Eye Spy: Afield With Nature Among Flowers and Animate Things

Part 1

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EYE SPY

AFIELD WITH NATURE AMONG FLOWERS AND ANIMATE THINGS

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1899

Copyright, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

A Naturalist's Boyhood The Story of the Floundering Beetle Fox-fire A Homely Weed with Interesting Flowers Two Fairy Sponges Green Pansies Mr. and Mrs. Tumble-bug Those Horse-hair Snakes "Professor Wiggler" "Cow-spit, Snake-spit, and Frog-spit" The Paper Wasp and His Doings The Spider's Span Ballooning Spiders The Lace-wing Fly The Perfumed Beetles Mushroom Spore-prints Some Curious Cocoons Nettle-leaf Tent-builders The Evening Primrose The Dandelion Burglar The Troubles of the House-fly Tendrils A Strange Story of a Grasshopper Riddles in Flowers Luck in Clovers Barberry Manners A Woolly Flock "What Ails Him?" The Cicada's Last Song Index

List of Designs

Initial Initial. Buttercup Leaves Three Views of a Helpless Beetle Down Among the Buttercup Leaves An Adventurous Baby The Adopted Home Initial. Fox-fire and Fungus A Luminous Fragment Three Specimens by Day Three Specimens by Night A Fox-fire Bugaboo The Bugaboo by Daylight Initial. The Figwort A Flower with Three Welcomes Sipping the Nectar. Fig. 1 In Flight with Pollen. Fig. 2 Transferring the Pollen to Stigma. Fig. 3 Fifth Day--Pod Enlarging Singular Method of Branching and Flowering Initial The Rose Mischief-maker The Fairy Using Her Magic Wand The Elfin Sponge of the Oak The Real Fairy of the Oak Sponge The Elfin Sponge of the Brier Rose The Inhabited Rose Sponge Initial. Pansies The Materials Making a Whole Plant Green A Tumbler Concealed Near By Initial. The Sacred Scarabaeus Mr. and Mrs. Tumble-bug Rolling the Ball Sinking the Ball Young Tumble-bug Digging out from His Dungeon Initial Amos Dangerous Ground for Grasshoppers and Crickets Busy Grasshoppers Initial. Lilacs "Professor Wiggler" at Home The Lilac Twig in June Tunnelling the Twig "Professor Wiggler" Moth Initial. Grasses and Weeds The Home of the "Spume-bearer" The Real Culprits Initial. A Nest of the Paper Wasp A Wolf in the Fold He was Hanging Head Downward Off for the Paper Nest Initial. Brooklyn Bridge Bridging the Brook From Tree to Tree Initial. Preparing for Flight Draped in the Glittering Meshes Spider-egg Cocoon Initial. The Lace-wing Fly The Wolf in the Fold A Tempting Aphis Brood Where the Aphides Swarm Initial. A Woodland Path The Perfumed Beetles Initial. A Spore-print Spore Surface of a Polyporus Spore Surface of a Polygaric Method of Making Spore-prints Spore-print of a Boletus Initial. A Nocturnal Bird From a Correspondent The Contents of the Cocoon Where the Cocoon Came From "The Owl on Muffled Wing" Initial. Nettles Leaf-tents of the "Comma" Caterpillar A Design for a Jeweller Initial. The Evening Primrose Two Kinds of Buds The Evening Primrose "The Worm i' the Bud" The Chrysalis and its Moth The Substitute for the Bud Initial. Dandelions The Nest-builder Initial. A Fly Model An Interrupted Toilet An Episode of Fly time A Victim of Fly Fungus Initial. Sweet-peas An Impossible and Real Tendril Grape Tendrils Evolved from Blossoms The Star Cucumber and its Compound Tendrils The Prank of a Tendril Initial. An Impaled "Quaker" The Haunt of the Grasshopper The Birth of the Parasites The Two-formed Flowers Puzzling Forms and Faces A. Fertilization of a Flower, as Believed by Grew and Linnaeus B. Linnaeus's Idea was Wrong C. and D. What Sprengel did not Explain The Way in which the Flower is Fertilized Initial. Clover Leaves A Rowen Field A Five-Leaved Specimen Sleeping Clover Initial. A Barberry Branch "In Arching Bowers" Barberry Blossoms, Showing Sepals and Petals Open. Fig. 1 Barberry Blossoms, Showing the Approach of the Bee. Fig. 2 Initial. A Woolly Flock One of the Flock Magnified A Winged Aphis Initial. Woodbine Branch and Sphinx Caterpillar What Happened the Next Day What He Should Have Become The Mischief-Maker Initial. Bearing Off the Prey A Section of the Sand-bank In the Dungeon_

EYE SPY

A Naturalist's Boyhood

I am enjoying a book, a picture, a statue, or, say, a piece of music. I know these to be the finished works of the man or the woman, but I invariably hark back to the boy or the girl.

What I want to discover is the precise time, in the lives of certain boys and girls, when the steel first struck the flint, the spark flew, and out streamed that jet of fire which never afterwards was extinguished.

I was reading an article entitled "Professor Wriggler," written by Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, which appeared in "Harper's Young People," in the number of October 31, 1893. I need not tell you that both old and young, at home and abroad, delight in reading what Mr. Hamilton Gibson has written, because he was not alone the most observant of naturalists, but a distinguished artist and a sympathetic author.

He thus filled a peculiar position in the literary and artistic world which is seldom given to any one man to fill. Besides being a naturalist from his boyhood, he was able to write better than most people what he wished to write, and to illustrate his articles in a way that was unique. Mr. Gibson's death a few days ago, therefore, has closed the career of a man who had the ability to interest a large number of people not only in natural history, but in art and literature.

The news of Mr. Gibson's death came to me suddenly, and as I was reading it I recalled an interesting talk I had with him less than a year ago about his work early in life and the way he got his start. I had been reading one of his articles to a lady, who, when she heard the name of the author, said:

"Why, I knew Mr. Hamilton Gibson long ago. When he was a lad he painted a lovely drop-curtain for us. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen then."

The next time I met Mr. Hamilton Gibson I asked him about this drop-curtain. "Do you remember it?"

"Certainly I do. We had a temperance society at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and we gave a grand entertainment. I made the drop-curtain. It represented a wood. There was a rock in the foreground, and a Virginia-creeper was climbing over it."

"Was it an original composition?" I asked.

"I made many studies of the rock and the Virginia-creeper from nature. On the other side of the curtain I painted a drawing-room. There were a marble mantelpiece, a clock, and lace curtains. I don't think I enjoyed painting the clock as much as the Virginia-creeper."

"To paint a drop-curtain at fifteen or sixteen means that you had then a certain facility. But that could not have been your beginning. When did you break your shell? What chipped or cracked your egg so that your particular bird emerged, chirped, and finally took flight? That was what I wanted to know."

"Is that what you are after?" asked Mr. Hamilton Gibson. "From my baby days I was curious about flowers and insects. The two were always united in my mind. What could not have been more than a childish guess was confirmed in my later days." Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson paused. I could see he was recalling, not without emotion, some memories of the long past.

"I was very young, and playing in the woods. I tossed over the fallen leaves, when I came across a chrysalis. There was nothing remarkable in that, for I knew what it was. But, wonderful to relate--providentially I deem it--as I held the object in my hand a butterfly slowly emerged, then fluttered in my fingers."

"You were pleased with its beauty," I said.

Part 2

"Oh! It was more than that. I do not know whether I was or was not a youngster with an imagination, but suddenly the spiritual view of a new or of another life struck me. I saw in this jewel born from an unadorned casket some inkling of immortality. Yes, that butterfly breaking from its chrysalis in my hand shaped my future career."

"But some young people may feel passing impulses, but how account for your artistic skill and literary powers?"

"As to the art side, at least deftness of hand came early. I had the most methodical of grandmothers. Every day I had a certain task. I made a square of patch-work for a quilt. I learned how to sew, and I can sew neatly to-day. I knew how to use my fingers."

"Did you like patch-work?" I inquired.

"I simply despised it. Sewing must have helped me, for it was eye-training, and when I went to work with a pencil and a paint-brush I really had no trouble. I read a great deal. I devoured Cooper's novels and the Rollo series: but there was one special volume, 'Harris on Insects,' I never tired of. I studied that over and over again. It was the illustrations of Marsh which fascinated me. I never found a bug, caterpillar, or butterfly that I did not compare my specimens with the Marsh pictures. I learned this way much which I have never forgotten."

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