“But dear to my heart as were these familiar tokens, how quickly were they all forgotten in my contemplation simply of a little stone that lay upon a patch of mold directly at my elbow, and my wandering eyes were riveted upon it, for it seemed as though in the universal quickening even this also had taken life.
“I can see it this moment. It moves again, and yet again, until now, with a final effort, it is lifted from its setting and rolled away, while in its place there protrudes from the ground a chrysalis risen from its sepulcher. Filled with wonder, I sit and watch as though in a dream, awaiting the revelation from this mysterious earthly messenger, when suddenly the encasement swells and breaks, the cerements are burst, and the strange shape gives birth to the form of a beautiful moth—a tender, trembling thing, which emerges from the empty shell and creeps quivering upon an overhanging spray.
“Now followed that beautiful and wonderous unfolding of the winged life—the softly-falling crumpled folds, the quivering pulsations of the new-born wings eager for their flight, until at length their glory shone in purity and perfection—a trial flutter, and the perfect being took wing and flew away!
“Thus did I become a votary to that science known as ‘entomology.’ What wonder, then, that it should yield to me in after life a winged significance, a spirit of unrest that bursts the shell of mere terminology, and enjoys a realm of resource not found in books, except, indeed, between the lines? For the entomology which I would seek is not yet written, and it is beyond my conception that any one among its votaries could witness unmoved by its deeper impress a spectacle such as this, or could find through the retina of science alone an ample insight.”
It is a curious feature of his experience that even the birds and the beasts seemed to feel this sympathy of his, and permitted him to take such liberties with them as they seldom grant. So many stories of his power and its exercise have gone out, that it seems best to let him give his own version of it. The first instances are narrated in a letter written from the Thorn Mountain House, Jackson, New Hampshire, in September, 1883:
“Among other things that Mrs. Farr has confided to a few of her newly made friends at the Intervale, is my remarkable power over animals and birds, by which I take them in my hand alive in the woods, and tame them. But while this idea of hers originally started in a joke, I am gradually becoming convinced that I have the power she attributes to me, but fail to develop or utilize it. On the very day she first spread the rumor, I walked with herself and husband in Cathedral Woods. He espied a squirrel jumping along the pine needles with a cone in his mouth. I suddenly conceived the notion to capture him. I followed him for a few paces and finally succeeded in placing my hand over him and catching him, holding him in my hand for several minutes afterward, as my fingers still bear witness from the network of scratches they exhibit. On the following day I almost caught a chick-a-dee, and to cap the climax, of all things, to-day, after dinner, while sitting on the porch I observed what I supposed to be a day-sphinx hovering over a bed of flowers across the lawn. I approached and soon discovered it to be a humming-bird, and was about to turn back when the thought suggested itself to try and catch the little fellow. Accordingly I approached and watched him closely for a moment or two, drawing nearer and nearer the while. He soon seemed to get accustomed to my presence and came to sip the honey from some verbenas at my feet. I lowered my hand slowly, and closed it about his tiny body with perfect ease and he seemed to make no effort to release himself. I took him to my room and closing the windows gave him wing. I played with him for nearly an hour and he at length became so tame that he would alight upon my finger and jump from one finger to another placed in front of him, and even preen his feathers. He was a dear little creature and I almost wanted to keep him. He would alight upon the window shutter, and when I held my finger an inch or so in front of him he would jump on it and fluff out his feathers. I could pick him up at any moment and lay him on his back in my hand, where he would remain perfectly quiet, with his bright black eyes moving all about as alive as could be. At length I concluded to give him his freedom, but in order first to allow the guests of the house an opportunity to see my diminutive captive, I tied a long piece of cotton twine loosely in one knot about one of his tiny feet and thus exhibited him. The twine was so heavy that it eased his occasional flight and the softness of it prevented injury to his foot. When all had seen him I cut the string close to his leg and away he went like the wind, no doubt taking his first opportunity to pick off the loose fold of string still dangling to his leg. Once before I almost picked a humming-bird from a flower, and I believe I can do it again and again with a few trials. So I feel less than ever like disabusing the mind of Mrs. Farr of what at first seemed so incredible and improbable.”
In the chapter on “Woodnotes” in “Happy Hunting Grounds” Gibson describes the incident which was mentioned by Dr. Raymond at his funeral. He was once standing in line with many others at the polls in a voting-place in Brooklyn, when a dove flew down and into the room, and came straight to him, alighting upon his shoulder. No one in the place knew anything about the bird, or had ever seen it before. No one could see why it should have chosen him over all others in the group of voters. Possibly Mr. Gibson’s own explanation will have to answer. In his note of the incident he says, “I remarked to the bystanders, ‘That bird knows a good Republican when he sees one.’”
Others also recall the incident of Dr. Abbott’s visit to Washington, when Mr. Gibson pointed out a bird in a near-by tree and began to describe its peculiar markings. Soon he rose impulsively, went up to the tree, reached out for the bird, and took the little creature in his hand, without its appearing in the least alarmed or hurt. Then, when he had finished his description and thus illustrated it from life, he replaced his specimen in the tree, whence it flew away. He certainly seemed to have that about him which made even the birds feel that he loved them and meant them no harm.
His crowning work as a naturalist was done in the lectures upon the cross-fertilization of plants which fascinated so many audiences with the novel story of one of nature’s most amazing manifestations of adaptation and of resource. For years he had been a careful student of Sprengel, Darwin, and Müller, whose experiments and studies he supplemented with careful observations of his own, upon the relations of plant-and insect-life. He accumulated a mass of studies and of notes. He brooded over this theme for years. And at last, driven to utterance, he prepared himself, as few men are able to, for a series of lectures, illustrated with charts of his own invention and his own making. The machinery of these lectures was a superb test of his triple powers as naturalist, as artist, as writer. They were based on a solid and accurate knowledge of natural history. They were illustrated by a master hand in mechanical technique, reinforced by an artist’s skill in drawing and in color. They were set forth in a text which was clear, vivacious, and forceful. They constituted one of the most delightful and popular courses ever given before the American public. His own account of the origin of these lectures is most interesting. He had been in the habit of giving informal talks and lectures upon natural history in his summer home at Washington, illustrating them by rapid sketches on the blackboard. “When I came,” he said, “to touch upon the topic of inter-association and inter-communion of insects and flowers, especially the mechanism of flowers, their movements and forms, I found that I was handicapped, as many other scientists had been, by the difficulty of expressing motion by fixed drawings and descriptions. It occurred to me to make a drawing of the sage-blossom with its tilted stamen fastened on separately to show the movement. This I did. It proved to be a revelation to myself and I made several other sectional charts of flowers and of insects that same summer. They served to demonstrate ocularly and simply, without the slightest effort on the part of my audience, what had heretofore been presented only in difficult technical descriptions. There really seemed to be a new field for work, and I accepted the indications and concentrated my thought upon the theme.” A writer who had been an attendant at these lectures gives this description of them:
“The lecture describes some general principles about a group of flowers and their associated insect-visitors, and while the listener is endeavoring to induce his imagination to form some picture of the process, Mr. Gibson steps to a screen, hangs up and unfolds a beautifully executed sketch of the flower, and gives an ocular demonstration of the thing he has just described. One sees the bee crawl into the sage-blossom, tilt the pivoted stamens, and come out with the pollen upon his back, which burden he is now ready to carry to another blossom, upon whose pistil he partly unloads it. The same busy bee creeps into the pogonia and straightway two powdery anthers are clasped to his side, leaving their visible deposit of yellow dust. The orchids are made to clap sticking-plasters upon their visitors, or to hurl bombshells of pollen on their heads. There is no room for failure to understand. The whole process is demonstrated before the sight, by a mechanism which works to a charm, a visible and artistic unfolding of the most subtle operations of the plant and insect world.”