CHICAGO.
BY W. E. PRATT.
| Am. Herring Gull[4] | 2-4 | 20 | 2-5 | 2-4 |
| Hooded Sheldrake | 2-18 | 4 | ||
| Red Crossbill | 2-18 | 2 | ||
| White-r. Shrike | 2-18 | 1 | ||
| Shore Lark | 2-18 | 100 | 2-22 | 2-18 |
| Bluebird | 2-22 | 12[5] | 2-23 | |
| Sparrow Hawk? | 2-22 | 4 | ||
| Red-tailed ” | 2-22 | 1 |
[4]A winter resident here when the lake (Michigan) is free of ice.
[5]All males.
The Red-breasted Sheldrake and Black-capped Chickadee, winter residents, were also observed.
Those interested in bird migration will, we hope, read our “Notes” with interest. We wish to thank those who forwarded reports for their aid; and would be pleased to receive reports from all. Those wishing to aid us in this department and sending us their address will have the necessary blanks sent them.
Our home reports are meager, owing to the extreme lateness of spring.
To secure insertion, the reports should be sent not later than the 15th of each month.
CONCHOLOGY.
For The Hawkeye O. and O. HOW TO COLLECT AND PREPARE CONCHOLOGICAL SPECIMENS.
BY J. A. SINGLEY.
The editors having given me permission to ride my “hobby,” I intend to give brief but full instructions on the above as well as make a few remarks on matters connected with a collection. There are many collectors who can profit by what I write, but these notes are intended mainly for the class to which I belonged about 23 years ago, i. e.: the young collector and the beginner. Had I had these instructions then it would have saved me many a false step aside from doing some things that, while not very serious mistakes, might be called “verdant.”
I want, in the first place, to point out the advantages of collecting shells. Collecting can be done all the year round in many localities; and on the sea-shore there is no intermission. There is no climbing of trees as in egg collecting, and no danger of broken bones. Shells are not easily broken, are much handsomer than eggs; and, best of all, a shell always carries its name about with it, while you must take your correspondent’s word for the egg. And tho’ some oologists profess to be able to identify a species by the egg alone, I am bound to say that after several years of professional collecting in oology, that in the majority of cases a species can not be determined from the eggs.
The first thing a collector thinks of when a species of any kind is obtained is the identifying or determination. The Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C., or the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, Pa., will always determine specimens sent them for that purpose. In sending out specimens for naming be generous. Send all that you can spare—and perfect specimens too, as it is impossible to make a positive determination from weathered, worn or broken specimens. Don’t ask that the specimens be returned to you, but present them to the institutions or individuals to whom you sent them for naming. Besides the institutions named above there are many of our prominent naturalists who make a specialty of conchology and will name any specimens sent to them for determination. One thing I wish to warn the beginner against is submitting his collections to an amateur and depending on his labeling. This was one of the “verdant” things of which I was guilty.
The beginner in land and freshwater shells will probably vote such a pursuit as “slow” when he first commences. After making a few exchanges and seeing the diversity of form, color, and sculpturing, he will become interested and begin making comparisons. He is then on the right road to knowledge, and as he adds species after species to his collection from land, river, or lake and sea, the hobby will grow on him and it will not be dropped when entering a business life as is the case with postage stamps and eggs, but the collection will be kept up and give many an hour’s recreation when worried with the cares of life.
Another advantage of such a collection is that you don’t offend those æsthetic people who are horrified at the idea of collecting birds and eggs and give us “fits” for “murdering” and “robbing” the poor birds. To tell the truth, after years of collecting and becoming “hardened” to it a guilty feeling sometimes comes over me when taking a set of eggs.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
MINERALOGY.
For The Hawkeye O. and O. THE SCIENTIST.
BY H. F. HEGNER, DECORAH, IOWA.
But now he stands upon the sandy beach with the breakers in sight, his eyes attracted to the sea weeds and pearly shells at his feet. He is interested, and examines them carefully. Some of the shells he finds inhabited, and, as he is a naturalist, is soon acquainted with each specific form, and has a learned name for it. But he also finds a real architect in the delicate tinted coral branches at his feet. Around the head and mouth of this little creature, serving as arms for obtaining food, he finds a number of tentacles. “Nature has given you a goodly work to do, little architect,” cries the naturalist, “and these tentacles are well adapted to your animal wants. Polypus is many armed, and henceforth, most scientifically, your name shall be polyp!”
And then he begins a pleasing study. Zoophytes he finds everywhere, spreading their beautiful architectural works along the continental borders.
He crosses the stormy Atlantic, weighing the mighty power that drives the storm. On, on through the quiet Indian ocean, the phosphorescent Indian ocean, naming and collecting myriad living forms, until he reaches the beautiful Polynesia, where, spread out in the tropical sun are the coral reefs—monuments of submerged islands—with an epitaph to the departed written in living characters around each placid lagoon.
The scientist, though, can read and understand; it is not beyond his conception; and bringing together these epitaphs, he forms a perfect image of those submerged lands. Vegetation and animalization, well defined, are as clear in his imagination as though, even now, the white sunlight were reflected from those ancient islands, forming a perfect image on the retina.
He studies hard, and his conclusions, builded on the material laws of nature, are reliable; and now he returns to civilization honored and respected, bringing the material of his researches to the civilized world.
There are other phenomena tho’, fully as grand as coral islands and polyps, and he is soon in the field of work again. The gallant ship carries him through the wintry northern seas, with their ice mountains towering beneath an enfeebled sun, to the realms of perpetual snow. Past Greenland’s milky glaciers that feed the Arctic main with ice mountains. Past the struggling crater of Mount Hecla, where, bound by the king of these ultimate realms, the Fire Demon struggles to be free, groaning out the essence of wrath from his fiery nostril in moulten rivers that are petrified by the rigid Ice King, and added to the adamantine chains with which he is bound; on, on to the north through a world of icebergs that moan and groan as though they were fettered in this desolate waste of frozen sea, to bar the explorer from the frosty Ice King’s ultimate throne, the North Pole. But no; the scientific mind knows no defeat, and he toils on over the icy fields, while the sun, aweary with his long vigil, sinks further and further in the horizon, as though he could no longer banish the sleep from his eyes, when lo!—an open Polar sea stretches away to the northward, breaking against a rocky, mountainous coast.
Filled with the joy of first discovery, the scientist voices the language of his soul in one grand apostrophe: “Oh restless Polar sea, that breaks upon this rock-bound coast, and spreads away, I know not where, e’en as Eternity, had I but my gallant ship, I’d sail thy tossing main!”
Sadly he toils back to the south, and none to soon. Creaking and roaring the massive icebergs among, on comes the tempest, and the scientist is thankful for the much needed shelter. The sun, too, has deserted him, and the grand aurora borealis, like a flaming sword above the lost Eden, seems to guard the Arctic realms, while sparkling gems glitter on each icy pinnacle.
The Arctic winter, which but for the aurora borealis would be black as the inkiest night, passes slowly away. Oh, how cold and gloomy it is! How the explorer struggles and struggles with the rigid Ice King, eagerly waiting for the departed sun to return and rescue him, and at last his anxious watch is rewarded. The east puts on the blush of modesty, a sure prophesy of his majesty’s return, and immediately his welcome face appears. As he comes up the way, the icebergs part to let him pass, and the gallant ship, freed from her rigid chains, sails onward to the south.
Thus, even thus it is that the scientist toils on and on in a masterly search for truth. Is it for glory or wealth that he dares this? No; the luxuries of civilization are even like contagion in his estimation, and with a Stoical spirit that is grand, he leads a purely intellectual life, drawing from Nature her richest treasures which she is only too glad to give. His wisdom is like a rich soil in which the seeds of knowledge and virtue germinate. He is a lover of truth, and in Nature he finds his ideal.
Natural phenomena become beautified before his studious mind, and the lower animal forms teach him objective lessons of wisdom, that, by their very simplicity, are deeply impressed on his memory.
Even in the profound laws of chemistry and astronomy he finds a beauty that is irresistable and studies them until he develops a giant intellect. He can see beauty in truth; he can see truth in Nature; and Nature becomes his inspiration.