and form so harmonises with leaves and thin branches that he constantly evades the sharpest-eyed of them all, and squeezes out their lives and swallows them whole. ”

“ Reviewing the small selection of life-stories of various Lepidoptera just sketched, we notice an interesting and suggestive variety in the wintering stage. The vanessid butterflies hibernate as imagos; the 'vapourer' winters in the egg, the magpie as a young ungrown larva, the 'tiger' as a half-size larva; the Agrotis caterpillar feeds through the winter, growing all the time; the codling caterpillar completes its growth in the autumn, and winters as a full-size resting larva ”

“ Then the magpie put another layer of mud over the twigs.
“Oh that's quite obvious,” said the wise owl, and away it flew; and owls have never made better nests since.
After this the magpie took some twigs and twined them round the outside.
“The very thing!” said the sparrow, and off he went; so sparrows make rather slovenly nests to this day.
Well, then Madge Magpie took some feathers and stuff and lined the nest very comfortably with it.
“That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfortable nests have starlings. ”

“ THE EAGLE AND THE WREN. A WREN that came into a mountainous region where mining was carried on, having found a deserted pit, made her nest in a hole in its side. One hot summer day an eagle lodged on the branch of a pine tree that stood near the pit, and spied the little wren coming up out of its mouth. Said the eagle:
“So you are not satisfied with getting down on to the ground? You must burrow under it to make your nest! Well, every creature finds its own proper level; but can [375]
[376] you see so far as that lofty crag on the top of yonder mountain? ”

“ The Æquivocall production of things under undiscerned principles, makes a large part of generation, though they seem to hold a wide univocacy in their set and certain Originals, while almost every plant breeds its peculiar insect, most a Butterfly, moth or fly, wherein the Oak seems to contain the largest seminality, while the Julus, Oak, apple, dill, woolly tuft, foraminous roundles upon the leaf, and grapes under ground make a Fly with some difference. ”

“ The tree-pie, or the Indian magpie as Jerdon calls him, is, to use a colloquialism, dead-nuts on a new-laid egg for his breakfast, and, as doves always display their oological productions on a shakedown in a tree, and as I defy even a museum ornithologist to discover any trace of protective colouration about the aforesaid oological treasures, we cannot be surprised if the tree-pie thinks that doves lay eggs for his especial benefit. ”

“ In other gardens I observe the blue Lobelia has done flowering, but our seedling that we raised, with bronze foliage, is as fine as it was two months ago. I cannot say the blue is so cool as the others, but the staying power of this special kind is of real importance, and the beds are most luminous. I am greatly enjoying a beautiful large blue Agapanthus in a green tub, placed on the grass near a trimmed Box tree, with a black Irish Yew for background. The scarlet Pelargoniums (must that long name be always said?) glow so hotly, they seem to want as much blue and green as we can give them. ”