Part 35

Many other things may be used for Monkeys. I have seen good ones made of peanuts, with the features inked on, and a very young black birch catkin for tail. Beautiful birds also can be made by using a pith body and bright feathers or silks glued on for plumes. The pith itself is easily coloured with water colours.

You will be delighted to see what beautiful effects you can get by use of these simple wild materials, helped with a little imagination.

And the end of the Monkey-hunt will be that you have learned a new kind of hunting, with nothing but pleasant memories in it, and trophies to show for proof.

TALE 76

The Horsetail and the Jungle

Long, long ago, millions of years ago, this world was much hotter than it is now. Yes, in mid-winter it was hotter than it is now in mid-summer. Over all Pennsylvania there were huge forests of things that looked a little like palms, but some looked like pipes with joints, and had wheels of branches or limb wheels at every joint. They were as tall as some palms, and grew in swamps.

When one of those big joint-wheels fell over, it sank into the mud and was forgotten. So at last the swamp was filled up solid with their trunks.

Then for some unknown reason all the big joint-trees died, and the sand, mud, and gravel levelled off the swamp. There they lay, and slowly become blacker and harder under the mud, until they turned into coal.

That is what we burn to-day, the trunks of the wheel-jointed swamp trees. But their youngest great-grandchild is still with us, and shows, in its small way, what its great ancestors were like.

You will find it along some railway bank, or in any damp woods. Country people who know it, call it Joint Grass or Horsetails; the books call it Equisetum. The drawing will show you what to look for.

Gather a handful and take them home. Then get some of the moss known as ground-pine, a small piece of glass (the Guide should see that the edges of the glass are well rubbed with a stone, to prevent cutting the fingers), a cigar box, and white paste or putty, as in the Monkey-hunt.

Make a pool with the glass, and banks around it of the paste. Now cover these banks with the ground pine; using a little glue on the under side of each piece, but leave an open space without moss at the back, near the pool. Take a pointed stick and make holes through the moss into the clay or putty, and in each hole put one of the Horsetails, cutting it off with scissors if too tall for the top, till you have a thicket of these stems on each side; only make more on one side than on the other.

* * * * *

Now for the grand finish. You must make an extinct monster. Get half a walnut shell; cut a notch at one end where the neck will be; fill the shell with putty; stick in wooden pegs for legs, tail, and head. The central stalk of a tulip-tree fruit makes a wonderful sculptured tail; the unopened buds of dogwood do for legs, also cloves have been used. Any nobby stick serves for head if you make eyes and teeth on it.

When dry this makes a good extinct monster. Set it on the far bank of the water, and you have a jungle, the old Pennsylvania jungle of the days when the coal was packed away.

TALE 77

The Woods in Winter

Go out to the nearest chestnut tree, and get half a small burr; trim it neatly. Fill it with putty; set four wooden pegs in this for legs, a large peg for a head and a long thin one for a tail. On the head put two little black pins for eyes. Now rub glue on the wooden pegs and sprinkle them with powdered rotten wood, or fine sand, and you have a Burr Porcupine. Sometimes carpet tacks are used for legs. You will have to wear strong leather gloves in making this, it is so much like a real Porcupine.

Now go into your woods and get a handful of common red cedar twigs with leaves on, or other picturesque branches, some creeping moss of the kind used by flower dealers to pack plants, various dried grasses, and a few flat or sharp-cornered pebbles. Take these home. Get a cigar box or a candy-box, some paper, clay or putty and glass, as already described for the Monkey-hunt. Make a pond with the glass and a bank with the clay and pebbles. Paint the top of the clay, and tops of the pebbles with the thin glue, and also part of the glass; then sprinkle all with powdered chalk, whitening, plaster of Paris or talcum powder for snow. Put the Porcupine in the middle, and you have the "Woods in Winter."

TALE 78

The Fish and the Pond

Go out and get the cone of a Norway Spruce tree, or a White Spruce; this is the body of your Fish. Cut two round spots of white paper for eyes, glue them on, and when dry, put a black ink spot in the middle of each. Add a curved piece of paper on each side for gills. Then with an awl or with the point of the scissors make holes in the sides, in which put fins cut out of brown paper, fixing them in with glue. Then, with the knife blade, make a long cut in the back, and split the tail, and in each cut glue a thick piece of brown paper cut fin shape. When dry, draw lines on these with ink. Now you have a good Fish.

For the pond, take a cigar-box, paint the lower quarter of it dark green, and the upper part shaded into light blue, for sky. Glue a piece of glass or else carwindow celluloid level across this near the bottom. This is for water. Hide all the back and side edges of the glass with clay banks as described in the Monkey-hunt, or with moss glued on. Put a fine black thread to the Fish's back, another to his tail, and hang him level above the water by fastening the threads to the top of the box. Label it "Pond Life" or the "Fish at Home."

TALE 79

Smoke Prints of Leaves

Collect one or two leaves that have strongly marked ribs; elm and raspberry are good ones. Take a piece of paper that is strong, but rather soft, and about as big as this page. Grease, or oil it all over with paint-oil, butter, or lard. Then hold it, grease-side down, in the smoke of a candle, close to the flame, moving it about quickly so that the paper won't burn, until it is everywhere black with soot.

Lay the paper flat on a table, soot-side up, on a piece of blotting paper. Lay the leaf on this; then, over that, a sheet of paper. Press this down over all the leaf. Lift the leaf and lay it on a piece of soft, white paper; press it down as before, with a paper over it, on which you rub with one hand while the other keeps it from slipping; lift the leaf, and on the lower paper you will find a beautiful line-drawing of the leaf, done in black ink; which, once it is dry, will never rub out or fade away.

At one corner write down the date and the name of the leaf.