WALRUS.(Trichechus rosmarus.)
WALRUS.(Trichechus rosmarus.)
An adult male Walrus measures about twelve feet from the end of his nose to that of his very short tail, or fourteen feet to the end of his hind flippers, and weighs something over a ton. His girth is as great as his length, in fact, it has been often observed that his great circumference and too-loose skin seem rather a source of annoyance than otherwise to him, especially when he tries to land on a sandy beach. Even with the wash of the breakers he is rarely able to get beyond the water line, except as the tide goes down and leaves him, dry perhaps, but yet at the mercy of men and polar bears.
Dane Coolidge.
The homing pigeon has proved that locality is a faculty fully developed in the bird’s little brain, but I heard, the other day, an instance of memory in the species that was most touching. A lady living in the top story of a Boston skyscraper had been in the habit of feeding the pigeons and sparrows who flew to the little balcony before her window, and had succeeded in taming some of her pensioners, one or two pigeons even eating out of her hand. One day, while passing along Park street, this lady was surprised to see a pigeon flutter away from some companions strutting in the middle of the road, and come upon the sidewalk, where it almost tripped her up in its efforts to attract her attention. It fluttered around her, evincing every sign of pleasure and recognition, and when she called it by name the little creature fairly flew at her! Now, in the midst of all that passing throng the pigeon knew its benefactor, who, with tears in her eyes, says its recognition gave her more joy than if the queen had saluted her. Under the circumstances, it was to her great regret that she had no crumbs to give him then and there. But who ever dreamed of being accosted in the street by a pigeon?
Our attention has been called by a traveling friend to an incident which occurred recently in the family of G. F. Marsh, a member of the Pacific Coast Pigeon Society. It certainly proved to him, and to all his friends in that region, in a most impressive manner the valuable services which may sometimes be rendered by the carrier pigeon, and probably explains some of his enthusiasm in that direction. His little baby boy was taken suddenly sick with most alarming symptoms of diphtheria.
The mother, watching by the bedside of the little one, dispatched a message tied on a carrier pigeon to her husband at his store on Market street, San Francisco. In the message she wrote the nature of the child’s alarming illness, and made an urgent appeal for medicine to save its life. The bird was started from the home of the family near the Cliff House, five miles from Mr. Marsh’s store.
The bird flew swiftly to the store, where Mr. Marsh received it. He read the message, called a doctor, explained the child’s symptoms as his wife had detailed them in her message, and received the proper medicine. Then tying the little vial containing the precious restorative to the tail of the pigeon, he let it go.
The pigeon sped away swiftly through the air straight for the Cliff. It made the distance, five miles, in ten minutes, a distance which would have required the doctor three-quarters of an hour to cover.
In twenty minutes from the time the mother’s message was sent to her husband the baby was taking the medicine.
Naturally enough Mr. Marsh is partial to pigeons, for he considers that he owes his baby’s life to one.
George Bancroft Griffith.
It was in the latter part of the month of March that we started out from Fresno for a day’s outing on the San Joaquin river, hunting for hawk and owl eggs. The day was bright and warm, and we keenly enjoyed the ride of nine miles across the plains. Out past the old, deserted Holland Colony, where stumps of vines showed that the settlers had once made an honest attempt to win their daily bread out of the hard pan. The last half of the way lay across the hog-wallow country, that peculiar effect which has puzzled many scientists, but which all attribute to the action of water in long past ages. The rolling motion of rising over and descending these mounds was like the riding of a small boat over the waves of the sea. Here and there a burrow in the top of one of the mounds, the domicile of the frisky ground-squirrel or the billy owl, gave the landscape the appearance of a dish of mush cooking, with the air bubbles swelling up, and some bursting, leaving the little holes. On across canals, past a wheat country, and then the virginal hog-wallow lands that no plowshare has ever touched, covered with a short green growth which gives nourishment to bands of sheep, dirty, and with numerous lambkins, guarded by a few sagacious shepherd dogs and lonely, and equally dirty, bearded Mexican herders.
The mounds grow higher and the hollows deeper until we wonder if they stretch on forever and if we are lost among them, when all at once we come out right on the top of a high bluff overlooking the San Joaquin. The unexpectedness is quite startling. One could not possibly have suspected a moment before that we were within miles of a great river bed more than a mile wide, with steep bluffs more than 300 feet high on either side and a swift river sweeping down its channel in the center, but here we were right on the edge of it. We can look down almost perpendicularly and see, three or four hundred feet below us, great green meadows stretching to the north and south and to the trees and thickets that edge the river. The river from this distance and height seems but a thread in its once vast bed. What a sight—what a power it must have been when once it filled all this vast bed, which often is more than a mile across from bluff to bluff. On the further side a few trees grow right on the edge of the water, and then the bluff rises abruptly even higher than on our side. Buzzards and hawks are sweeping around us in the air, and dark spots in the tops of far-off trees betoken the presence of the objects of our search, the nests of the hawks. We begin the descent, which at first seems extremely hazardous, and even on further trial sufficiently steep to make walking down more of a pleasure than riding, as we find. The road or path winds around and around, as necessarily it must unless one would go head-first to the bottom. It is narrow and steep and the ruts deeply worn in places by the action of water. About half way down we come upon what was once a canal, and we can see the level ridge of its embankment stretching away above and below us along the side of the bluff, as it curves in and out. What a vast undertaking it must have been to build this great waterway along the face of the bluff. As we near the bottom clumps of elderberry and scraggly greasewood appear, and we come upon two little white eggs of the dove, laid in a hollow in the ground—an early bird surely.
At last we are safely down in the valley and across the meadow, which is one vast bed of poppies, a field of the cloth of gold. Then we come down among the huge cottonwoods and river oaks that line the river bank and unharness ourhorse and tie him where the grazing is good and then start on our search. We first make our way down to the river’s edge and, lying flat on the sand and rocks, drink to our content of the cool water fresh from the snow of the Sierras. The river is about five hundred feet wide and varies from two hundred to a thousand at this point. It is not high now, for the spring floods come later, with the melting of the snow, and in its deepest part is not probably over eight or ten feet, but it is swift—terribly swift. It is a good swimmer that can hold his own with the current for five minutes, and in the swiftest part it is impossible for a man to make any headway. The bottom is of shifting sand and the channel is ever changing. It is a deceitful and treacherous river, though laughing and sparkling in the sun to-day. It has taken value for value for all the gold it has given up. Here and there in the deep places under the shadow of the bank we can see catfish and big carp moving lazily about. The catfish and a fish known as the river trout can be caught with a hook and line, but the carp never touches bait, but there is considerable sport in spearing them.
We pass up the stream with our eyes directed at the tree tops, but now and then at the ever-changing aspect of the river, taking in all the beauties of nature and the curious formation of the steep sides of the bluff. The face of the bluff represents excellently the different geological layers of soil and stone, here chalky, there slaty, and here gaudily daubed with all the brilliant hues of a clay formation. The cottonwood and the willows are just beginning to show green. Now and then we come upon a nest in the cottonwood trees, far out over the water. Sometimes it is an old one, but often we are convinced otherwise by the sudden departure of a screaming hawk as we throw a dead limb in that direction. Then comes the hard climb, the toilsome shin to reach the first limb, with knees and elbows hugging tightly the smooth, slippery bark, taking advantage of every little knot and twig, and then, the limb gained, up from limb to branch, up into the air, into the cooling breeze, feeling for the instant the life of the birds, up into the swaying lesser branches, up to the tip-top, where the big, rough nest of sticks is firmly placed, the nether end of a jackrabbit carcass half hanging over the edge, and numerous ears, paws and small bones along the rim, and inside four handsome, large, speckled brown eggs of the squirrel hawk. Into our little sack they go, regardless of the remonstrances of the angry hawk, which is circling around overhead, and with the sack firmly held in our teeth we descend to the ground, pack the eggs into our case and go on. Sometimes in the distance huge clumps of mistletoe on the river oaks look like nests, but nearer approach shows the difference. Mistletoe is very plentiful here. What a place for a party of girls and boys to spend Christmas. Now we come upon a bend in the river where the ground is all strewed with driftwood left by some winter freshet. There is enough to keep many families in fuel for a long time, but it lies there untouched, inaccessible, to be carried on at the next flood—on to where? Who knows the ending of the travels of a piece of driftwood that starts from the mills far up in the Sierras? The wood is washed smooth and round and into every conceivable shape. At places we pass through thickets of rose bushes, blackberry vines, and elderberry, which grow profusely all along the river. In a many-limbed willow tree, an easy climb and not a high one, we find the nest of a horned owl, with five round white eggs within. The old bird stayed on the nest until we were nearly to it and then, with a peculiar cry, scrambled over the side and fell to the ground as if shot, then arose to a neighboring branch and sat there, uttering a cry like a cat and swelling out her feathers angrily, but all in vain. Further up the river ran in close to the bluff on our side, and as the traveling was rather difficult along land that lay at an angle of only five or ten degrees from the vertical, we scrambled to the top, at times slipping, and often pulling ourselves up by the weeds, so steep it was. A misstep would have sent us rolling into the river below. In the face of the bluff squirrels had their homes, and we found the dwellings therein of two handsome big snowy owls, but they had wisely chosen them in placeswhere the five degrees of slope was in under us and a crumbling of the sand meant a straight drop of fifty or sixty feet, so we left them with “requiescat in pace.” For a quarter of a mile we followed along the top of the bluff, watching the river and the tree tops below us. Flocks of ducks were flying up and down the river, quacking vigorously. Now and then a big, ugly “shack” rose from a stump and flapped across the river. Isles big and little and middlesized were dotted in the stream, all heavily covered with underbrush, an excellent refuge for the ducks in their nesting season a little later on. A big white pelican sat on a log watching its victims in the water. The river curves and bends and doubles on itself, and never goes straight for forty yards at a time. At a bend we came upon a scene that delighted our ornithological eyes. One hundred feet below us, in the tops of a clump of cottonwoods, was a heronry. Dozens of big, basket-like nests blackened the tree tops, and perched on the very topmost branches were dozens of long-legged, crooked-necked, great blue herons. As we came upon them they started up, flapping their wings, stretching out their necks and pulling in their legs behind them. Uttering cries like those of the seagulls, they flapped off and lit away upon the plains, but within sight of us, and seemed to be holding a consultation. We could see into the most of the nests, and they were all empty. It was a little too early for the birds to begin nesting, and they were evidently mating and perhaps deciding who should have first choice. Some nests looked like old family residences of many generations, for they had several stories and additions, porticos and dormer windows, so to speak, in abundance.
We passed on, and when the valley widened out again we descended and sat down under the oaks to eat our luncheon. It soon disappeared, the last morsel, and we were on our way again. At long intervals farm houses appeared on the edge of the bluff, and in the river below one of them, on the opposite side of the stream from us, was a curious old water-wheel on a flatboat securely moored to the trees on the bank, and which laboriously and noisily jerked water up through a pipe to the bluff above. The meadows along the river are the pasturage of big herds of horses and cattle, and one is lucky if one’s perambulations are not interrupted by some inhospitable bull. As we ascend the river it grows swifter and more rocky and the top of the bluff rolls higher and higher and the hills appear in the distance. When we came to the first of these low hills we climbed the bluff and ascended it. It was a peculiar formation of stone resembling sand in softness or sand resembling stone in hardness, we could hardly determine which. It was seamed and ribbed, projecting cliff-like into the air, with boulders lying about and with caverns and precipitous sides. As we scaled to the top of it we scared away a number of turkey buzzards that had been watching our ascent, and it was evidently their nesting place, as we discovered traces of old nests and a good many bones of the hapless denizens of the plains. We started several of the big boulders at the edge rolling and plunging down, and, though most of them broke up in their downward career, they stopped only when, after a great plunge, they settled in the bed of the river. Sometimes as they thundered down they would startle a rabbit from his repose, and off he would scamper in great affright. But it was getting near sundown and we were miles from our wagon, and even when we reached that we would be ten miles from home, so we set out on our return with spirits not lacking, but appetites sorely pressing. The miles of climbing up hill and down hill in the pure air had done us more good than months in a gymnasium, and when, long after dark, we reached our home in Fresno town, what a supper we did eat.
Charles Elmer Jenney.
BENGAL TIGER.(Felis tigris.)
BENGAL TIGER.(Felis tigris.)
The Bengal Tiger (Felis tigris) inhabits the hotter regions of Southern Asia, but the species is found with certain color variations throughout the lower levels of all Asia from Siberia to the River Euphrates and as far south as Sumatra and Java. Next to the lion it is the strongest and most ferocious of carnivorous animals, and, on account of the heavily wooded country in which it lives being densely populated, the Tiger is even more destructive of human life. In Bengal alone three hundred and forty-seven persons were reported killed by Tigers in a single year, and this in spite of the best efforts of the government and people to mitigate the evil by poisoning, hunting and trapping.
Mr. William T. Hornaday, who hunted Tigers on his collecting trip in India, says in his book, “Two Years in the Jungle,” that only a limited number of Tigers, and those of the old and decrepit sort, ever kill men at all, but once they have tasted human flesh they continue to kill until some hunter reciprocates and brings peace again to the ravaged district. According to their habits in procuring food the people of India divide Tigers into three classes—the “game killer,” the “cattle lifter” and the “man killer.” The “game killer” lives in the dense forest, catches his own deer and wild hogs and is very self-respecting and honest, for a Tiger. The “cattle lifter” is a fat and lazy cat, who hangs around villages and kills a steer from the herds whenever he is hungry. Dragging away the carcass he returns to it until it is all eaten, when he kills again, while the timid and defenseless natives flee in terror or hover about, unable to protect their herds. It is after these fat “cattle lifters” get old and mangy that they turn “man eater,” finding it easier to catch the herdsman than to drag off a bullock. Then after the first taste they haunt the paths and villages, pouncing upon men, women and children until there is no safety, except within doors, until some hunter has slain the foe.
Among the English of India Tiger hunting is a favorite sport. A most picturesque and safe way is to mount on an Elephant and be driven about through the country beating up the Tigers from cover and shooting them with the huge four-bore rifles which the English sportsmen affect. The principal danger lies in the stampeding of the elephant or the attack of a wounded Tiger on the elephant himself. The more common way is to build a shooting platform by some water hole or carcass and lie in wait for the Tiger, or, better yet, have a small army of beaters drive him from his lair and past the spot where the platform has been erected.
Sometimes men who like to take chances follow the Tigers on foot and shoot them where they find them, which is often coming straight through the air. A glance at the illustration will show what powerful forearms and shoulders the tiger has. One blow from that paw will break a bullock’s back, and a wounded Tiger is more dangerous than one unhurt. Unless the brain is reached or the spinal column broken a Tiger will not stop in his charge, and the most active man can hardly avoid his clutches.
An adult Bengal Tiger measures ten feet from tip to tip, stands over three and a half feet in height and weighs five hundred pounds. If we consider the strength, activity and ferocity of the ordinary house cat and then think of it multiplied a hundred times we can form some conception of the Bengal Tiger as he lies down by his water hole and wonders what he will kill next.
In color the Tiger matches the foliage of his native jungles. When lying in grass or even upon the ground the dark markings and rufous fawn colors of his body blend almost perfectly with his surroundings, and it has often happenedthat his presence was only guessed by the thrashing of his nervous tail in the grass as he gathered for a leap. Grassy plains and swamps are his favorite abiding places, and he does not hesitate to swim from island to island in search of prey. Curiously, again, for a cat, the Tiger does not climb trees except when forced to do so by floods.
The Tigress gives birth to from two to six cubs and is most affectionate toward them and aggressive toward intruders while she has them in charge. As soon as they can eat she begins to kill for them, and teaches them by a thousand cruel tricks to imitate her example. Not until they are nearly grown and able to kill for themselves does she separate herself and leave them to shift for themselves. Young Tigers are far more destructive than old, killing three or four cattle and eating one, as if they wished to learn their duties in life well or were mad with the rage to kill.
Dane Coolidge.
With bars of beaten brass and amethyst,Evening hath shut the crimson sun withinA pasturage, where fleecy cloud-flocks winUncertain nurture from pelagian mist,The singing of a feathered rhapsodistSounds from the darkening wood: O Night begin!Bright pageant of the stars, come, usher inThe hour when Peace, a potent exorcist,Casts out the turbulence and fret of day.Now as the last faint bird notes die away,And sunset’s glory fades from out the west,Cometh an angel and his name is Rest.On white dream wings I soar away with him,Farewell, O Earth; farewell, O twilight dim!Mary Grant O’Sheridan.
With bars of beaten brass and amethyst,
Evening hath shut the crimson sun within
A pasturage, where fleecy cloud-flocks win
Uncertain nurture from pelagian mist,
The singing of a feathered rhapsodist
Sounds from the darkening wood: O Night begin!
Bright pageant of the stars, come, usher in
The hour when Peace, a potent exorcist,
Casts out the turbulence and fret of day.
Now as the last faint bird notes die away,
And sunset’s glory fades from out the west,
Cometh an angel and his name is Rest.
On white dream wings I soar away with him,
Farewell, O Earth; farewell, O twilight dim!
Mary Grant O’Sheridan.
Birds and Nature