Birds and all Nature, Vol. VII, No. 4, April 1900

THE MASSENA QUAIL

(Cyrtonyx Massena.)

THIS beautiful species is said to be by far the most gentle and unsuspicious of our quails, and will permit a very close approach by man, showing little or no fear of what most animals know so well to be their most deadly enemy. While feeding they keep close together, and constantly utter a soft clucking note, as though talking to one another.

This species is about the size of the eastern variety. Its head is ornamented with a beautifully full, soft occipital crest. The head of the male is singularly striped with black and white. The female is smaller and is quite different in color, but may be recognized by the generic characters. The tail is short and full, and the claws very large.

The quail makes a simple nest on the ground, under the edge of some old log, or in the thick grass on the prairie, lined with soft and well-dried grass and a few feathers. From fifteen to twenty-four white eggs are laid. The female sits three weeks. The young brood, as soon as they are fairly out of the shell, leave the nest and seem abundantly strong to follow the parent, though they are no bigger than the end of one's thumb – covered with down. The massena quail is an inhabitant of the western and southwestern states.

IN THE OLD LOG HOUSE

BY BERTHA SEAVEY SAUNIER

THE big orchard on the Triggs place was also the old orchard. Grandpa Triggs had planted it long ago in his young days when the country was new. The year before he had hauled logs from yonder forest with his ox-team and built the strong little house that still stands at the foot of the orchard.

He brought young crab trees, too, and set them all about the house and though, after the orchard was started, he often threatened to cut them down, he never did it and they grew into a tangle of friendship and protection until the little one-roomed house was nearly hidden.

The house was desolate now. The catbirds built their nests in the crotches of the crabs and the jays came over from the woods across the river and quarreled with them. An old zigzag rail fence separated the orchard from the hay-field at one end and a tall uncared-for osage hedge did scant duty at two sides. Once in a great while a sheep would leave the aftermath and step through the wide spaces of the hedge and, entering the doorless house, would walk curiously about and then return. But that was all – no, not quite all. The children built fires in the great fireplace and roasted potatoes or experimented at cooking carrots, artichokes, apples and occasionally a pair of kidneys rolled each in several thicknesses of brown paper and slowly cooked under the hot ashes and coals. To be sure, the smoke came out into the room and got into the children's eyes and passed out at the door – for the chimney had crumbled to half its old time height – but the playtimes went on in spite of that and the birds shouted and sang outside.

One would expect that all this activity above board to be happily interested without looking for new and startling circumstances under ground. But, withal, life went on among the "underground lights," with its busy unconcern of affairs which it could not share or even comprehend. Rarely when the fire warmed the bricks about the fireplace did comely, plump Mrs. Acre Tidae fail to raise her song. She had a way of building a home had Mrs. House Cricket. She tossed out a few grains of earth from under the brick tiling of the hearth and presto! she entered in backward and sat down waving her long slender antennæ with a happy content that would shame many a one who, having more, is not satisfied. Mr. Field Cricket, who happens also to be named Acre Tidae, had built his home at the edge of the path in the sandy loam just without the door. Two bodies of the same name and family would be expected to live in the same house, but they couldn't quite come to do that on account of tastes. For one thing they differed in the matter of dress, though that was the least objection one to the other. Mrs. House Cricket wore a grayish yellow dress, marked a little with brown and Mr. Field Cricket wore darker colors. He built his home deeper, too, which would never suit Mrs. Acre Tidae at all. Sometimes his home is twelve inches deep, and six it is sure to be. And then, big fellow that he is, quite a bit larger than she, he does not mind the cold. He snuggles down in the deep darkness as soon as he sees the dew frozen in the tiny crystals all over the long grass blades, and sleeps the time away, however long and cold the winter may be; and such a life is scorned by bright Mrs. House Cricket, who chooses the hearth on account of the warmth and who chirps joyfully throughout the year, except when the fire goes out, as it often does in the little old log house; for there were days and days when the children did not come to play. At such times Mrs. House Cricket was forced unwillingly to fall asleep. "Shameful!" she would mutter, as the last flicker of feeling departed. "Such a waste of time. If I had built in a bakery or by a brick oven how much busier I might be – and happier. I'm no better than those cousins of mine who make it a business to sleep half the year around." These last words were so soft as she scraped them off on the ridges of her wing covers that the children, who were just going home, stopped and Linsey said, "Do hear the cricket – it says, 'Good night; good night.'"

"By-by, Crick!" called Harry, as he leaped through the hedge and ran to the brook to stamp on the thin ice with his heel. "I shall move out," moaned Mrs. Cricket with her faintest note. But moving day did not arrive for many weeks and Mrs. Cricket awoke and went to sleep as many times; and finally the long hot days found her contentedly basking in the field among the warm grasses, having forgotten the troubles of the winter. "Dear me," she was softly drumming with her wing covers as she stopped in her evening search for food. "Dear, dear! how that big cousin of mine does scream! Perhaps he calls it music, but I don't."

She crept along slowly and hid in a fold of rain-worn paper near the home of her much criticized relative. He was sitting in his doorway singing his evening song as loud as he could, for he was singing with a purpose. The source of his music lay within his wing covers. Nearly one hundred and thirty fine ridges were on the under side of one wing cover (which is hard and horny), and these are hastily scraped over a smooth nervure which projects from the under side of the other wing cover. And that is how he sings. His song is bound to be a love-song and Mrs. House Cricket finding a few crumbs within the paper and deciding to stay all night suddenly heard the loud, harsh tones softened and, looking out, she saw her big cousin standing close to another dark form like his own. He was crooning softly as he caressed her with his slender, delicate antennæ – his mate, whom he had won to himself with his song. Mrs. House Cricket looked on for a moment and changed her mind about staying all night. "I'll creep under a leaf," she said, "and leave the lovers to themselves." So she slipped away and saw them no more until, some weeks later, she passed and, seeing her cousin in his door, stopped:

"I have all my eggs laid," she said, "and I'm going up toward the big house to stay until the weather gets cold."

"Mrs. Field Cricket has two hundred eggs right here under this long grass," he answered with great pride. "She is welcome," returned his cousin; "for my part I prefer quality to quantity." And she turned away to take a peep at the nursery which was warmed and nourished only by the sun.

"They will soon hatch out and dig homes each for himself like my own little ones," she said as she left them and began her long journey toward the farmhouse. "But mine will be wise enough to get near to a barn or house when they are grown up," she mused, "so that they need not sleep all winter, and they can be busy and useful to the world – busy, useful, cheerful, hopeful." She stopped to say one or the other of these good words often as she traveled on and sometimes she said them all at one time, as she pruned her wings which when folded, extended beyond her body into long, slender filaments like the antennæ.

At length, just as the maple leaves, all brown and dry, were blowing into heaps against the rosebushes and the lilacs, Mrs. Acre Tidae reached the farmhouse and slipped unobserved into the warm, clean kitchen.

She found a wide crack in the floor near the big chimney and squeezed in, digging it out to suit her body.

"The babies are all safe in their little holes by this time," she said, "safe for the winter. Perhaps by next fall they will be with me and we will all go out at night to eat crumbs," and she began singing, "Useful, cheerful – busy, hopeful." "Do hear the cricket," said Linsey, "It sounds like the one in the old log house."

"They are all alike, I guess," returned Harry, who was eating apples. "They are always jolly sad, I reckon." "Use-ful, cheer-ful, hope-ful," sang Mrs. Cricket.

ANIMALS AS PATIENTS

M. LEPINAY, the presiding genius of the bird hospital in Paris, has found by experience that his feathered patients chiefly exhibit a tendency toward apoplexy – the dove is particularly addicted to this complaint; consumption follows in order of unpopularity, with internal complaints occupying the third place. In the case of apoplexy, blood-letting – so popular a remedy in the days of our great-grandparents – is resorted to by means of a diminutive lancet inserted in a fleshy portion of the bird, and this is followed by small doses of such drugs as quinine, bromide of camphor, etc.

Apropos of dog's teeth, about a year ago there was exhibited at a certain show a very interesting and aged schipperke, who was at that time the only dog in the world boasting a complete set of false teeth. His owner, Mr. Moseley, is a dentist as well as a lover of animals, and it is entirely due to his skill that the little dog is able to eat with perfect comfort by the aid of the artificial molars provided for him by his master, who, on another occasion, provided a dog who had lost a limb in an accident with an artificial leg. The only horse possessing a full set of false teeth was the property of Mr. Henry Lloyd of Louisville, Ky., who had its diseased teeth extracted and replaced by a set of false ones.

A swan that had had a leg run over by a cart-wheel, causing a compound fracture, was recently successfully treated at Otley, England, while yet another swan had an operation performed at Darlington some little time ago that was very much out of the ordinary. In this instance, the unlucky bird had the principal bone in its right wing fractured in several places, the fracture presumably being caused by a brutal blow dealt by some unknown ruffian. A veterinary surgeon was asked to give his advice, and on his recommendation an amputation was decided upon, and this he successfully performed. The bird, sans a wing, was, when last heard of, well on the road to recovery.

THE TRIPLET TREE

CHARLES COKE WOODS, PH.D

MATTER per se is an evidence of mind. Every material thing enshrines a thought. Essential nature has no superfluities. To the thinker everything means something. In nature nothing happens. Everything is ordered. There can be no portrait of a landscape without a painter. There can be no landscape without a maker.

The visible forms that nature takes may be changed. Her invisible forms are changeless. The search for the changeless is the great and delightful task of art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. The ultimate in nature and in art is divine. The permanent principle survives the fleeting form. Nature's principles are relatively few. Her forms are multifarious. Tree life is true life. It is natural. It is therefore true. Nature's garb may be odd. It may even be deformed. But her inner self is never false. Sap, fiber, leaf, blossom, fruit; this is nature's apocalypse. It is Queen Beauty's progressive revelation.

Trees usually grow singly. Under certain conditions they may as naturally grow otherwise. The unusual is not necessarily the unnatural. Nature's resources are vast. She may at any time manifest herself in an unfamiliar form.

A triplet tree grows on what is known as "Green's Ranch" in Cowley County, Kansas. The ranch is located five miles northeast of Arkansas City. The trees are about three hundred yards from the west bank of the Walnut River. They range in a line running north and south. They are between forty-five and fifty feet high. The first two on the north are eighteen inches apart. The third tree standing at the south end of the row is fifteen feet from the middle one. They are water elms, and average about three and one-half feet in girth. The tree standing at the north end of the row is hollow at the base and, leaning over southward intersects the central tree two feet from the ground; thence it extends to the one at the south end of the row, and intersects it with a limb from either side twelve feet above the ground. The segment of the circle described by the leaning tree is about twenty feet. At the points where the cross tree intersects the other two, it is not merely a case of contiguity, but of actual identification.

Another feature of the leaning tree is that half way between its base and the trunk of the second, and on the lower side is an unsightly knot about as large as a half bushel measure. Half way between the center tree and the one on the south, and on the under side of the leaning tree is another lump similar to the first, about half the size. These unsightly warts appear to have been produced by a congestion of sap in the tissue of the intersecting tree. This triplet tree is a curiosity. It presents a strange phenomenon in tree formation. But nature is everywhere full of mystery and surprises.