NEW ENGLAND AND NATURE.
TF we may judge from the evidence of books, there now exists in New England a counterpart to the great and growing appreciation of Wild Nature, which has left such a mark on recent English literature. The reckless destruction of animal life in the States, which was noticed not long since in the Spectator, has been mainly confined to the frontier settlements, and the prairies and mountains of the west ; and even had the attention of Congress been drawn earlier to the mischief, it is difficult to see how a needy and greedy popula- tion of frontier farmers could have been induced to protect the creatures which gave them food, or injured their crops, or the forests which hindered their ploughs. Even prudential regard for the future can hardly be expected in face of the pressure of present necessity ; and anything like a general appreciation of the charm of natural scenery or the observa- tion of wild life would naturally be looked for, not among the pioneer population, but in the old countries of the New World. The love of Nature is contemplative ; it demands leisure and thought. Time is essential to its enjoyment ; and though Thoreau showed that money is not, few people would care to endure the life he willingly sought, in order to contem- plate nature at close quarters as an end in itself. But even if the conditions of life were different, we should hardly expect the love of Nature, as we understand it, to develop spontaneously among the vast mountains and plains and rivers of the South and West. Hugeness of natural scenery dazzles more than it charms. It may inspire a Humboldt, but it crushes ordinary minds. The tender and tranquil scenes of Old England, the little hills and brooks, invite familiarity and stimulate curiosity. And so in America it is not among the frowning cliffs of the "Rockies," or the measureless waters of the Mississippi, that the love of Nature has grown up and developed, but in the homely and beautiful woodlands of Old New England. It would be strange if it were not so. Where the inborn bias of the English blood is not diverted but encouraged to pursue its natural bent by conditions like those in the old home, such a revival of a national taste is just what might be expected. And since Burroughs came over to England to bear for himself the songs of the thrush and of the nightingale, and to compare the wild life of our fields with the outdoor sights and sounds of Connecticut, there has grows up a body of literature on the wild life of the old States which bids fair before long to equal or rival our own. Even Fenimore Cooper, in his descriptions of the wanderings of his bunters and trappers, Indian scouts and English travellers, among the forests and lakes of the North, painted the wild life of the woods with a minuteness of detail and depth of feeling which suggests that the readers for whom he wrote were not less in sympathy with the subject than him- self. The works of Thoreau and of W. Burroughs are now American classics ; and to judge by the number of recent works similar in kind and object, the appetite of New England grows by what it feeds on. The coincidence by which people of the same race, and living in the same latitude, but on different sides of the globe, are now eagerly expressing in a common language their pleasure and interest in exactly the same kind of subjects and scenes, though the actual birds and beasts, trees and plants, are often as distinct as the two conti- nents in which they are found, is probably unique. There is no such analogy in taste between England and any of her Colonies as this common love of Nature which finds almost identical expression in the prose idylls of Jefferies and of Burroughs, and the engravings of Wolf and of Mr. Hamilton Gibson. Much of the descriptive work, in addition to the illustrations in a new work by the last-named author, in which, under the title of "Sharp Eyes," he describes and illustrates the changes in the wild life of New Eng- land throughout the year, is as accurate and sympathetic as that of Richard Jefferies himself. His pages almost tempt the reader to collate them with the work of his pre- decessors, and then and there to reconstruct for himself the feeling of spring-time in the Eastern States. The " drum- ming " of the ruffled grouse in the woods is the bird-sound
which, to New England ears, takes the place of the notes of the cuckoo and the wryneck. But, apart from names, the setting seems much like our own April. "The April showers' bring odorous responses from roots and quickening seeds. Then the rocks and bark of trees, and even the old decaying leaves, have a breath and perfume." So writes Mr. Gibson; and so he might of the English spring, when the east wind, which kills all odours, has gone. "April begins," says Burroughs, "when the partridge drums, when the hyla peeps, when the shad starts up the rivers, and the grass greens in the spring runs. It ends when the leaves are un- folding and the last snow-flake dissolves in mid-air." Of course the American robin is not a robin, and the "blue- bird" is a stranger to us in shape and name. But the chatter of the grackles and the red-winged starlings is the exact counterpart of the spring song of our own starlings on the roofs in May ; and the swallows dip over the trout-streams of New England as they do on the Test or Avon. Here is a description of swallow-flights by the author of "The Story of My House ":—
"The surface of the stream was dimpled by the constant rise of feeding trout, and brushed every now and then by a bird drinking on the wing. It is a favourite haunt of both fly-catchers and swallows, lured by the rich insect-life that congregates above the still expanse of water, the ephemeris dancing their joyous dance of an hour. The stream is scarcely a rod and half wide. It is almost overarched with bushes and trees, and abounds in curves. There are at least forty swallows hawking over it, all chasing over the glassy surface, carelessly coming and going, swift as missiles flung from a sling. Yet not a catkin of the alders or a blade of the rushes is so much as grazed by a wing; not a barbule of one bird ruffled by the feathers of another, amid all their lightning tarns."
It is impossible to feel that this is the work of a man of different race to ourselves, though the swallows and trout were on the other side of the Atlantic. Cce/ura non animum mutant !
The most marked difference in the spring sounds of tem- perate America and of England, seems to be the song of the frogs,—not the harsh croaking of the marsh which may some- times be heard even here on hot spring days, and which breaks
sleep in Germany and Holland, but the harmony of the hylodes, or whistling frogs, tiny little fellows who are equally at home among the branches of a tree or in the swamp waters. Later comes the note of a musical toad, which Mr. Gibson declares is to him "the sweetest sound in nature, and one of the most characteristic attributes
of early spring, though it still remains unsung by our poets." It must not be supposed that the noisy croakers of Aris- tophanes' chorus become tuneful in America. But this frog- music is mainly confined to Florida and Louisiana, where it sounds, according to Mr. Gibson, like some primitive guitar, "made of straps of india-rubber stretched across a tomato can." The agreement of the seasons in time, as well as in character, with the spring, autumn, and winter in England, brings the record of American field naturalists into still closer harmony with the sentiment of the old country. November is there, as here, a time of falling and fallen leaves, of birds on migration passing overhead in the darkness, of dark days and short. The "frost-weed," the last of autumn flowers, is blossoming in the New England fields, just as the yellow corn-marigold, the latest of British wild flowers, is still lingering in our stubbles. But the last blossom of the "frost-flower" is truly the creature of an hour ; for it is, in fact, a feathery crystallisation of frozen sap which bursts from the stem in the first frost and makes an icy simulacrum of a flower.
The powers of observation possessed by American field- naturalists are at least equal to the best-written records of our own observers. Take, for instance, the following accounts of the nest of the gray vireo, a small-crested bird, in shape and size much like a blackcap. Following the hints given by an entry in Thoreau's journal, written some thirty years ago- " another bright winter's day, to the woods, to see what birds'- nests are made of "—Mr. Hamilton Gibson gives the results of a day spent in picking to pieces the deserted nests in the woods. The vireo is a wonderful nest-builder, slinging his home like a cradle to the pendent branches, and seeking with curious eagerness for strange and unlikely material for use and ornament. One nest Mr. Gibson found was constructed entirely of snake-skins, three or four cast skins being woven together. But the following description is interesting, not only as a fact in natural history, but for the true nature- lovers' spirit which it shows. "What are the materials of this basket here in the fork of the maple P Let us unravel it.. It is already somewhat worn and weather-beaten, but it will be many a month before these tough strands are loosened. Here we find the toughest material of the nest, one wise bird having selected fibres of inner bark, spider and cocoon silk, and strips from the milk-weed stalk,—strong as flax, to weave its cradle. The compact body of the nest gives a singular variety ; strips of white and yellow birch-bark,. aster calyxes, cobwebs, a bluebottle-fly, spider-egg silk purses, slender roots, bits of pith, skeletonised leaves, pine needles, old cocoons of the tussock moth, grass, caterpillar hairs,. dandelion seeds, moss, and feathers. A broad piece of mottled-grey paper-like substance forms the outer base of the nest. We might have been certain of finding this—a fragment of hornets' nest, a favourite materiel with all the vireos. Further unravelling shows a number of pieces of printed paper embedded in the fabric, and one or two are seen on the ground below the nest." On one piece was the sen- tence, "Have in view the love of God," an apt text for a bird architect in the old Puritan States.
We have quoted enough to show the reality of the love for- Nature which has arisen in the old settlements of the New World. Like Columbus of old, who recognised in the bird- notes of the new continents, the "songs of swallows and nightingales as in the gardens of Seville," so the English Colonists named their birds after the familar songsters of the fields and gardens of England. Now they have learnt to see and know, and value the wild life of their own country.. But the growth of this appreciation is not a sign of difference,. but a mark of identity. The taste for leisure, and for out- door recreation and observation, must always increase the- bond of sympathy and sentiments between Old and New. England.
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