Part 23

Several pieces of cotton drawn in, in this way, will fill the body enough to hold it in shape. If the cotton is wet in alcohol, or camphor, it is better.

Worms, spiders, toads, minnows, and such soft-bodied things, must be kept in clear glass bottles, filled with alcohol.

Now the chief thing in a collection is to have it good of its kind. The specimens should be as perfect as possible, and be kept neat and clean. Especially they should be set in good order. They should all have labels, with their names on them.

A collection well marked will be worth much more than one without the names placed on the specimens. A collection all jumbled together, without order, will be of little use.

If you set a bird’s nest here, a wasp’s nest there, a bright stone next, and then a beetle, or a card of butterflies, your cabinet will have small teaching value. Remember a cabinet is not merely made to “look pretty” like a doll’s house, or a shop window.

Place things of a kind together. Then put kinds which are nearest like next each other. Put your insects together, and arrange them by their orders. Put the beetles together, the butterflies together, the wasps, and bees, and so on. Spiders come in as one order of the insects. Your crabs and shrimps must stand together, but be placed next the insects, as they are of the jointed class of creatures.

Put your birds’ nests, and eggs, and any stuffed birds, or pictures of birds that you may have, together. And so on, with all the other things.

Your cabinet may be a small one, but if it is neatly arranged, and all the specimens are good of their kind, rightly named, and kept clean, it will be of real value.

Do not be in such a hurry to collect, that you put in rubbish, instead of good specimens. A butterfly with broken wings, a beetle without a head, and a spider that has lost half its legs, are not worth a place in a cabinet.

To get together even a small cabinet of objects in natural history, takes time, care, and patience. I knew a girl who was carefully collecting and mounting beetles. In a whole summer she got only twenty-five. But each one was perfect, different from the rest, nicely fastened in place, and had its name written beside it. So her collection was of real value.

After you have secured a nice little cabinet, the trouble will be to keep it safe, and in order. Specimens must be taken care of. All specimens of plants, and insects, are very liable to be destroyed by little bugs. Only the things kept in alcohol are really safe from being eaten.

Camphor and red pepper are of some use to keep out these enemies. Your teachers will know, or can easily learn, how to prepare the specimens with poisons, which will kill the mites and not harm you or the specimens. You must leave it to them.

It is nice to have a case with glass doors. If you cannot have that, arrange as many of the objects as you can in boxes with panes of glass laid over them. For open cabinets it is well to have a piece of fine gauze to lay over each shelf, or over the whole set of shelves, when the cabinet is not in immediate use.

Dust makes a cabinet look very ugly. But you cannot clean off beetles and butterflies with a dusting cloth or brush. It would ruin such delicate things.

You can gently move the boxes and specimens, and wipe off the shelves, and the sides of the boxes. Then blow, or fan, the dust from the specimens. Even minerals should have the dust blown from them, not wiped off. It is easy to rub the bloom and the little fine points, and edges, from a mineral specimen.

When you have made up your minds to have a cabinet in your school, look about and see what your friends have to give you for it. Many people have a few natural history curiosities, for which they do not really care. Such persons would gladly give their treasures to a school cabinet. But there should be some bright little lad or lass to say: “Oh, we have a cabinet at our school. Would you not be willing to send these things there?”

Correct pictures of birds, fish, insects, and flowers, are useful in a cabinet, but you must be sure that they are correct before you give them a place. You must not put the pictures into your cabinet merely because they are pretty. If they are wrong they will give you false ideas. I have seen colored pictures of insects with some of the legs set upon the hinder part of the body instead of all upon the chest part. Such a picture is of no use.

Keen eyes to see what comes in your own way, and keen wits to suggest to other people what they can do for you, will steadily help to build up the school cabinet.

LESSON XVI.

THE OLD MAN OF THE MEADOW.

When I was about seven years old, I caught a grasshopper and put him into a bottle.

Then I sat down outside the bottle, and looked at the grasshopper. He sat inside the bottle, and looked at me.

It began to grow upon my mind that the grasshopper looked much like an old man. His face, with the big, solemn eyes, and straight mouth, was like an old man’s face.

He wore a gray coat, like a loose duster. He had a wrinkled greenish vest. He wore knee-breeches and long red stockings.

The more I looked at him, the more he looked like a little, grave, old-time man who came to visit my aged grandfather.

I had a cousin who at dusk would sit with me in a corner of the big sofa, and repeat to me a poem, called the “Prisoner of Chillon.” That sad poem had made me feel very sorry for all prisoners. I thought my grasshopper in the bottle felt like a prisoner. I said, “Now you may go, my Old Man of the Meadow.”

I took the cork out of the bottle. The grasshopper at once leaped up, and sat on the rim of the bottle. Then a strange thing happened! The Old Man of the Meadow spread out two wide brown wings. They had a broad, lemon-colored band on them. They were gay as the wings of a butterfly! On them he sailed away!

I could hardly believe my eyes. I ran after him to a tall stalk of golden-rod. There he sat a plain, gray-green old man. But again he spread out the wide wings, and was gone!