Through Magic Glasses and Other Lectures Part 13

I have called it a "marine city," and now I will tell you why. Take the piece in your hand and run your finger gently up and down it; you will glide quite comfortably from the lower to the higher part of the leaf, but when you come back you will feel your finger catch slightly on a rough surface. Your pocket lens will show why this is, for if you look through it at the surface of the leaf you will see it is not smooth, but composed of hundreds of tiny alcoves with arched tops; and on each side of these tops stand two short blunt spines (see 2, Fig. 72), making four in all, pointing upwards, so as partly to cover the alcove above. As your finger went up it glided over the spines, but on coming back it met their points. This is all you can see in the dead specimen; I must show you the rest by diagrams, and by and by under the microscope.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 72.

The Sea-mat or Fl.u.s.tra (_Fl.u.s.tra foliacea._)

1, Natural size. 2, Much magnified. _s_, Slit caused by drawing in of the animal _a_.]

First, then, in the living specimen which I have here, those alcoves are not open as in the dead piece, but covered over with a transparent skin, in which, near the top of the alcove just where the curve begins, is a slit (_s_ 2, Fig. 72). Unfortunately the membrane covering this alcove is too dense for you to distinguish the parts within. Presently, however, if you are watching a piece of this living leaf in a flat water-cell under the microscope, you will see the slit slowly open, and begin to turn as it were inside out, exactly like the finger of a glove, which has been pushed in at the tip, gradually rises up when you put your finger inside it. As this goes on, a bundle of threads appears, at first closed like a bud, but gradually opening out into a crown of tentacles (_a_, Fig. 72), each one clothed with hairs. Then you will see that the slit was not exactly a slit after all, but the round edge where the sac was pushed in. Ah! you will say, you are now showing me a polyp like those on the sertularian tree. Not so fast, my friend; you have not yet studied what is still under the covering skin and hidden in the living animal. I have, however, prepared a slide with this membrane removed (see Fig. 73), and there you can observe the different parts, and learn that each one of these alcoves contains a complete animal, and not merely one among many mouths, like the polyp on the Sertularia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 73.

Diagram of the animal in the Fl.u.s.tra or Sea-mat.

1, Animal protruding. 2, Animal retracted in the sheath. _sh_, Covering sheath. _s_, Slit. _t_, Tentacles. _m_, Mouth. _th_, Throat. _st_, Stomach. _i_, Intestine. _r_, Retractor muscle. _e_, Egg-forming parts.

_g_, Nerve-ganglion.]

Each of these little beings (_a_, Fig 72) living in its alcove has a mouth, throat, stomach, intestine, muscles, and nerves starting from the ganglion of nervous matter, besides all that is necessary for producing eggs and sending forth young ones. You can trace all these under the microscope (see 2, Fig. 73) as the creature lies curiously doubled up in its bed, with its body bent in a loop; the intestine _i_, out of which the refuse food pa.s.ses, coming back close up to the slit. When it is at rest, the top of the sac in which it lies is pulled in by the retractor muscle _r_, and looks, as I have said, like the finger of a glove with the top pushed in. When it wishes to feed, this top is drawn out by muscles running round the sac, and the tentacles open and wave in the water (1, Fig. 73).

Look now at the alcoves, the homes of these animals; see how tiny they are and how closely they fit together. Mr. Gosse, the naturalist, has reckoned that there are 6720 alcoves in a square inch; then if you turn the leaf over you will see that there is another set, fixed back to back with these, on the other side, making in all 13,440 alcoves. Now a moderate-sized leaf of fl.u.s.tra measures about three square inches, taking all the rounded lobes into account, so you will see we get 40,320 as a rough estimate of the number of beings on this one leaf. But if you look at this tuft I have brought, you will find it is composed of twelve such leaves, and this after all is a very small part of the ma.s.s growing round my pool. Was I wrong, then, when I said that my miniature ocean contains as many millions of beings as there are stars in the heavens?

You will want to know how these leaves grew, and it is in this way.

First a little free swimming animal, a mere living sac provided with lashes, settles down and grows into one little h.o.r.n.y alcove, with its live creature inside, which in time sends off from it three to five buds, forming alcoves all round the top and sides of the first one, growing on to it. These again bud out, and you can thus easily understand that, in this way, in time a good-sized leaf is formed.

Meanwhile the creatures also send forth new swimming cells, which settle down near to begin new leaves, and thus a tuft is formed; and long after the beings in earlier parts of the leaf have died and left their alcoves empty, those round the margin are still alive and spreading.

With this history we must stop for to-day, and I expect it will be many weeks before you have thoroughly examined the specimens of each kind which I have put in the aquarium. If you can trace the spore-cells and urns in the seaweeds, observe the polyps in the Sertularia, and count the number of mouths on a branch of my animal fringe (_Sertularia tenella_); if you make acquaintance with the Thuricolla in its vase, and are fortunate enough to see one divide in two; if you learn to know some of the beautiful forms of diatoms, and can picture to yourselves the life of the tiny inhabitants of the Fl.u.s.tra; then you will have used your microscope with some effect, and be prepared for an expedition to my pool, where we will go together some day to seek new treasures.

CHAPTER IX

THE DARTMOOR PONIES,

OR

THE WANDERINGS OF THE HORSE TRIBE

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Put away the telescopes and microscopes to-day, boys, the holidays are close at hand, and we will take a rest from peeping and peering till we come back in the autumn laden with specimens for the microscope, while the rapidly darkening evenings will tempt us again on to the lawn star-gazing. On this our last lecture-day I want you to take a journey with me which I took in imagination a few days ago, as I lay on my back on the sunny moor and watched the Dartmoor ponies.

It was a calm misty morning one day last week, giving promise of a bright and sunny day, when I started off for a long walk across the moor to visit the famous stone-circles, many of which are to be found not far off the track, called Abbot's Way, leading from Buckfast Abbey, on the Dart, to the Abbey of Tavistock, on the Tavy.

My mind was full of the olden times as I pictured to myself how, seven hundred years or more ago, some Benedictine monk from Tavistock Abbey, in his black robe and cowl, paced this narrow path on his way to his Cistercian brethren at Buckfast, meeting some of them on his road as they wandered over the desolate moor in their white robes and black scapularies in search of stray sheep. For the Cistercians were shepherds and wool-weavers, while the Benedictines devoted themselves to learning, and the track of about twenty-five miles from one abbey to the other, which still remains, was worn by the members of the two communities and their dependents, the only variety in whose lives consisted probably in these occasional visits one to the other.

Yet even these monks belonged to modern times compared to the ancient Britons who raised the stone-circles, and buried their dead in the barrows scattered here and there over the moor; and my mind drifted back to the days when, long before that pathway was worn, men clad in the skins of beasts hunted wild animals over the ground on which I was treading, and lived in caves and holes of the ground.

I wondered, as I thought of them, whether the cultured monks and the uncivilised Britons delighted as much in the rugged scenery of the moor as I did that morning. For many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly upon the ma.s.s of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to s.h.i.+mmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the _tors_, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of the day.

The cattle which were scattered in groups here and there feeding on the dewy gra.s.s were enjoying the happiest time of the year. The moor, which in winter affords them scarcely a bare subsistence, is now richly covered with fresh young gra.s.s, and the st.u.r.dy oxen fed solemnly and deliberately, while the wild Dartmoor ponies and their colts scampered joyously along, shaking their manes and long flowing tails, and neighing to each other as they went; or cl.u.s.tered together on some verdant spot, where the colts teased and bit each other for fun, as they gambolled round their mothers.

It was a pleasure, there on the open moor, with the lark soaring overhead, and the b.u.t.terflies and bees hovering among the sweet-smelling furze blossoms, to see horses free and joyous, with no thought of bit or bridle, harness or saddle, whose hoofs had never been handled by the shoeing-smith, nor their coats touched with the singeing iron. Those little colts, with their thick heads, s.h.a.ggy coats, and flowing tails, will have at least two years more freedom before they know what it is to be driven or beaten. Only once a year are they gathered together, claimed by their owners and branded with an initial, and then left again to wander where they will. True, it is a freedom which sometimes has its drawbacks, for if the winter is severe the only food they can get will be the furze-tops, off which they sc.r.a.pe the snow with their feet; yet it is very precious in itself, for they can gallop when and where they choose, with head erect, sniffing at the wind and crying to each other for the very joy of life.

Now as I strolled across the moor and watched their gambols, thinking how like free wild animals they seemed, my thoughts roamed far away, and I saw in imagination scenes where other untamed animals of the horse tribe are living unfettered all their lives long.

First there rose before my mind the level gra.s.s-covered pampas of South America, where wild horses share the boundless plains with troops of the rhea, or American ostrich, and wander, each horse with as many mares as he can collect, in companies of hundreds or even thousands in a troop.

These horses are now truly wild, and live freely from youth to age, unless they are unfortunate enough to be caught in the more inhabited regions by the la.s.so of the hunter. In the broad pampas, the home of herds of wild cattle, they dread nothing. There, as they roam with one bold stallion as their leader, even beasts of prey hesitate to approach them, for, when they form into a dense ma.s.s with the mothers and young in their centre, their heels deal blows which even the fierce jaguar does not care to encounter, and they trample their enemy to death in a very short time. Yet these are not the original wild horses we are seeking, they are the descendants of tame animals, brought from Europe by the Spaniards to Buenos Ayres in 1535, whose descendants have regained their freedom on the boundless pampas and prairies.

As I was picturing them careering over the plains, another scene presented itself and took their place. Now I no longer saw around me tall pampas-gra.s.s with the long necks of the rheas appearing above it, for I was on the edge of a dreary scantily covered plain between the Aral Sea and the Balkash Lake in Tartary. To the south lies a barren sandy desert, to the north the fertile plains of the Kirghiz steppes, where the Tartar feeds his flocks, and herds of antelopes gallop over the fresh green pasture; and between these is a kind of no-man's land, where low scanty shrubs and stunted gra.s.s seemed to promise but a poor feeding-ground.

Yet here the small long-legged but powerful "Tarpans," the wild horses of the treeless plains of Russia and Tartary, were picking their morning meal. St.u.r.dy wicked little fellows they are, with their s.h.a.ggy light-brown coats, short wiry manes, erect ears, and fiery watchful eyes. They might well be supposed to be true wild horses, whose ancestors had never been tamed by man; and yet it is more probable that even they escaped in early times from the Tartars, and have held their own ever since, over the gra.s.sy steppes of Russia and on the confines of the plains of Tartary. Sometimes they live almost alone, especially on the barren wastes where they have been seen in winter, sc.r.a.ping the snow off the herbage as our ponies do on Dartmoor. At other times, as in the south of Russia, where they wander between the Dnieper and the Don, they gather in vast herds and live a free life, not fearing even the wolves, which they beat to the ground with their hoofs. From one green oasis to another they travel over miles of ground.

"A thousand horse--and none to ride!

With flowing tail, and flying mane, Wide nostrils--never stretch'd by pain, Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein, And feet that iron never shod, And flanks unscarr'd by spur or rod.

A thousand horse, the wild, the free, Like waves that follow o'er the sea."[1]

[1] Byron's _Mazeppa_.

As I followed them in their course I fancied I saw troops of yet another animal of the horse tribe, the "Kulan," or _Equus hemionus_, which is a kind of half horse, half a.s.s (Fig. 74), living on the Kirghiz steppes of Tartary and spreading far beyond the range of the Tarpan into Tibet.

Here at last we have a truly wild animal, never probably brought into subjection by man. The number of names he possesses shows how widely he has spread. The Tartars call him "Kulan," the Tibetans "Kiang," while the Mongolians give him the unp.r.o.nounceable name of "Dschiggetai." He will not submit to any of them, but if caught and confined soon breaks away again to his old life, a "free and fetterless creature."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 74.

_Equus hemionus_, "Kiang" or "Kulan," the Horse-a.s.s of Tartary and Tibet. (Brehm.)]

No one has ever yet settled the question whether he is a horse or an a.s.s, probably because he represents an animal truly between the two.

His head is graceful, his body light, his legs slender and fleet, yet his ears are long and a.s.s-like; he has narrow hoofs, and a tail with a tuft at the end like all the a.s.s tribe; his colour is a yellow brown, and he has a short dark mane and a long dark stripe down his back as a donkey has, though this last character you may also see in many of our Devons.h.i.+re ponies. Living often on the high plateaux, sometimes as much as 1500 feet above the sea, this "child of the steppes" travels in large companies even as far as the rich meadows of Central Asia; in summer wandering in green pastures, and in winter seeking the hunger-steppes where st.u.r.dy plants grow. And when autumn comes the young steeds go off alone to the mountain heights to survey the country around and call wildly for mates, whom, when found, they will keep close to them through all the next year, even though they mingle with thousands of others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 75.

Przevalsky's Wild Horse, the "Kertag" or "Statur."]

Till about ten years ago the _Equus hemionus_ was the only truly wild horse known, but in the winter of 1879-80 the Russian traveller Przevalsky brought back from Central Asia a much more horse-like animal, called by the Tartars "Kertag" and by the Mongols "Statur." It is a clumsy, thick-set, whitish-gray creature with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-coloured head; its legs have a red tint down to the knees, beyond which they are blackish down to the hoofs. But the ears are small, and it has the broad hoofs of the true horse, and warts on his hind legs, which no animal of the a.s.s tribe has. This horse, like the Kiang, travels in small troops of from five to fifteen, led through the wildest parts of the Dsungarian desert, between the Altai and Tianschan Mountains, by an old stallion. They are extremely shy, and see, hear, and smell very quickly, so that they are off like lightning whenever anything approaches them.

So having travelled over America, Europe, and Asia, was my quest ended?

No; for from the dreary Asiatic deserts my thoughts wandered to a far warmer and more fertile land, where between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea rise the lofty highlands of Abyssinia, among which the African wild a.s.s (_Asinus taeniopus_), the probable ancestor of our donkeys, feeds in troops on the rich gra.s.ses of the slopes, and then onwards to the bank of a river in Central Africa where on the edge of a forest, with rich pastures beyond, elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes and buffaloes, lions and hyaenas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. There I saw the herds of Zebras in all their striped beauty coming down from the mountain regions to the north, and mingling with the darker-coloured but graceful quaggas from the southern plains, and I half-grieved at the thought how these untamed and free rovers are being slowly but surely surrounded by man closing in upon them on every side.

I might now have travelled still farther in search of the Onager, or wild a.s.s of the Asiatic and Indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented itself, as I flung myself down on the moor to ponder over the early history of all these tribes.

Where have they all come from? Where shall we look for the first ancestors of these wild and graceful animals? For the answer to this question I had to travel back to America, to those Western United States where Professor Marsh has made such grand discoveries in horse history.

For there, in the very country where horses were supposed never to have been before the Spaniards brought them a few centuries ago, we have now found the true birthplace of the equine race.

Come back with me to a time so remote that we cannot measure it even by hundreds of thousands of years, and let us visit the territories of Utah and Wyoming. Those highlands were very different then from what they are now. Just risen out of the seas of the Cretaceous Period, they were then clothed with dense forests of palms, tree-ferns, and screw-pines, magnolias and laurels, interspersed with wide-spreading lakes, on the margins of which strange and curious animals fed and flourished. There were large beasts with teeth like the tapir and the bear, and feet like the elephant; and others far more dangerous, half bear, half hyaena, prowling around to attack the clumsy paleotherium or the anoplotherium, something between a rhinoceros and a horse, which grazed by the waterside, while graceful antelopes fed on the rich gra.s.s. And among these were some little animals no bigger than foxes, with four toes and a splint for the fifth, on their front feet, and three toes on the hind ones.

These clumsy little animals, whose bones have been found in the rocks of Utah and Wyoming, have been called _Eohippus_, or horses of the dawn, by naturalists. They were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they belonged to the horse tribe, and already the fifth toe common to most other toed animals was beginning to disappear.

This was in the Eocene period, and before it pa.s.sed away with its screw-pines and tree-ferns, another rather larger animal, called the _Orohippus_, had taken the place of the small one, and he had only four toes on his front feet. The splint had disappeared, and as time went on still other animals followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. First one as large as a sheep (_Mesohippus_) had only three toes and a splint. Then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock of a horse's skeleton.