My Studio Neighbors

Part 1

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1898

Copyright, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights reserved.

Page

A Familiar Guest 3

The Cuckoos and the Outwitted Cow-bird 23

Door-step Neighbors 57

A Queer Little Family on the Bittersweet 87

The Welcomes of the Flowers 105

A Honey-dew Picnic 151

A Few Native Orchids and Their Insect Sponsors 171

The Milkweed 227

Index 239

Page

William Hamilton Gibson Frontispiece

Initial. The Studio Door 3

The Rose-bush Episode 9

A Corner of My Table 12

An Animated Brush 14

A Specimen in Three Stages 16

The Studio Table 18

Initial 23

The European Cuckoo 24

The Yellow-billed Cuckoo 26

Part 2

Browsing Kine 29

A Greedy Foster-child 34

The Yellow Warbler 44

A Blighted Home 46

The Normal Nest of the Yellow Warbler 47

The Yellow Warbler at Home 49

A Suspicious Nest of the Yellow Warbler 50

The Nest Separated 52

Initial 57

The Door-step Arena, with its Pitfalls 60

Fishing for Tigers 65

Tiger-beetle 68

The Spider Victim 70

Filling the Spider's Grave 71

Black Digger-wasp 73

Black Digger-wasp and His Victim, Showing the Egg of the Wasp Attached 75

Protecting the Burrow while Searching for Prey 79

The "Cow-spit" Mystery Disclosed 81

The Tiger's Head, from the Victim's Stand-point 84

Initial. Branch of the Bittersweet 87

A Bittersweet Covey 90

Flushing the Game 92

Specimen Twig 94

Building Froth-tent 100

Butterflies and Flowers 105

A Row of Stamens 106

The Parts of a Flower 109

Historical Series, Showing the Progress of Discovery of Flower Fertilization 110

Part 3

The Garden Sage 120

Cross-fertilization of the Sage 121

Elastic Stamens. Anthers Inserted in their Pockets 124

Elastic Stamens of Mountain-laurel 125

Andromeda Ligustrina 127

Fertilisation of Andromeda 128

The Laurel 130

Cross-fertilization of the Blue-flag 131

Blue-flag 132

Pogonia and Devil's-bit 133

Devil's-bit 134

Horse-balm. Collinsonia 135

Cross-fertilization of the Horse-balm--Flowers in Various Stages, and in the Order of their Visitation by the Bee 136

The Cone-flower 137

Cone-flower, Showing Numerous Florets, Some in Pollen, Others in Stigmatic Stage 139

Cross-fertilization of Cone-flower 140

The Fertilization of the English Arum, 1st Stage 141

The Fertilization of the English Arum. 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th Stages 142

Pogonia 145

Cross-fertilization 146

A Pine Branch 151

Initial 151

The Picnic 159

Tail-piece 167

Habenaria Orbiculata 171

Arethusa Bulbosa 177

The Botanical Distribution of an Ordinary Flower and of the Orchid 182

The "Column" in Various Orchids 183

Part 4

The Result of the Bee's Visit 184

Cross-fertilization of Arethusa 188

Habenaria Orbiculata. A Single Flower Enlarged 190

Orchis Spectabilis 191

Cross-fertilization of H. Orbiculata (Sphinx-moth) 193

The Flower and Column of Orchis Spectabilis, Enlarged 195

Orchis Spectabilis 195

Position of Pollen of Orchis Spectabilis Withdrawn on Pencil 197

The Cross-fertilization of Orchis Spectabilis 197

The Purple-fringed Orchid 199

The Ragged Orchid (Front Section) 200

The Ragged Orchid (Profile Section) 202

The Ragged Orchid (H. Lacera) and the Butterfly's Tongue. Cross-fertilization 203

The Yellow Orchid (H. Flava) 204

The Ragged Orchid (H. Lacera) 205

Cypripedium Acaule 207

Moccasin-flower (C. Acaule) 208

The Bee Imprisoned in the Lips of Cypripedium 210

Moccasin-flower. Bee Sipping Nectar 211

The Bee Passing Beneath the Stigma 213

A Bee Receiving Pollen-plaster on His Thorax 214

Rattlesnake-Plantain--the Young and the Old 215

Cross-fertilization of the Rattlesnake-Plantain. Side Sections 216

Cross-fertilisation of the Rattlesnake-Plantain. Front View 217

The Tongue of a Bumblebee 218

Goodyera, or Periamium Pubescens 221

Milkweed Captives 231

The Pollen Masses and the Fissure 232

Part 5

The Tragedy of the Bees 235

A Moth Caught by the Tongue in Dogbane 237

A FAMILIAR GUEST

Solitude! Where under trees and sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If he fails to be aware of the fact, more's the pity. His desolation is within, not without, in spite of, not because of, his surroundings.

Here in my country studio--not a hermitage, 'tis true, but secluded among trees, some distance isolated from my own home and out of sight of any other--what company! What occasional "tumultuous privacy" is mine! I have frequently been obliged to step out upon the porch and request a modulation of hilarity and a more courteous respect for my hospitality. But this is evidently entirely a matter of point of view, and, judging from the effects of my protests at such times, my assumed superior air of condescension is apparently construed as a huge joke. If the resultant rejoinder of wild volapuek and expressive pantomime has any significance, it is plain that I am desired to understand that my exact status is that of a squatter on contested territory.

There are those snickering squirrels, for instance! At this moment two of them are having a rollicking game of tag on the shingled roof--a pandemonium of scrambling, scratching, squealing, and growling--ever and anon clambering down at the eaves to the top of a blind and peeping in at the window to see how I like it.

A woodchuck is perambulating my porch--he was a moment ago--presumably in renewed quest of that favorite pabulum more delectable than rowen clover, the splintered cribbings from the legs of a certain pine bench, which, up to date, he has lowered about three inches--a process in which he has considered average rather than symmetry, or the comfort of the too trusting visitor who happens to be unaware of his carpentry.

The drone of bees and the carol of birds are naturally an incessant accompaniment to my toil--at least, in these spring and summer months. The tall, straight flue of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an organ, is softly murmurous with the flurry of the swifts in their afternoon or vesper flight. There is a robin's nest close by one window, a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and oriole within close limits, to say nothing of an ants' nest not far off, whose proximity is soon manifest as you sit in the grass--and immediately get up again.

Fancy a wild fox for a daily entertainment! For several days in succession last year I spent a half-hour observing his frisky gambols on the hillside across the dingle below my porch, as he jumped apparently for mice in the sloping rowen-field. How quickly he responded to my slightest interruption of voice or footfall, running to the cover of the alders!

The little red-headed chippy, the most familiar and sociable of our birds, of course pays me his frequent visit, hopping in at the door and picking up I don't know what upon the floor. A barn-swallow occasionally darts in through the open window and out again at the door, as though for very sport, only a few days since skimming beneath my nose, while its wings fairly tipped the pen with which I was writing. The chipmonk has long made himself at home, and his scratching footsteps on my door-sill, or even in my closet, is a not uncommon episode. Now and then through the day I hear a soft pat-pat on the hard-wood floor, at intervals of a few seconds, and realize that my pet toad, which has voluntarily taken up its abode in an old bowl on the closet floor, is taking his afternoon outing, and with his always seemingly inconsistent lightning tongue is picking up his casual flies at three inches sight around the base-board.

A mouse, I see, has heaped a neat little pile of seeds upon the top of the wainscot near by--cherry pits, polygonum, and ragweed seeds, and others, including some small oak-galls, which I find have been abstracted from a box of specimens which I had stored in the closet for safe-keeping. I wonder if it is the same little fellow that built its nest in an old shoe in the same closet last year, and, among other mischief, removed the white grub in a similar lot of specimen galls which I also missed, and subsequently found in the shoe and scattered on the closet floor?

I have mentioned the murmur of the bees, but the incessant buzzing of flies and wasps is an equally prominent sound. Then there is the occasional sortie of the dragon-fly, making his gauzy, skimming circuit about the room, or suggestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling; and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of course, somewhere in its dusty spread, tapers off into a dark tunnel, where lurks the eight-eyed schemer, "o'erlooking all his waving snares around."

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