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BIRDS AND ALL NATURE.

ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.

Page

SOME ANIMAL PROPENSITIES. 81

THE PETRIFIED FERN. 83

WATER AND ANIMALS. 84

THE HERRING GULL. 87

USEFUL BIRDS OF PREY. 88

THE RACCOON. 91

WILD BIRDS IN LONDON. 92

THE PIGMY ANTELOPE. 95

BIRDS OF ALASKA. 95

THE RED-SHOULDERED HAWK 96

THE DOVES OF VENICE. 100

BUTTERFLIES. 102

MISCELLANY. 109

THE GRAY SQUIRREL. 110

AH ME! 113

THE PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 114

EYES. 117

THE HUNTED SQUIRREL. 119

SUMMARY. 120

SOME ANIMAL PROPENSITIES.

It is not quite agreeable to contemplate many of the shortcomings, from a moral point of view, of certain of the animal creation, and even less to be compelled to recognize the necessity of them. Thievery in nature is widely extended, and food is the excuse for it. Civilization has made the practice of the humanities possible among men, but the lower animals will doubtless remain, as they have ever been, wholly subject to the instincts with which nature originally endowed them.

Huber relates an anecdote of some Hive-bees paying a visit to a nest of Bumble-bees, placed in a box not far from their hive, in order to steal or beg the honey. The Hive-bees, after pillaging, had taken almost entire possession of the nest. Some Bumble-bees, which remained, went out to collect provisions, and bringing home the surplus after they had supplied their own immediate wants, the Hive-bees followed them and did not quit them until they had obtained the fruit of their labors. They licked them, presented to them their probosces, surrounded them, and thus at last persuaded them to part with the contents of their "honey-bags." The Bumble-bees did not seem to harm or sting them, hence it would seem to have been persuasion rather than force that produced this instance of self-denial. But it was systematic robbery, and was persisted in until the Wasps were attracted by the same cause, when the Bumble-bees entirely forsook the nest.

Birds, notwithstanding their attractiveness in plumage and sweetness in song, are many of them great thieves. They are neither fair nor generous towards each other. When nest-building they will steal the feathers out of the nests of other birds, and frequently drive off other birds from a feeding ground even when there is abundance. This is especially true of the Robin, who will peck and run after and drive away birds much larger than himself. In this respect the Robin and Sparrow resemble each other. Both will drive away a Blackbird and carry away the worm it has made great efforts to extract from the soil.

Readers of Frank Buckland's delightful books will remember his pet Rat, which not infrequently terrified his visitors at breakfast. He had made a house for the pet just by the side of the mantel-piece, and this was approached by a kind of ladder, up which the Rat had to climb when he had ventured down to the floor. Some kinds of fish the Rat particularly liked, and was sure to come out if the savor was strong. One day Mr. Buckland turned his back to give the Rat a chance of seizing the coveted morsel, which he was not long in doing and in running up the ladder with it; but he had fixed it by the middle of the back, and the door of the entrance was too narrow to admit of its being drawn in thus. But the Rat was equal to the emergency. In a moment he bethought himself, laid the fish on the small platform before the door, and then entering his house he put out his mouth, took the fish by the nose and thus pulled it in and made a meal of it.

That nature goes her own way is illustrated by these anecdotes of birds and animals, and by many others even more strange and convincing. The struggle for existence, like the brook, goes on forever, and the survival, if not of the fittest, at least of the strongest, must continue to be the rule of life, so long as the economical problems of existence remain unsolved. Man and beast must be fed. "Manna," to some extent, will always be provided by generous humanitarianism. There will always be John Howards. Occasionally a disinterested, self-abnegating soul like that of John Woolman will appear among us--doing good from love; and, it may be, men like Jonathan Chapman--Johnny Appleseed, he was called from his habit of planting apple seeds whereever he went, as he distributed tracts among the frontier settlers in the early days of western history. He would not harm even a Snake. His heart was right, though his judgment was little better than that of many modern sentimentalists who cannot apparently distinguish the innocuous from the venemous.

It does seem that birds and animals are warranted in committing every act of vandalism that they are accused of. They are unquestionably entitled by every natural right to everything of which they take possession. The farmer has no moral right to deny them a share in the product of his fields and orchards; the gardener is their debtor , and the government, which benefits also from their industry, should give them its protection.--C. C. M.

THE PETRIFIED FERN.

In a valley, centuries ago, Grew a little fernleaf, green and slender, Veining delicate and fibres tender, Waving when the wind crept down so low; Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it; Playful sunbeams darted in and found it, Drops of dew stole in by night and crowned it; But no foot of man e'er came that way, Earth was young and keeping holiday.

Monster fishes swam the silent main-- Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches, Giant forests shook their stately branches, Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain; Nature reveled in wild mysteries, But the little fern was not of these, Did not number with the hills and trees, Only grew and waved its sweet wild way-- No one came to note it day by day.

Earth one day put on a frolic mood, Moved the hills and changed the mighty motion Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean, Heaved the rocks, and shook the haughty wood, Crushed the little fern in soft moist clay, Covered it and hid it safe away. Oh, the long, long centuries since that day! Oh, the agony, Oh, life's bitter cost Since that useless little fern was lost!

Useless? Dost? There came a thoughtful man Searching Nature's secrets far and deep; From a fissure in a rocky steep He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, Veining, leafage, fibres, clear and fine, And the fern's life lay in every line. So, methinks, God hides some souls away, Sweetly to surprise us some sweet day.

--ANON.

WATER AND ANIMALS.

To show the importance of water to animal life, we give the opinions of several travelers and scientific men who have studied the question thoroughly.

The Camel, with his pouch for storing water, can go longer without drink than other animals. He doesn't do it from choice, any more than you in a desert would prefer to drink the water that you have carried with you, if you might choose between that and fresh spring water. Major A. G. Leonard, an English transport officer, claims that Camels "should be watered every day, that they can not be trained to do without water, and that, though they can retain one and a half gallons of water in the cells of the stomach, four or five days' abstinence is as much as they can stand, in heat and with dry food, without permanent injury."

Another distinguished English traveler, a Mr. Bryden, has observed that the beasts and birds of the deserts must have private stores of water of which we know nothing. Mr. Bryden, however, has seen the Sand-Grouse of South America on their flight to drink at a desert pool. "The watering process is gone through with perfect order and without overcrowding"--a hint to young people who are hungry and thirsty at their meals. "From eight o'clock to close on ten this wonderful flight continued; as birds drank and departed, others were constantly arriving to take their places. I should judge that the average time spent by each bird at and around the water was half an hour."

THE HERRING GULL.

Just how many species of Gulls there are has not yet been determined, but the habits and locations of about twenty-six species have been described. The American Herring Gull is foundt horizons. The Upper Coal-Measures, as a rule, have been lost by denudation, much of which occurred before Triassic times. South of the line between Galway and Dublin the coal is anthracitic, while north of this line it is bituminous. The northern coalfields are the L. Carboniferous one at Ballycastle, the high outliers of Millstone Grit and Coal-Measures round Lough Allen, and the Dungannon and Coalisland field in county Tyrone. The last named is in part concealed by Triassic strata. The only important occurrences of coal in the south are in eastern Tipperary, near Killenaule, and in the Leinster coalfield , where there is a high synclinal field, including Lower and Middle Coal-Measures, and resembling in structure the Forest of Dean area in England.

The "Hercynian" earth-movements, which so profoundly affected north-west and north-central Europe at the close of Carboniferous times, gave rise to a series of east and west folds in the Irish region. The Upper Carboniferous beds were thus lifted within easy reach of denuding forces, while the Old Red Sandstone, and the underlying "Caledonian" land-surface, were brought up from below in the cores of domes and anticlines. In the south, even the Carboniferous Limestone has been so far removed that it is found only in the floors of the synclinals. The effect of the structure of these folds on the courses of rivers in the south of Ireland is discussed in the paragraphs dealing with the geology of county Cork. The present central plain itself may be regarded as a vast shallow synclinal, including a multitude of smaller folds. The earth-wrinkles of this epoch were turned into a north-easterly direction by the pre-existing Leinster Chain, and the trend of the anticlinal from Limerick to the Slieve Bloom Mountains, and that of the synclinal of Millstone Grit and Coal-Measures from Cashel through the Leinster coalfield, bear witness to the resistance of this granite mass. The Triassic beds rest on the various Carboniferous series in turn, indicating, as in England, the amount of denudation that followed on the uplift of the Hercynian land. Little encouragement can therefore be given in Ireland to the popular belief in vast hidden coalfields.

The Permian sea has left traces at Holywood on Belfast Lough and near Stewartstown in county Tyrone. Certain conglomeratic beds on which Armagh is built are also believed to be of Permian age. The Triassic sandstones and marls, with marine Rhaetic beds above, are preserved mainly round the basaltic plateaus of the north-east, and extend for some distance into county Down. An elongated outlier south of Carrickmacross indicates their former presence over a much wider area. Rock-salt occurs in these beds north of Carrickfergus.

The Jurassic system is represented in Ireland by the Lower Lias alone, and it is probable that no marine beds higher than the Upper Lias were deposited during this period. From Permian times onward, in fact, the Irish area lay on the western margin of the seas that played so large a part in determining the geology of Europe. The Lower Lias appears at intervals under the scarp of the basaltic plateaus, and contributes, as in Dorsetshire and Devonshire, to the formation of landslips along the coast. The alteration of the fossiliferous Lias by dolerite at Portrush into a flinty rock that looked like basalt served at one time as a prop for the "Neptunist" theory of the origin of igneous rocks. Denudation, consequent on the renewed uplift of the country, affected the Jurassic beds until the middle of Cretaceous times. The sea then returned, in the north-east at any rate, and the first Cretaceous deposits indicate the nearness of a shore-line. Dark "green-sands," very rich in glauconite, are followed by yellow sandstones with some flint. These two stages represent the Upper Greensand, or the sandy type of the English Gault. Further sands represent the Cenomanian. The Turonian is also sandy, but in most areas was not deposited, or has been denuded away during a local uplift that preceded Senonian times. The Senonian limestone itself, which rests in the extreme north on Trias or even on the schists, is often conglomeratic and glauconitic at the base, the pebbles being worn from the old metamorphic series. The term "Hibernian Greensand" was used by Tate for all the beds below the Senonian; the quarrymen know the conglomeratic Senonian as "Mulatto-stone." The Senonian chalk, or "White Limestone," is hard, with numerous bands of flint, and suffered from denudation in early Eocene times. Probably its original thickness was not more than 150 ft., while now only from 40 to 100 ft. remain. This chalk appears to underlie nearly the whole basaltic plateaus, appearing as a fringe round them, and also in an inlier at Templepatrick. The western limit was probably found in the edge of the old continental land in Donegal. Chalk flints occur frequently in the surface-deposits of the south of Ireland, associated with rocks brought from the north during the glacial epoch, and probably also of northern origin. It is just possible, however, that here and there the Cretaceous sea that spread over Devonshire may have penetrated the Irish area.

After the Irish chalk had been worn into rolling downs, on which flint-gravels gathered, the great epoch of volcanic activity opened, which was destined to change the character of the whole north-west European area. The critical time had arrived when the sea was to be driven away eastward, while the immense ridges due to the "Alpine" movements were about to emerge as the backbones of new continental lands. Fissure after fissure, running with remarkable constancy N.W. and S.E., broke through the region now occupied by the British Isles, and basalt was pressed up along these cracks, forming thousands of dikes, from the coast of Down to the Dalradian ridges of Donegal. One of these on the north side of Lough Erne is 15 m. long. The more deep-seated type of these rocks is seen in the olivine-gabbro mass of Carlingford Mountain; but most of the igneous region became covered with sheets of basaltic lava, which filled up the hollows of the downs, baked the gravels into a layer of red flints, and built up, pile upon pile, the great plateaus of the north. There was little explosive action, and few of the volcanic vents can now be traced. After a time, a quiet interval allowed of the formation of lakes, in which red iron-ores were laid down. The plant-remains associated with these beds form the only clue to the post-Cretaceous period in which the volcanic epoch opened, and they have been placed by Mr Starkie Gardner in recent years as early Eocene. During this time of comparative rest, rhyolites were extruded locally in county Antrim; and there is very strong evidence that the granite of the Mourne Mountains, and that which cuts the Carlingford gabbro, were added at the same time to the crust. The basalt again broke out, through dikes that cut even the Mourne granite, and some of the best-known columnar masses of lava overlie the red deposits of iron-ore and mark this second basaltic epoch. The volcanic plateaus clearly at one time extended far west and south of their present limits, and the denudation of the lava-flows has allowed a large area of Mesozoic strata also to disappear.

Volcanic activity may have extended into Miocene times; but the only fossiliferous relics of Cainozoic periods later than the Eocene are the pale clays and silicified lignites on the south shore of Lough Neagh, and the shelly gravels of pre-glacial age in county Wexford. Both these deposits may be Pliocene. Probably before this period the movements of subsidence had set in which faulted the basalt plateaus, lowered them to form the basin of Lough Neagh, and broke up the continuity of the volcanic land of the North Atlantic area. As the Atlantic spread into the valleys on the west of Ireland, forming the well-known marine inlets, Europe grew, under the influence of the "Alpine" movements, upon the east; and Ireland was caught in, as it were, on the western edge of the new continent. It seems likely that it was separated from the British region shortly before the glacial epoch, and that some of the ice which then abutted on the country travelled across shallow seas. The glacial deposits profoundly modified the surface of the country, whether they resulted from the melting of the ice-sheets of the time of maximum glaciation, or from the movements of local glaciers. Boulder-clays and sands, and gravels rearranged by water, occur throughout the lowlands; while the eskers or "green hills," characteristic grass-covered ridges of gravel, rise from the great plain, or run athwart valleys and over hill-sides, marking the courses of sub-glacial streams. When the superficial deposits are removed, the underlying rocks are found to be scored and smoothed by ice-action, and whole mountain-sides in the south and west have been similarly moulded during the Glacial epoch. In numerous cases, lakelets have gathered under rocky cirques behind the terminal moraines of the last surviving glaciers.

There is no doubt that at this epoch various movements of elevation and subsidence affected the north-west of Europe, and modern Ireland may have had extensions into warmer regions on the west and south, while the area now left to us was almost buried under ice. In post-Glacial times, a subsidence admitted the sea into the Lagan valley and across the eastern shore in several places; but elevation, in the days of early human occupation, brought these last marine deposits to light, and raised the beaches and shore-terraces some 10 to 20 ft. along the coast. At Larne, Greenore and in the neck between Howth and Dublin, these raised beaches remain conspicuous. To sum up, then, while the main structural features of Ireland were impressed upon her before the opening of the Mesozoic era, her present outline and superficial contours date from an epoch of climatic and geographical change which falls within the human period.

ECONOMICS AND ADMINISTRATION

The cause of the continuous though varying decrease which these figures reveal has been emigration. This movement of population took its first great impulse from the famine of 1846 and has continued ever since. When that disaster fell upon the country it found a teeming population fiercely competing for a very narrow margin of subsistence; and so widespread and devastating were its effects that between 1847 and 1852 over 1,200,000 of the Irish people emigrated to other lands. More than 1,000,000 of these went to the United States of America, and to that country the main stream has ever since been directed. Between 1851 and 1905 4,028,589 emigrants left Ireland--2,092,154 males and 1,936,435 females, the proportion of females to males being extraordinarily high as compared with the emigration statistics of other countries. Between these years the numbers fluctuated widely--1852 showing the highest total, 190,322 souls, and 1905 the lowest, 30,676 souls. Since 1892, however, the emigrants in any one year have never exceeded 50,000, probably because the process of exhaustion has been so long in operation. As Ireland is mainly an agricultural country the loss of population has been most marked in the rural districts. The urban population, indeed, has for some years shown a tendency to increase. Thus in 1841 the rural population was returned as 7,052,923 and the urban as 1,143,674, while the corresponding figures in 1901 were respectively 3,073,846 and 1,384,929. This is further borne out by the percentages given in the above table, from which it will be seen that the greatest proportional decrease of population has occurred in the two provinces of Munster and Connaught, which may be regarded as almost purely agricultural. That the United States remained the great centre of attraction for Irish emigrants is proved by the returns for 1905, which show that nearly 80% of the whole number for the year sailed for that country. Ireland does little to swell the rising tide of emigration that now flows from England and Scotland to British North America.

Turning now to the census figures of 1901, we find that the population had diminished as compared with 1891 by 245,975. During the decade only three counties, Dublin, Down and Antrim, showed any increase, the increase being due to the growth of certain urban areas. Of the total population of 4,458,775, 2,200,040 were males and 2,258,735 were females. The inhabitants of the rural districts decreased during the decade by over 380,000; that of the urban districts, i.e. of all towns of not less than 2000 inhabitants increased by over 140,000. This increase was mainly due to the growth of a few of the larger towns, notably of Belfast, the chief industrial centre of Ireland. Between 1891 and 1901 Belfast increased from 273,079 to 349,180; Dublin from 268,587 to 289,108; and Londonderry, another industrial centre in Ulster, from 33,200 to 39,873. On the other hand, towns like Cork , Waterford and Limerick , remained almost stationary during the ten years, but the urban districts of Pembroke and of Rathmines and Rathgar, which are practically suburbs of Dublin, showed considerable increases.

From the returns of occupation in 1901, it appears that the indefinite or non-productive class accounted for about 55% of the entire population. The next largest class was the agricultural, which numbered 876,062, a decrease of about 40,000 as compared with 1891. The industrial class fell from 656,410 to 639,413, but this represented a slight increase in the percentage of the population. The professional class was 131,035, the domestic 219,418, and the commercial had risen from 83,173 in 1891 to 97,889 in 1901. The following table shows the number of births and deaths registered in Ireland during the five years 1901-1905.

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