Wild Pastures

by Winthrop Packard

The meadow was flowed intermittently for a century; then the pond grew out of it. Not only might no seedlings find roothold there, but the very black muck in which they might grow was washed away from the roots of the great stumps. These, in the main, have endured, losing their bark and sap-wood, but with the heart-wood still firm after the lapse of two centuries.

Here at this ebb tide I read the record of growth of trees that had their beginnings more than three centuries ago. These roots so twine and intertwine that the original sap, drawn from the tender tips, must have nourished any one of several trees indifferently, for heart-wood joins heart-wood in scores of places near the stump and far from it, showing that each tree stood not only on its own roots, but on those of its neighbors all about it; not only was it nourished by its own rootlets, but by those of trees near by. No gale could uproot these swamp cedars. United they stood and divided they might not fall. It is a curious method of growth, and I dare say it obtains in many swamps where the white cedars stand close, but under no other circumstances could it have been revealed to me, casually strolling that way three centuries after it happened.

At high water all these curious roots are submerged and you see only the butts of the trees, numerous miniature islands on which many an alien growth has made port. Here in June the dour and melancholy cassandra disputes the footing of the wild rose, and the huckleberry and sweet-fern twine in loving companionship, afloat as ashore. Here intertwine the sheep laurel and the hard-hack, the meadow-sweet and the marsh St. John’s-wort, garlanding the white skeletons of the ancient trees and making them young again with the odorous promises of spring.

In midsummer, among patches of green and gray moss, you will find tiny, diamond-like globules glistening. These are the clear, dew-like drops of glutinous liquid which gem the leaves of the Drosera, northern representative of the Venus’s fly-trap. This, the Dionaea, catches flies by means of a steel-trap leaf which closes on them when they light on it. This other, the Drosera, is not so active. It attracts insects with its honey dew, holds them with sticky glands, and grips them, little by little, with bristles. It is a curious and beautiful little plant, and one would hardly think it carnivorous to see it adding its diamond ornaments to the floral decorations which beautify the ancient stumps all summer long.

Yet of all the life histories revealed by the pond at low tide I still think that of the Unionidæ the most interesting. You find them all along above and below the margin of the shallow water, their shells most wonderfully streaked with olive-green and pale-yellow in alternate bands, till one might think he had found nodules of malachite which the long-ago glacier had culled from some Labrador ledge and ground to unsymmetrical ovoids before it dropped them on the old-time meadow marge. In certain individuals and certain lights the shells of these obscure creatures send out gleams of green and gold, like gems that have soft fires within them. It is as if an opalescent soul dwelt within, and the thin shell which a crow with his bill may puncture with a blow was so constructed as to hold in the reds and blues of the opalescence, but transmit the greens and gold.

You find many with only the backs of their shells sticking out of the mud. This may be the creature’s natural position, but I find far more of them lying quietly on their sides in the shallow water, rocking gently to and fro in the placid undulations as if they were there but to show me their shining colors. But if you watch one intently for a time you will see him open his shell cautiously and put out one foot. This is his best, for it is all he has and he puts it foremost. It is very white and clean, and it might as well be called his tongue, for with it he licks his food. It is half as long as he is, and when he has put it out as far as he can, or as far as he dares, a fine white fringe grows on its outer margin. Thus he gathers in minute animalculæ or refuse matter from the surface of the mud, for his stomach’s sake.

It is a rather interesting thing to stand by and watch a Unio margaritifera daintily putting away his own particular brand of little necks and mock turtle. At the least untoward sign of interest in the affair, however, he shuts up like a clam, and you will need your pocket-knife if you wish to see more of him.

Where the water is only an inch deep or so over the soft ooze of the bottom you will see where the unio has used this so-called foot as a foot should be used, for he not only stands on it, but walks with its help. These signs are curiously erratic marks drawn as with a sharpened stick for a distance sometimes of yards. If you will inspect the seaward end of this trail you will find a unio in it, generally a young one, for it is he that has left the mark behind him in his travels. For the unio at a certain age is a great traveller; that is, when he is very young. The adults foot it, but the young before they reach their full growth ride, some of them by what you might call the lightning expresses of the pond world.

If you will split a big one at this time of year you will be likely to find within an astonishing number of eggs. These are carried in brood pouches that seem to occupy pretty nearly all the space between the shells. In seeing them you wonder vaguely where there was room for the bearer of this amazing progeny. Just where they are these young unios grow to maturity of a certain sort, forming minute shells which have hooks, forming also peculiar organs of sense. The hooks and the sense organs are provided that they may not miss that free ride which is the privilege of every young unio if he is to reach the period of adolescence.

At the moment of being sent forth from the home shell the golchidium, for that is what the scientific men call the unio at this stage of the affair, begins to hunt, aided by his sense organs, for a thoroughfare. Here he takes the first conveyance, whether the slow coach of the sluggish horn-pout, the bream automobile, or the pickerel flying-machine. To the first fish that comes by he attaches himself, oftentimes to the gills, and there he rides and, like most travelers, continues to develop.