The Desman chooses the margin of such places as are convenient for the burrows which it digs under water. These are sometimes seven yards in length, and are used as hiding-places. The water freezes over these entrances, and numbers of the animals are suffocated every winter. If there are any cracks or fissures in the ice, they crowd to them, eagerly thrusting their noses up to get the air.
The Desman preys at the bottom of the water, and dabbles with its nose in the mud, in search of the small insects which inhabit it. Its senses of touch and smell are very acute; this is rendered necessary from the fact that the animals upon which it preys are silent and invisible. Although nearly blind, it is not a nocturnal animal, but sleeps during the night, at which time it keeps its nose constantly moving, in order, it is supposed, to retain the organs in a proper state for work. Water is indispensable to its existence, and after having remained in a small quantity for any time, it is rendered very offensive from a strong musky odor, from which it derives its common name of musk-rat.
Inquisitive Jack.
CHAPTER II.
About the hen and her chickens.
It seems natural for mankind to love accumulation. When a child has got two or three pieces of money, he wants more, and his desire of increasing his stores, increases with his little wealth. When a person gets together a few minerals, his wish to form a cabinet begins, and in proportion as his collection enlarges, his eagerness for more specimens is stimulated. This love of increase, is what I call a love of accumulation, or a love of laying up.
Nov it is all the same with knowledge. A person who has only a few ideas, is like the child who has only a few coppers; he is usually eager to spend them and get rid of them. But one who has stored his mind with many ideas, is like a person who has commenced a cabinet of minerals: he wishes to increase his collection; he wishes to get new specimens, and is delighted with those which are rare and beautiful.
Now, our hero, Jack, was just in this condition: he had begun his mental cabinet of knowledge; he had learned a good deal about insects; and he had entered the gate of a new and beautiful science—Ornithology—or the study of birds. How little did he think that his acquaintance with the wren family had advanced him so far into the delightful mysteries of science. Yet so it was. He now began to notice other birds, such as the blue-bird, which belongs only to America; the sparrows and finches, which build their nests in the hedges and bushes, and sing so sweetly.
About this time his attention was very strongly attracted by a hen and her chickens. Jack had himself set the hen; that is, he had put the eggs under her, there being thirteen; for he was told that an even number was unlucky, and an uneven number lucky; a notion, by the way, that is very common, but utterly destitute of foundation. He was told that the eggs would be hatched in just three weeks, and so it proved.