LESSON XXII.

THE MARVEL IN MAIL.

“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,The vapors weep their burden to the ground,Man comes and tills the fields and lies beneath,And after many a summer dies the swan,Us only cruel immortality consumes.”

“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapors weep their burden to the ground,

Man comes and tills the fields and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan,

Us only cruel immortality consumes.”

—Tennyson.

The first five lessons in this Nature Reader, No. 4, were devoted to a description of some of the prominent facts of the periods during which our globe was built up from an immense sphere of fiery gas, to the compact and inhabited earth which we know to-day.

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.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.

After our brief glance at the solar system, we have learned, by means of fossils hidden in the rocks, something of the wonderful progress of life through all the earth-building ages. As we have traced this slow ascent of life from its far-off, simple beginning, we have found that the first home of life was the ocean. 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.

After the survey of some of the vanished fauna that peopled the earth in past epochs, the next step suggested is to make acquaintance with yet remaining animal life, such as is more nearly related to extinct species than to any other surviving families. There are even now animals more or less common, that have altered little in the slow lapse of ages, and have their nearest affinities with fossiltypes. Such an one we have found in that most venerable of crustaceans, the limulus, or king crab!

Coming into creation some thousands or even some hundreds of thousands of years later than the crustaceans, the reptiles have left one of their early representatives, a conservative which has adapted itself to no new fashions, accommodated itself to no living species, but maintained its integrity as a near relation of a family of fossil lizards, whose remains are found in England near Warwick, in Scotland at Elgin, in Central India, and in South Africa, indicating that in their palmy days they were citizens of the world, widely spread, numerous, and nicely adjusted to the conditions of their age. This scion of a most ancient family whom we now introduce, claiming for it the regard due to long lineage, is named the sphenodon, or hatteria.

At present the hatteria holds aloof from general society, and unless forced to exhibit in zoological gardens, confines itself to a very limited haunt in New Zealand. In New Zealand a score or two of years ago, the hatteria crawled about with the slowness proper to long years and high dignity, and enjoyed a numerous family and a comfortable independence. Behold him, then, honorably divested of foolish pride in his pedigree, but carefully adhering to all the manners and traditions of his venerable line.

What a wonder is this, that a frail and short-lived creature should have maintained itself unaltered, generation after generation, while, with mighty convulsions the face of nature has changed, and changed, and changed again; the whole surface of the globe undergoing transformations which left unaffected this one little reptile.

The hatteria belongs to the lizard-like reptiles with tails and scales; is possessed of four legs, the front pair being hand-like in structure. The creature suggests to us some venerable grandparent who has divided a large part of his patrimony among numerous descendants and collaterals; for the other four orders of reptiles all share some of the characteristics of the hatteria, as if it had divided its traits among them. We might write them thus:—

So there is the hatteria, or sphenodon, a link between the new and the old. To explain all the points of likeness and difference would be to write an elaborate treatise on comparative osteology, or the science of skeletons.

While passing over in silence the matter of the bones, we can note a few plain points of likeness between the sphenodon and other reptiles. When the tail or any part of the tail is broken it is renewed as the crustaceans renew a leg or claw;[50]this power it holds in common with some of the lizards, which have very brittle tails. The vertebræ of the tail are made in two portions, and the line of junction in each vertebra is the weakest part; so if the tail is broken it is broken on this line, and not between two vertebræ; and on this line it is renewed. The famous philosopher, Aristotle, and that other famous ancient student of nature, Pliny, seem to have been much impressed with this ability to renew broken tails.

The skull of the hatteria is more like that of a crocodile than like that of any other reptile; but on the other hand its legs are like those of the lizard, so that a description of the bones of the leg and foot of a lizard, would answer almost equally well for a sphenodon. The hatteria has nine more vertebræ in its tail than in all the rest of its body and its head together; and to aid it in its motions while impeded by this long tail, it has some especial muscles, such as are very prominently developed in the serpent family. As the hatteria grows old its teeth wear down to a simple cutting edge, as do those of snakes.

The New Zealand native name for the hatteria is rather pretty—tuatera. Strangely enough the Maoris of New Zealand have a superstitious horror of the creature, and turn pale and shiver with abject fear if they merely see one. Does the tuatera merit their aversion? Not at all. It is not handsome, some call it exceedingly unpleasing in appearance, but no creature is so absolutely harmless. It is without weapons of offence or defence, and without energy to use such weapons if it possessed them.

The hatteria, or tuatera, now lives in only one place in the world, and that place is a small rocky islet called Karenha, in the Bay of Plenty, in New Zealand. Formerly, the creature was abundant all along the rocky coasts of New Zealand, living in crevices of the rock, or in little burrows dug by itself. The settlers in New Zealand took a fancy to the hatteria as an article of food, and the hogs which the settlers brought with them, shared the taste of their masters, so that between men and swine, the poor creatures have nearly becomeextinct. Their sole chance of maintaining existence is to confine themselves strictly to Karenha, where not a shrub, nor blade of grass, nor lichen grows, and where not a fresh-water spring is known.

On this desolate island the hatterias lie, clinging to the bare rock, absolutely quiet, apparently unconscious, and alike indifferent to the whipping of sharp, cold spray driven by a strong wind, and to the fierce beating of the sun.

The hatteria is from eight to twenty inches long, is of a bronze or olive-green color, spotted with yellow above, and fading into greyish white below. Down the back and along the tail, are sharp spines or bristles in a ridge or crest, which the creature can erect at will. Its eyes are golden, and instead of the vivid quickness of the jewel-like eyes of many lizards, these organs in the hatteria have the dull stare of glass eyes. Also, instead of the flash-like motions of many lizards, the hatteria is the slowest of living things. Hour after hour, day after day, it will lie like an animal fashioned of wax, desiring neither food nor drink, and seeming to need almost no air.

Often people stand for a long time before the glass case of the hatterias in the London Zoological Gardens, and from the absolute quiet of the creatures, conclude that they are stuffed. But finally they see the head turning, or the body sliding forward, with an almost imperceptible motion, slow as that of the minute hand of a clock. Or, looking a little closer, the motion of the heart may be recognized by the slow palpitating of the loose skin near the forearm.

The hatteria seems as contented when kept in a glasscase, as when extended on its native rocks. One wonders how a creature can possess so few of the evidences and the needs of life. It makes no noise, shows neither fear, hope, affection, nor anxiety; one might think that the accumulated age of all its long race had invaded its cold veins, and that it was verging on petrifaction.

The hatteria in one single small specimen is the sole living representative of the genus, family, and order to which it belongs. Its fossil relatives partook of characteristics now scattered among members of different classes. One of them approached the birds, in having no teeth and a beak-like projection of the jaws; others were like fish, in having teeth set not only in their jaws, but also, as some fish do, “in the velvet,”[51]namely, all down the sides of the throat.

The great value of the hatteria now, is the light which it throws on obscure points in the structure of its fossil relatives. Helpless and inert, it seems to belong rather to past ages and to the dead, than to to-day and the living.

FOOTNOTES:[50]Nature Reader, No. 1, Lessons 1-6.[51]Nature Reader, No. 3, Lesson 45.

[50]Nature Reader, No. 1, Lessons 1-6.

[51]Nature Reader, No. 3, Lesson 45.

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