Part 11

I took my prizes home, and determined to announce my great discovery to the world in an early issue of some scientific paper, fully assured that I had made a "great find." Before accomplishing this purpose, however, I thought I would consult my "oracle," "Harris's Insects Injurious to Vegetation"--a most beautiful and valuable entomological work, by-the-way, which should be in every boy's library. There, on page forty-two, behold my odorous specimen, true to life! And what does Harris say about him? "They are nocturnal insects, and conceal themselves through the day in the crevices and hollows of trees, where they feed upon the sap that flows from the bark. They have the odor of Russia-leather, and give this out so powerfully that their presence can be detected by the scent alone at the distance of two or three yards from the place of their retreat. This strong smell suggested the name Osmoderma, 'scented skin,' given to these beetles by the French naturalists."

"Nocturnal" they may be, but that they are diurnal also I have many times proved. Almost any hot sunny day I am even now sure of my specimen upon a certain oozy cherry trunk near by, the presence even of one beetle being distinctly announced at a distance of ten feet.

There are two common species of these beetles, the present insect being the Osmoderma scabei, as given by Harris.

Mushroom Spore-prints

The dusty puff-ball, floating its faint trail of smoke in the breeze from the ragged flue at its dome-shaped roof as from an elfin tepee, or perhaps enveloping our feet in its dense purple cloud as we chance to step upon it in the path, is familiar to every one--always enthusiastically welcomed by the small boy, to whom it is always a challenge for a kick, and a consequent demonstration of smoke worthy of a Fourth-of-July celebration.

A week ago this glistening gray bag, so free with its dust-puff at the slightest touch, was solid in substance and as white as cottage cheese in the fracture.

But in a later stage this clear white fracture would have appeared speckled or peppered with gray spots, and the next day entirely gray and much softened, and, later again, brown and apparently in a state of decay. But this is not decay. This moist brown mass becomes powdery by evaporation, and the puff-ball is now ripe, and intent only on posterity.

Each successive squeeze as we hold it between our fingers yields its generous response in a puff of brown smoke, which melts away apparently into air. But the puff-ball does not end in mere smoke. This vanishing purple cloud is composed of tiny atoms, so extremely minute as to require the aid of a powerful microscope to reveal their shapes. Each one of these atoms, so immaterial and buoyant as to be almost without gravity, floating away upon the slightest breath, or even wafted upward by currents of warm air from the heated earth, has within itself the power of reproducing another clump of puff-balls if only fortune shall finally lodge it in congenial soil. These spores are thus analogous to the seeds of ordinary plants. We have seen the myriadfold dispersion of its potential atoms in the cloud of spore-smoke from the puff-ball, but who ever thinks of a spore-cloud from a mushroom or a toadstool? Yet the same method is followed by all the other fungi, but with less conspicuousness. The puff-ball gives a visible salute, but any one of the common mushrooms or toadstools will afford us a much prettier and more surprising account of itself if we but give it the opportunity. This big yellow toadstool out under the poplar-tree, its golden cap studded with brownish scurfy warts, its under surface beset with closely plaited laminae or gills, who could ever associate the cloud of dry smoke with this moist, creamy-white surface? We may sit here all day and watch it closely, but we shall see no sign of anything resembling smoke or dust. But even so, a filmy mist is continually floating away from beneath its golden cap, the eager breeze taking such jealous care of the continual shower that our eyes fail to perceive a hint of it.

Do you doubt it? You need wait but a few moments for a proof of the fact in a pretty experiment, which, when once observed, will certainly be resorted to as a frequent pastime in leisure moments when the toadstool or mushroom is at hand.

Here is a very ordinary-looking specimen growing beside the stone steps at our back door perhaps. Its top is gray; its gills beneath are fawn-color. We may shake it as rudely as we will, and yet we shall get no response such as the puff-ball will give us. But let us lay it upon a piece of white paper, gills downward, on the mantel, and cover it with a tumbler or finger-bowl, so as to absolutely exclude the least admission of air. At the expiration of five minutes, perhaps, we may detect a filmy, pinkish-yellow tint on the paper, following beneath the upraised border of the cap, like a shadow faintly lined with white. In a quarter of an hour the tinted deposit is perceptible across the room; and in an hour, if we carefully raise the mushroom, the perfect spore-print is revealed in all its beauty--a pink-brown disk with a white centre, which represents the point of contact of the cut stem, and white radiating lines, representing the edges of the thin gills, many of them as fine and delicate as a cobweb.

Every fresh species will yield its surprise in the markings and color of the prints.

These spore-deposits are of course fugitive, and will easily rub off at the slightest touch. But inasmuch as many of these specimens, either from their beauty of form or exquisite color, or for educational or scientific purposes, it will be desirable to preserve, I append simple rules for the making of the prints by a process by which they will become effectually "fixed," and thus easily kept without injury.

DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A MUSHROOM SPORE-PRINT

Take a piece of smooth white writing-paper and coat its surface evenly with a thin solution of gum-arabic, dextrine, or other mucilage, and allow it to dry. Pin this, gummed side uppermost, to a board or table, preferably over a soft cloth, so that it will lie perfectly flat. To insure a good print the mushroom specimen should be fresh and firm, and the gills or spore-surface free from breaks or bruises.

Cut the stem off about level with the gills, then lay the mushroom, spore-surface downward, upon the paper, and cover with a tumbler, finger-bowl, or other vessel with a smooth, even rim, to absolutely exclude the slightest ingress of air.

After a few hours have passed by, perhaps even less, the spores will be seen through the glass on the paper at the extreme edge of the mushroom, their depth of color indicating the density of the deposit. If we now gently lift the glass, and with the utmost care remove the fungus, perhaps by the aid of pins previously inserted, in a perfectly vertical direction, without the slightest side motion, the spore-print in all its beauty will be revealed--perhaps a rich brown circular patch with exquisite radiating white lines, marking the direction and edges of the gills, if an Agaric; perhaps a delicate pink, more or less clouded disk, here and there distinctly and finely honey-combed with white lines, indicating that our specimen is one of the polypores, as a Boletus. Other prints will yield rich golden disks, and there will be prints of red, lilac, greens, oranges, salmon-pinks, and browns and purples, variously lined in accordance with the number and nature of the gills or pores. Occasionally we shall look in vain for our print, which may signify that our specimen had already scattered its spores ere we had found it, or, what is more likely, that the spores are invisible upon the paper, owing to their whiteness, in which case a piece of black paper must be substituted for the white ground, when the response will be beautifully manifest in a white tracery upon the black background. One of these, from the Amanita muscarius, is reproduced in our illustration. If the specimen is left too long, the spore-deposit is continued upward between the gills, and may reach a quarter of an inch in height, in which case, if extreme care in lifting the cap is used, we observe a very realistic counterfeit of the gills of the mushroom in high relief upon the paper. A print of this kind is of course very fragile, and must be handled with care. But a comparatively slight deposit of the spores, without apparent thickness, will give us the most perfect print, while at the same time yielding the full color. Such a print may also be fixed by our present method so as to withstand considerable rough handling, all that is required being to lay the print upon a wet towel until the moisture has penetrated through the paper and reached the gum. The spores are thus set, and, upon drying the paper, are quite securely fixed. Indeed, the moisture often exuded by the confined fungus beneath the glass proves sufficient to dampen the mucilage and set the spores.

A number of prints may be obtained from a single specimen.

To those of my readers interested in the science of this spore-shower I give sectional illustrations of examples of the two more common groups of mushrooms--the Agaric, or gilled mushroom, and the Polyporus, or tube-bearing mushroom. The entire surface of both gills and pores is lined with the spore-bearing membrane, or hymenium, the spores falling directly beneath their point of departure as indicated; in the case of the Agaric, in radiating lines in correspondence with the spaces between the gills, and in Polyporus in a tiny pile directly beneath the opening of each pore.

Some Curious Cocoons

The title of this article will doubtless recall to readers of "Harper's Young People" a paper upon a similar subject which appeared in my calendar series two years ago. With the title the resemblance ends, for the cocoons which I am about to describe are of a sort that has never been mentioned in any previous article. These curious cocoons had been familiar to me since my boyhood, having long excited my wonder before finally revealing their mystery. They have recently been brought freshly to my notice by a letter that I have received, accompanied by a box of specimens, which reads as follows:

DEAR MR. GIBSON,--I have sent you to-day what I take to be three cocoons. These with three others I picked up from a gravel-walk in Po'keepsie over a year ago. They seemed connected at the ends, but easily broke apart. I kept them, purposing to see what would emerge, but nothing has rewarded my watch, and they seem now to be shrivelling up. Can you give me any information in regard to them? If so, I shall be very grateful to you.

Now "Harper's Round Table."

I had barely read half through the brief description when I guessed the nature of the cocoons in question, having received similar letters before, as well as verbal queries, from others who had been puzzled by the non-committal specimens. The fact that they were found "on the gravel-walk," and were loosely "connected at the ends," was in itself strong evidence of their questionable nature, and I felt sure that I should recognize the cocoons as old friends. And I did.

Upon opening the box, I found three of them packed in a mass of cotton, two of them still loosely attached at the ends, the third one somewhat disintegrated. Each was about an inch in length, and half an inch in thickness, somewhat egg or cocoon shaped. Upon being separated, one end of each was seen to be hollowed out, and had thus previously received the pointed end of its fellow in the "connected" condition in which they had been found. In color they were a mouse gray precisely, and to the careless observer might have appeared to consist of caterpillar silk, though in reality having a substance more like felt. Yes, they might easily be mistaken for cocoons if we simply contented ourselves with looking at them.

Who, by a mere glance, could imagine the materials that the little bird called the vireo employs in building her peculiar nest? The reader will remember how we pulled one of those nests apart, and what strange materials we found woven in its fabric. But they were hardly more surprising than we may discover within this sly cocoon if we dissect it. Now, to begin with, a true cocoon is not solid to the core, as this one evidently is as we press it between our fingers, nor can you pinch off a tuft of gray hair from the surface of an ordinary cocoon when you will. True, there are some cocoons into whose silk meshes the caterpillar weaves the hair of its body, but the felt thus formed is only a shell, and is intermeshed with silken webs, and one pinch alone will open up the hollow interior and show us the caterpillar or chrysalis within. Such, for instance, is the little brown winter snuggery of the woolly-bear caterpillar which we all know, and whose prickly cocoons may be found beneath stones and logs in the fields.

See "Sharp Eyes,"

But what do we find in these cocoons that we now have before us? Not only is there no vestige of silk to be seen, but there are hairs enough in this single cocoon to have supplied a hundred caterpillars, while we look in vain for any sign of the spinner within. Indeed, there is no within; pinch after pinch reveals nothing but the same gray felt. We are now a quarter of an inch below the surface, when another pinch brings with it a small mass of white specks like crumbs intermingled with the hair, and in the hollow thus deepened we observe a shiny white object like ivory, with a minute ball at its tip. It certainly looks like a tiny bone. We impatiently break open the cocoon, when we see in truth a bone--indeed, a compact mass of bones from some very small animal, whose identity we may guess from the mouse-color of the felt. Here is the femur of a field-mouse--two of them--also a part of the fibula, and a dozen or more other bones. Breaking asunder the mass further, we find a few tiny teeth; and as we continue the process in the remaining two specimens, we bring to light parts of the skull, ribs, and vertebrae. A strange "cocoon" indeed.

A further examination of the remaining specimens disclosed similar ingredients, until the entire mass presented a collection somewhat like that shown in my illustration.