no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. I took up the chip on which the 10 three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, ex20 posing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their 30 bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accom40 plished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hôtel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never 44. Hôtel des Invalides, a great hospital in Paris for sick and wounded soldiers. learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had 50 my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. NOTES AND QUESTIONS 1. The selection is taken from Walden, an account by Thoreau of his experiences while living in a simple cabin by the shore of a New England lake. 2. Make a list of the historic allusions and references found in the selection and briefly explain the significance of each. 3. Mention some of the facts you have gained from the story or about which your knowledge has been extended. Library Reading. Other stories of insects or animals in Walden, Thoreau; "Ants," Lubbock (in The Beauties of Nature, pp. 58-69); "With Army Ants Somewhere in the Jungle,' Beebe (in The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1917). THE TORTOISE GILBERT WHITE A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the house where I am now visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it discovers very little inclination toward food, but in the height of summer grows voracious, and then 10 as the summer declines, its appetite declines; so that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its favorite dish. In a neighboring village one was kept till, by tradition, it was supposed to be a hundred years old-an instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile! On the first of November I remarked 20 that the old tortoise began first to dig the ground, in order to the form ing of its hibernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and throws it up over its back with its hind; but the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock. Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night and day 10 in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the cavity; but as the noons of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth, by the heat of the middle of the day; and though I continued there till the thirteenth of November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher weather and frosty mornings would have 20 quickened its operations. No part of its behavior ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and 30 running its head up in a corner. If attended to, it becomes an excellent weather-glass; for as sure as it walks elate, and as it were, on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in a morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach, as well as 40 lungs, and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first awakened, it eats nothing; nor again in the autumn before it retires. Through the height of the summer it feeds voraciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it kind offices; for as soon as the good The old Sussex tortoise has now become my property. I dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by hissing; and, packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in postchaises. The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice 70 down to the bottom of my garden; however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried itself in the loose mold, and continues still concealed. As it will be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging my observations on its mode of life and propensities; and perceive already that, toward the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing-place in the so ground near its head, requiring, I conclude, a freer respiration as it becomes more alive. This creature not only goes under the earth from the middle of November to the middle of April, but sleeps a great part of the summer; for it goes to bed, in the longest days, at four in the afternoon, and often does not stir in the morning till late. Besides, it retires to rest at every 90 shower, and does not move at all in wet days. When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of 55. "the ox knoweth," etc., see Isaiah, i, 3. 10 wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than twothirds of its existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers. While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, with the thermometer at 50, brought forth troops of shell-snails; and, at the same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mold and put out its head; and the next morning came forth, as it were raised from the dead, and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence! a very amusing 20 occurrence! to see such a similarity of feeling between two qɛQέotxot, φερέοικοι, for so the Greeks call both the shellsnail and the tortoise. Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to undervalue his abilities and depreciate his powers of instinct. Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, Much too wise to walk into a well; 30 and has so much discernment as not to fall down an ha-ha, but will stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot sun, because his thick shell, when once heated, would, as the poet says of solid armor, "scald with safety." He therefore spends the more sultry hours under the um40 brella of a cabbage leaf or amidst the waving forests of an asparagus bed. But as he avoids the heat in summer, so, in the decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal beams by getting within the reflection of a fruit wall; and though he never has 21. Epέoxo, house-bearers. 28. Mr. Pope, Alexander Pope, English poet (1688-1744). read that planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth, he inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray. Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embarrassed reptile: to be cased in a suit of ponderous armor which he cannot lay aside; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his own shell, must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year, usually the beginning of 60 June, when his exertions are remarkable. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning; and traversing the garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will escape if possible; and often has eluded the care of the gardener, and wandered to some distant field. NOTES AND QUESTIONS 1. This selection is taken from Gilbert White's A Natural History of Selborne. Through many years the author watched the habits of insects and animals and wrote down what he saw; how long had this land tortoise been kept under observation? 2. Discuss the following topics: the food of the tortoise; his preparation of winter quarters; his fear of rain; his attitude toward strangers. 3. Make a list of the author's observations concerning the old Sussex tortoise. Library Reading. "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz," Sharp (in The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1910). FORMATION OF CORAL REEFS LOUIS AGASSIZ Every zone of the earth's surface has its own animals, suited to the conditions under which they are meant to live; and, with the exception of those that accompany man in all his pilgrimages, and are subject to the same modifying influences by which he adapts his home and himself to all climates, animals are absolutely bound by the laws of their nature within the range assigned to them. Nor is this the case only on land, where river banks, lake shores, and mountain ranges might be supposed to form the impassable boundaries that keep ani10 mals within certain limits; but the ocean, as well as the land, has its faunæ and floræ bound within their respective zoological and botanical provinces; and a wall of granite is not more impassable to a marine animal than that ocean line, fluid, and flowing, and ever-changing though it be, on which is written for him, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther.” 20 One word as to the effect of pressure on animals will explain this. We all live under the pressure of the atmosphere. Now, thirty-two feet under the sea doubles that pressure, since a column of water of that height is equal in weight to the pressure of one atmosphere. At the depth of thirty-two feet, then, any marine animal is under the pressure of two 30 atmospheres-that of the air, which surrounds our globe, and of a weight of water equal to it; at sixty-four feet he is under the pressure of three atmospheres, and so on-the weight of one atmosphere being always added for every thirty-two feet of depth. There is a great difference in the sensitiveness of animals to this pressure. Some fishes live at a great depth, and 40 find the weight of water genial to them; while others would be killed at once by the same pressure; and the latter naturally seek the shallow waters. Every fisherman knows that he must throw a long line for halibut, while with a common fishing-rod he will catch plenty of perch from the rocks near the shore; and the differ18. Hitherto, etc., see Job, xxxviii, 11. ently colored bands of seaweed revealed by low tides show that the 50 floræ as well as the faunæ of the ocean have their precise boundaries. Of all air-breathing animals, none exhibits a more surprising power of adapting itself to great and rapid changes of external influences than the condor. It may be seen feeding on the seashore under a burning tropical sun, and then, rising from its repast, it floats up among the highest 60 summits of the Andes, and is lost to sight beyond them, miles above the line of perpetual snow, where the temperature must be lower than that of the Arctics. But even the condor, sweeping at one flight from tropic heat to arctic cold, although it passes through greater changes of temperature, does not undergo such changes of pressure as a fish that rises from a 70 depth of sixty-four feet to the surface of the sea; for the former remains within the limits of one atmosphere; while the latter, at a depth of sixty-four feet, is under a weight equal to that of three such atmospheres, which is reduced to one when it reaches the sea-level. The change is proportionally greater for those fishes that come from a depth of several hundred feet. 80 These laws of limitation in space explain many facts in the growth of coral reefs that would be otherwise inexplicable, and which I now will endeavor to make clear to my readers. For a long time it was supposed that the reef-builders inhabited very deep waters, for they were sometimes brought up on sounding-lines from a depth of many hundreds, or even 90 thousands, of feet, and it was taken for granted that they must have had their home where they were found; but the facts recently ascertained respecting the subsidence of ocean-bottoms have shown that the foundation of a coral wall may have sunk far below the place where it was laid. And it is now proved, beyond a doubt, that no reef-building coral can thrive at a depth of more than fifteen fathoms, though corals of other kinds occur far lower, and that the dead reefcorals, sometimes brought to the surface from much greater depths, are only broken fragments of some reef 10 that has subsided with the bottom on which it was growing. But though fifteen fathoms is the maximum depth, at which any reef-builder can prosper, there are many which will not sustain even that degree of pressure; and this fact has, as we shall see, an important influence on the structure of the reef. Imagine now a sloping shore on some tropical coast descending gradu20 ally below the surface of the sea. Upon that slope, at a depth of from ten to twelve or fifteen fathoms, and two or three or more miles from the mainland, according to the shelving of the shore, we will suppose that one of those little coral animals, to whom a home in such deep waters is genial, has established itself. How it happens that such a being, which we know 30 is immovably attached to the ground, and forms the foundation of a solid wall, was ever able to swim freely about in the water till it found a suitable resting-place, I shall explain hereafter, when I say something of the mode of reproduction of these animals. Accept, for the moment, my unsustained assertion, and plant our little coral on this sloping shore, 40 some twelve or fifteen fathoms below the surface of the sea. The internal structure of such a coral corresponds to that of the seaanemone. The body is divided by vertical partitions from top to bottom, leaving open chambers between; while in the center hangs the digestive cav 4. fathom, a measure-about six feet. 43. seaanemone, marine animal, in form and color like a plant. ity, connected by an opening in the bottom with all these chambers. At the top is an aperture serving as a 50 mouth, surrounded by a wreath of hollow tentacles, each one of which connects at its base with one of the chambers, so that all parts of the animal communicate freely with each other. But though the structure of the coral is identical in all its parts with that of the sea-anemone, it nevertheless presents one important difference. The body of the sea-anemone 60 is soft, while that of the coral is hard. It is well known that all animals and plants have the power of appropriating to themselves and assimilating the materials they need, each selecting from the surrounding elements whatever contributes to its well-being. Now corals possess, in an extraordinary degree, the power of assimilating to themselves the lime contained in 70 the salt water around them; and as soon as our little coral is established on a firm foundation, a lime deposit begins to form in all the walls of its body, so that its base, its partitions, and its outer wall, which in the seaanemone remain always soft, become perfectly solid in the polyp coral, and form a frame as hard as bone. It may naturally be asked where so the lime comes from in the sea which the corals absorb in such quantities. As far as the living corals are concerned the answer is easy, for an immense deal of lime is brought down to the ocean by rivers that wear away the lime deposits through which they pass. The Mississippi, whose course lies through extensive lime regions, brings down yearly lime enough to supply 90 all the animals living in the Gulf of Mexico. When the coral has become in this way permeated with lime, all parts 78. polyp coral, coral still in the soft stage. |