The Spring of the Year Part 7

IV

You must hear the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will. Both birds are to be heard at twilight, and the whip-poor-will far into the night. At the very break of dawn is also a good time to listen to them.

At dusk you will see (I have seen him from the city roofs in Boston) a bird about the size of a pigeon mounting up into the sky by short flights, crying _peent_, until far over your head the creature will suddenly turn and on half-closed wings dive headlong toward the earth, when, just before hitting the ground, upward he swoops, at the same instant making a weird booming sound, a kind of hollow groan with his wings, as the wind rushes through their large feathers. This diver through the dim ocean of air is the nighthawk. Let one of the birds dive close to your head on a lonely dusky road, and your hair will try to jump out from under your hat.

The whip-poor-will's cry you all know. When you hear one this spring, go out into the twilight and watch for him. See him spring into the air, like a strange shadow, for flies; count his _whip-poor-wills_ (he may call it more than a hundred times in as many seconds!). But hear a circle of the birds, if possible, calling through the darkness of a wood all around you!

V

There is one strange bird song that is half song and half dance that perhaps most of you may never be able to hear and see; but as it is worth going miles to hear, and nights of watching to witness, I am going to set it here as one of your outdoor tasks or feats: you must hear the mating song of the woodc.o.c.k. I have described the song and the dance in "Roof and Meadow," in the chapter called "One Flew East and One Flew West." Mr. Bradford Torrey has an account of it in his "Clerk of the Woods," in the chapter named "Woodc.o.c.k Vespers." To hear the song is a rare experience for the habitual watcher in the woods, but one that you might have the first April evening that you are abroad.

Go down to your nearest meadow--a meadow near a swampy piece of woods is best--and here, along the bank of the meadow stream, wait in the chilly twilight for the _speank_, _speank_, or the _peent_, _peent_, from the gra.s.s--the signal that the song is about to begin.

VI

One of the dreadful--positively dreadful--sounds of the late spring that I hear day in and day out is the gobbling, strangling, ghastly cries of young crows feeding. You will surely think something is being murdered. The crying of a hungry baby is musical in comparison. But it is a good sound to hear, for it reminds one of the babes in the woods--that a new generation of birds is being brought through from babyhood to gladden the world. It is a tender sound! The year is still young.

VII

You should hear the hum of the honey-bees on a fresh May day in an apple tree that is just coming into perfect bloom. The enchanting loveless of the pink and white world of blossoms is enough to make one forget to listen to the _hum-hum-hum-humming-ing-ing-ing-ing_ of the excited bees. But hear their myriad wings, fanning the perfume into the air and filling the suns.h.i.+ne with the music of work. The whir, the hum of labor--of a busy factory, of a great steams.h.i.+p dock--is always music to those who know the blessedness of work; but it takes that knowledge, and a good deal of imagination besides, to hear the music in it. Not so with the bees. The season, the day, the colors, and perfumes--they are the song; the wings are only the million-stringed aeolian upon which the song is played.

VIII

You should hear the gra.s.s grow. What! I repeat, you should hear the gra.s.s grow. I have a friend, a sound and sensible man, but a lover of the out-of-doors, who says he can hear it grow. But perhaps it is the soft stir of the working earthworms that he hears. Try it. Go out alone one of these April nights; select a green pasture with a slope to the south, at least a mile from any house, or railroad; lay your ear flat upon the gra.s.s, listen without a move for ten minutes. You hear something--or do you feel it? Is it the reaching up of the gra.s.s?

is it the stir of the earthworms? is it the pulse of the throbbing universe? or is it your own throbbing pulse? It is all of these, I think; call it the heart of the gra.s.s beating in every tiny living blade, if you wish to. You should listen to hear the gra.s.s grow.

IX

The fires have gone out on the open hearth. Listen early in the morning and toward evening for the rumbling, the small, m.u.f.fled thunder, of the chimney swallows, as they come down from the open sky on their wonderful wings. Don't be frightened. It isn't Santa Claus this time of year; nor is it the Old Nick! The smothered thunder is caused by the rapid beating of the swallows' wings on the air in the narrow chimney-flue, as the birds settle down from the top of the chimney and hover over their nests. Stick your head into the fireplace and look up! Don't smoke the precious lodgers out, no matter how much racket they make.

X

Hurry out while the last drops of your first May thunder-shower are still falling and listen to the robins singing from the tops of the trees. Their liquid songs are as fresh as the shower, as if the raindrops in falling were running down from the trees in song--as indeed they are in the overflowing trout-brook. Go out and listen, and write a better poem than this one that I wrote the other afternoon when listening to the birds in our first spring shower:--

The warm rain drops aslant the sun And in the rain the robins sing; Across the creek in twos and troops, The hawking swifts and swallows wing.

The air is sweet with apple bloom, And sweet the laid dust down the lane, The meadow's marge of calamus, And sweet the robins in the rain.

O greening time of bloom and song!

O fragrant days of tender pain!

The wet, the warm, the sweet young days With robins singing in the rain.

CHAPTER XI

TURTLE EGGS FOR AGa.s.sIZ

I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the four volumes of Aga.s.siz's "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States." I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are a monumental work, the fruit of vast and heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the United States, and their life-history. The work was published more than half a century ago, but it looked old beyond its years--ma.s.sive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks; and I soon turned with a sigh from the weary learning of its plates and diagrams to look at the preface.

Then, reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:--

"In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Th.o.r.eau of Concord; ... and from Mr.

J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro." And then it hastens on with the thanks in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only thing of real importance in all the world.

Turtles are important--interesting; so is the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. Indeed any reverend gentleman who would catch turtles for Aga.s.siz must have been interesting. If Aga.s.siz had only put a chapter into his turtle book about him! and as for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro (at the end of the quotation) I know that he was interesting; for years later, he was an old college professor of mine.

He told me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars which Aga.s.siz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the thousands--brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle _eggs_ to Cambridge--_brought_ them, I should say; and all there is to show for it, so far as I could discover, is a small drawing of a bit of one of the eggs!

Of course, Aga.s.siz wanted to make that drawing, and had to have a _fresh_ turtle egg to draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it.

A great man, when he wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he gets some one else to get it for him. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell us about the getting of it.

It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them.

Nothing at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find them. So with anything else. But if you want turtle eggs _when_ you want them, and are bound to have them, then you must--get Mr.

Jenks, or somebody else to get them for you.

Aga.s.siz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them--not a minute over three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hens'

eggs only three hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private turtle-coop in Harvard College Yard; and provided he could have made his turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-sc.r.a.ps and the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud turtle's nest in the back yard to his work-table in the laboratory; but to get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this might have called for nice and discriminating work--as it did.

Aga.s.siz had been engaged for a long time upon his "Contributions." He had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single exception of one--the very earliest. That beginning stage had brought the "Contributions" to a halt. To get eggs that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been impossible.

There were several ways that Aga.s.siz might have proceeded: he might have got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of that--as those who are college professors and naturalists know.

As this was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing--asked Mr. Jenks of Middleboro to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them.

Aga.s.siz knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating thing is, that Aga.s.siz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, at least in the preface to his monumental work.

It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college professor, told me how he got those eggs to Aga.s.siz.

"I was princ.i.p.al of an academy, during my younger years," he began, "and was busy one day with my cla.s.ses, when a large man suddenly filled the doorway of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Aga.s.siz.

"Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to me across the room.

"Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only once.

"When I promised Aga.s.siz those eggs, I knew where I was going to get them. I had got turtle eggs there before--at a particular patch of sandy sh.o.r.e along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy.

"Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles.

Forty miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and got the trip down to two hours,--record time:--driving from the pond to the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays.

"Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we didn't figure on was the turtle." And he paused abruptly.