Brightwen Eliza Elder
Inmates of my House and Garden
STARVING TORTOISES
“Where’er he dwells, he dwells alone,
Except himself has chattels none,
Well satisfied to be his own
Whole treasure;
Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads,
Nor partner of his banquet needs,
And if he finds one, only feeds
The faster.”
Vincent Bourne.
I CANNOT refrain from drawing attention to the cruelty with which these inoffensive creatures are often treated with regard to their food. One constantly hears the remark, “We had a tortoise for a few months, but it died.” Either from carelessness or ignorance the poor tortoise is hardly ever properly fed, and, though it can endure privation for a longer time than most creatures, yet unless food is supplied it must die miserably of starvation at last. The ordinary land-tortoise feeds on cabbage, sow-thistle, lettuce-leaves, and dandelion flowers, while some specimens will enjoy bread and milk as well. I have been carefully watching a tame one in my conservatory, and find that, day after day, he eats a lettuce nearly half his own size. If, then, he requires so much food to keep him in health and vigour, how pitiable must be the condition of those kept without food, or those that are perhaps offered a dandelion flower once a week!
The water-tortoises are equally ill-used, for often from lack of knowledge they are constantly offered vegetable diet which they cannot eat, their proper food being the live creatures they find in the water they exist in. They are best fed in captivity by supplying them with little portions of raw meat, or remains of boiled cod or turbot. They are easily distinguished from the land-tortoises by their livelier movements, and by their being able to swim in water. Still even they do not care to be always afloat, so there should be a piece of cork or some small island upon which they can rest when they are tired of swimming.
One day I saw on a shelf in a village shop a handsomely marked tortoise-shell, which I rather desired to purchase for my museum. Upon inquiry I found it had been bought for a few shillings from a man who was going through the village with a truck-load of these poor creatures for sale. The shopkeeper knew nothing about the requirements of his new acquisition, and thought it would be quite happy in the water-butt, where he placed it for the night. It being a land-tortoise, it was of course found dead in the morning – one of the many victims of well intentioned ignorance. Those who sell tortoises in the streets know nothing about their habits, they only want to get rid of their stock as quickly as possible. The purchasers may never even have seen a tortoise before, and have not, as a rule, the vaguest idea of how it should be treated, so that the unfortunate creatures are almost sure sooner or later to perish miserably of mismanagement and starvation.
They are entirely vegetable feeders, so that the idea that a tortoise will clear the kitchen of black-beetles is an absurd fiction, though it is, I believe, urged by street sellers of tortoises as an inducement for the householder to purchase his stock.
One day a tortoise was brought to me by a man who said he had picked it up in one of my fields. I felt sure it must have strayed from its rightful owner, and we therefore made every inquiry amongst our neighbours round about in order to discover, if possible, its previous home. As no one would own the tortoise, we placed it in the conservatory that we might be able to observe its ways and habits, as it happened to be the first specimen of the kind that had been enrolled amongst my pets. When placed on the lawn for exercise the creature would greedily snap off every hawkweed flower he came to, and as these abounded in the turf he had happy times feasting on flowers and basking in the sun.
After keeping the tortoise about a year, it happened that a policeman living in a neighbouring village called here to see a friend of his, and this comrade (one of my gardeners) took him to see the flowers in the conservatory. After a few minutes the policeman exclaimed, “Why, there’s our Jack!” An explanation ensued, and it turned out that the tortoise had really belonged to him, as he proved by showing a little hole he had bored through the shell in order to tether Master Jack and prevent his straying away. The tortoise had been the gift of a dear friend, and the loss of this pet had been quite a sorrow in the family. “My missus will cry for joy at seeing Jack again,” said the man; and very glad was I to restore the truant to his rightful owner, whose pet he had been for four years.
Although somewhat slow and inert, a tortoise is quite worth keeping, and when well cared for, properly fed, and taken notice of, it has a good deal of a quaint sort of intelligence. The one I now possess will feed from my hand, gives an angry hiss when offended, will put on double quick speed, when the door is opened, in order to elope into the garden, and what mind he has is greatly exercised about the lemurs. I judge this because I so often find him gazing at them through the wirework, his shell tilted at an angle as if he would fain climb up to satisfy his curiosity.
To the poor people who often visit my place in summer, many of whom have never seen such a creature before, the tortoise is an object of surprise, not unmixed with fear, for one woman asked if he would “fly at her,” and others seem to suppose him a creature of ferocious tendencies, judging by the way they keep at a distance and eye him askance.
I happened to be at the Zoological Gardens one autumn day when some of the large Galapagos tortoises were fairly active, and was fortunate enough to see one digging a hole in a rather hard gravel path. The excavation was carried on entirely by the hind legs; first one and then the other went down and grasped a few stones with the claws on the foot; these stones were dropped on the surface of the ground, and down went the other leg, and slowly it brought up a little soil, and this process went steadily on for ten minutes or more, and the hole became about eight or nine inches deep. The sturdy tail of the tortoise is used as a sort of boring instrument in first beginning the hole, and when deep enough the tortoise cautiously deposits her eggs at the bottom of the cavity, and when all are laid the hole is filled up with earth, well pressed down, and the mother leaves her precious deposits to be hatched by the heat of the sun.
Gilbert White has remarked upon the tortoise as a weather prophet. He says, “As sure as it walks elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in the morning, so sure will it rain before night.” I can confirm this statement from my own observation, and when my tortoise walks in a weak sort of fashion, as if his limbs had no strength, it is a sure presage of fine weather. I frequently see another habit in my pet which is noticed in White’s “Selborne”: “He inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray.” The sun shines upon the floor of my conservatory in different places according to the time of day, and my tortoise “improves the shining hour” by seeking these pleasant sunny spots and basking in them in rotation as the day goes on.
A young dove that is allowed to fly about in my conservatory is remarkably fond of the tortoise, and may often be seen sitting on its back and pluming itself; it stays there whilst the tortoise walks about, apparently quite unaware that it is carrying an “outside passenger.”
In the Japanese islands these creatures grow to an enormous size. I possess a shell which is highly polished and ornamented with gold lacquer work; the measurement of it is three feet one inch by three feet four inches across, and, as these animals live to an immense age, this specimen may probably be several hundred years old.
As each year appears to be marked by a ring round each plate of the tortoise-shell, much as one sees them in a section of tree stem, it might have been possible to reckon the age of my huge shell, but in polishing the surface the rings have been effaced, so its age can only be conjectured.
Let it not be forgotten that a tortoise is a thirsty creature, and needs to have access to water in some very shallow pan out of which it can drink. My own specimen knows well the sound of falling water, and goes beneath the hanging baskets in the conservatory after the gardeners have soaked them, and there enjoys the dripping moisture, drinking from the pools upon the tiled floor.
The shell of a tortoise should be well oiled every few weeks, as it is apt to grow too dry, and might be liable to crack or peel off, the artificial life the creature leads in confinement tending to have a desiccating effect upon the shell.
If each reader of this book would kindly tell those who possess tortoises the kind of food they require it would greatly tend to reduce unintentional cruelty.
TEACHING VILLAGE CHILDREN TO BE HUMANE
“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
At rich man’s tables eaten bread and pulse?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine.”
Emerson.
“Else they are all – the meanest things that are,
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first
Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.”
Cowper.
“A man who is kind to the animals belonging to him will be thoughtful of the feelings and wishes of his family. A woman who, with patience and tenderness, cares for the domestic creatures around her home, can but be loving to her little ones; for she must observe how strong is the mother-love in the humblest thing that lives.”
Mrs. F. A. F. Wood-White.
SO much preventable cruelty in this world arises from ignorance that it seems the duty of every one to try and pass on to others any useful knowledge they may happen to have acquired, and thus increase the general sum of happiness in the hearts and lives of those who live around them. This general axiom is, I think, especially true with reference to information about animals and birds: we can prevent a great deal of cruelty being unintentionally shown towards the useful creatures that serve us in so many ways by using our influence wisely in the village schools and in the houses of the children’s parents.
If some one in each country village would but gather the children together as often as possible, and talk to them pleasantly and kindly about the right treatment of horses, asses, dogs, cats, birds, &c., the little lads who will grow up to be grooms, ostlers, and carters, would be likely to remember the teaching they receive, and carry it out in humane treatment of the animals under their charge. I dare not repeat what I know of the cruelties practised by young boys upon birds and their nestlings in the breeding season, but will at any rate try and show some of the motives that lead young people to persecute birds and destroy their eggs. I would classify these motives thus: first, wanton mischief; secondly, ignorance; and thirdly, collecting mania. The two first mostly influence the poor, and the last the richer classes. I will endeavour to suggest remedies for each.
Mischievous country lads may in some measure be restrained by bills freely posted about in their village stating clearly the penalties for taking nests and eggs, with a list of protected birds. The notices should be couched in simple words, that children can understand, and not after the style of a notice board, which was placed to protect a spring of pure water for village use, and which ran thus: “Persons are requested to refrain from polluting or contaminating this water.” I am afraid the rustic Tommy would not be much enlightened by these formidable words. Much more to the point is the warning to be met with in one Surrey village, “Children, let Well alone.”
Any proved case of pure mischief or cruelty shown towards any living creature should be made a serious offence, rebuked openly in the village school, and spoken about to the parents by the clergy and others. In this way public opinion may by degrees be created, and any child so offending may learn that he or she is in disfavour for such acts.
It may be that only a few children out of a whole school have the disposition which delights in cruelty, but all are more or less ignorant and thoughtless, and need to be carefully and patiently taught the duty of kindness to all living creatures.
What constantly happens is this. A boy sees something unusual flitting about in a tree; he wonders what it is, and, wishing to find out, he naturally flings a stone at the object; when the coveted thing lies gasping at his feet he looks at it a moment, and flings it aside. He knows nothing about the harm he has done – has no idea that he has killed a bird that perhaps very rarely visits our shores, and that may not be seen again for years. Why, then, if we wish such rare visitants to increase, do we not systematically teach our boys and girls to watch and study the ways of wild creatures, and feel some rational interest in them, so that in consequence they may be drawn to do what they can to aid in their preservation? The children need to be instructed about the life-history of one bird after another; information should be given about its mode of life, its usefulness in destroying insects, its nesting habits, the tender love between the mated birds, and their care of their young – defending them even at the risk of their own lives if needful. Surely the impressible hearts of children might be led to pity and protect our feathered songsters if once they were made thoroughly acquainted with facts such as these.
Leaflets on natural history and kindness to animals and birds can be had very cheaply from the R.S.P.C.A., the Society for the Protection of Birds, and the Dickybird Society, and these should be scattered broadcast throughout our land, where they cannot fail to do beneficent work. If coloured lithographs of our common birds were hung up in village schools, and simple explanatory lessons were given upon them, it would surely be more useful to our country children than that they should be taught to know the exact difference between the Indian and African elephant! And yet one often sees large prints of foreign animals in schools, and but seldom anything so simple as pictures of the animals and birds the children meet with in everyday life.
Again, small prizes might be offered for the best papers written upon our English birds, describing their habits and uses, and all the facts about them which the children are able to comprehend.
I was delighted to receive from a dear unknown child a capital drawing of a brambling which I could recognise at once, so truthful was the pose and colouring, and, though the young artist was only eleven, his drawing and letter revealed a born naturalist. Now this kind of effort might be largely promoted amongst young people with excellent effect. We should make a rule I have myself observed all my life most carefully, “Never to have a bird killed wantonly, even for drawing or study purposes.” There are admirable pictures to be obtained of all our English birds, and, with an occasional find of a dead bird, and the glimpses we may obtain of them in life, these will furnish enough to guide young artists in their first attempts. Suppose the children of a village school awakened to this kind of competition, and a “tea” given to those who have sent in papers, I can see the way to a delightful evening when the papers should be read, comments kindly offered, mistakes corrected, information given, and some fresh subjects set for the next time. The whole village would be full of chat about this gathering, and each child would naturally bring much of the knowledge gained into his own home, and thus the parents would indirectly become enlightened upon natural history subjects, on which they are usually deplorably ignorant.
These humble suggestions are offered as being the best means I can at present bring forward in order to attain the end we have in view, and in a measure they apply equally to young people in a higher position in life, who would, I believe, welcome little informal meetings for the reading of the papers they may have written, and the attainment from their elders of further information on the life-histories of animals and birds. I earnestly hope that still better plans may be evoked from others as a result of bringing this subject prominently forward.
I must draw attention to an excellent idea borrowed from Miss Carrington’s book on “The Extermination of Birds,” and it is that our young people who desire to possess collections of birds’ eggs should be encouraged to model them in wax and colour them precisely according to nature. Even the one egg used as a model need only be borrowed from a nest and returned when the model is cast and coloured; or one may be lent for the purpose from the collection of a friend. The young artist would be able to enjoy the thought that his specimens were of a permanent nature, and that there had been no rifling of the nests of valuable birds, without whose incessant labours we should have endless insect plagues. For the modus operandi of this last idea I would refer my readers to Miss Carrington’s little book.2
In trying to discourage the collecting mania I know I am treading upon delicate ground, and I must define my meaning clearly, else I may convey wrong ideas and provoke needless discussion of vexed questions. I do not think very young children should be allowed to kill any living creature in order to make a collection – it must tend to make them hard-hearted; far better is it to lead them to watch and admire every bird and insect they come across. As they are taught to know the ways and habits of living things, and year by year they grow up with kindly feelings towards them, I think they will hardly be amongst those who would destroy perhaps fifty lovely butterflies in order to complete a circle of colour in some case of insects. That is the kind of collecting I wholly condemn as both useless and cruel. So much study can be carried on without taking life, that it seems undesirable to adopt in early life any line of investigation which involves the death of the objects being studied – at any rate until the student is old enough to avoid any possible cruelty in the matter. It appears to me that if we bring up young people with a reverent love for all, even the lowliest of God’s handiwork, that feeling will tend to restrain them from exercising the instinct of destruction which we may often trace in children’s early years.
There must be a certain amount of slaying for necessary food, and animals and birds prey upon each other by the very laws of their existence. Specimens, too, are required for museums, else how could students learn to know the various orders of animal and bird creation; but outside all these unavoidable uses, the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent life that is carried on year by year, fills me with distress, and I, for one, shall never cease to protest against it with voice and pen. I can but hope that by the multiplication of our Selborne branches and kindred societies we may in time see some diminution of this selfish warfare against all creatures in fur and feathers.
STUDYING NATURE
“If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! – no tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.”
Longfellow.
I HAPPEN to live in the country, in the midst of lovely scenery, abounding in all the elements of beauty, such as wide-spreading heaths, sheets of water, distant views, and grand old trees and woods.
There are many varieties of birds and insects to be seen, plenty of wild flowers, mosses, and lichens in the lanes, and in my own grounds all kinds of cultivated flowers.
Numbers of young people come to stay with me in the course of the year, and naturally, when I am taking walks with them, and we are admiring trees and flowers, or a sweet-voiced bird begins to sing, questions arise about the names of various plants and songsters. I confess I am often surprised to discover the very limited knowledge of elementary natural history or botany that is possessed by young girls who in other branches of study are intelligent and well-informed. It grieves me to think that the instructive book of Nature is thus disregarded, and its lessons left unlearned, by thousands who would be much happier, and have many more resources to fill up leisure moments, if they knew more about the everyday things which surround them in the country.
Even if it is the lot of many young people to live in towns, still, when they pay visits to their friends at the seaside, or in the country, there are ample opportunities for natural history studies, and by means of books these studies can be carried on when they return home.
I will try and describe one of the subjects which my young visitors always discover to be full of interest, namely, the study of trees.
Such a book as “The Forest Trees of Britain”3 will supply the names of all our ordinary trees; and, when taking a ramble in a country lane or garden, if a perfect leaf of each species of tree is gathered, well pressed, and dried between sheets of blotting paper under a heavy weight, there will be found pleasant occupation for some wet day spent indoors in arranging these specimen leaves in a large blank book.
Space should be left to write the English and Latin name of each tree, whence it was imported, and some of its chief uses. If, later on, the autumn-tinted leaf of each species can be obtained, and a coloured drawing made of its catkin flower, then in time a really charming and valuable book will be formed, which a girl will feel pleasure in showing to her young friends, and thus others will be led to fill up their leisure time with instructive pursuits of this kind.
Drying and arranging the leaves is only the first step towards a more intimate knowledge of this subject. The exquisite beauty of autumn-tinted leaves attracts the attention of the most unobservant. One longs to preserve them, and for years I used to try various methods of pressing and drying them with but very partial success. Now, however, I have devised a plan by which their fleeting colours are so exactly imitated that my friends constantly mistake the painted leaf for the real one. As it may afford pleasurable occupation for some of my readers, I will briefly describe the process.
The materials required are but few: a common slate, some fine drawing paper, a cyclostyle4 roller, and a bottle of the ink which is sold with it. A small quantity of the ink should be placed on the slate, and the roller passed to and fro until it is slightly and evenly inked. The leaf should then be placed on a flat, hard surface, and the roller passed firmly over it so as to leave a little ink on the under side of the leaf to mark the veins. The leaf should then be reversed, with the ink side downwards, on a piece of drawing paper, and the roller firmly passed over it once or twice. The result will be an exquisite faint imprint of the exact shape of the leaf with all its veins. After a few minutes it will be ready to be tinted in water colours, so as to exactly resemble the various hues in the real leaf. The colours should be very moist, and rather floated into each other, as in this way one can most readily attain the delicate gradations of tone. When finished the leaf should be neatly cut out with fine scissors, carefully following the outline of the notches, which vary so much in different trees, and give character to each species. When such painted leaves are gummed into a blank book the effect will be found to be wonderfully real. The album should be large enough to allow of four or five leaves, each representing a different stage in the coloration – yellow, pink, crimson, and all other tints which belong to each special tree. A page should of course be reserved for each set of specimens, and the English and Latin name, the date, and any other particulars written at the bottom of the page will add to the scientific value of the collection.
The various galls which are found on each species of tree will alone furnish a wide field for study. The ink with which I am now writing is the product of an oak-gall which is imported in large quantities from Asia Minor; many kinds are of great value in dyeing; and the life-history of the numerous gall-flies is most curious and interesting.
Careful drawings of the buds of trees as they open in spring will reveal the delicate plaiting of the tiny leafage within. We can then discern how some leaves are folded lengthways or in half, others curled up spirally or fluted; we shall see how the embryo leaves are protected by more than a dozen scales, often lined with silky down, and then, as in the case of the horse-chestnut, still further guarded from the winter’s cold by an outer coating of resin.
Again, the fruits and seeds of trees would prove an interesting subject. I wonder how many young people know the difference between the English sycamore, which is a true maple, and the sycomore of Palestine, which is a fig-tree; and yet they are totally unlike each other – the first producing a dry seed vessel, and the other an eatable fruit; the sycamore usually having a stem twenty or thirty feet high before it branches, and the sycomore dividing near the ground, so that Zaccheus found no difficulty in climbing its ample stems.
There are some birds which frequent special trees, and are named after them, such as the hawfinch, the whinchat, which is found on its favourite furze-bushes (called whins in Scotland), the pine and fir grosbeak, and the nuthatch. The student should know something of these birds and their habits, as being linked with the trees they frequent.
There are innumerable insects also found upon the leaves and stems of trees. It has been calculated that about two thousand different species of caterpillars and larvæ of various kinds prey upon the oak alone.
We thus see vistas which open out before the young student, any one of which, when followed up with thoughtful perseverance, will add immensely to the pleasure of walks abroad and quiet hours at home.
As this chapter aims to be a suggestive one, I would mention the possibility of making a dried collection of the trees of Scripture. This may seem at first sight very difficult of attainment, but we often hear of friends going abroad (even if we cannot go ourselves), and a request to gather and dry a spray of olive or carob-tree will hardly be refused, and thus in time, by the help of others, our collection will be formed, and will become of much value to us in teaching our Bible classes, as well as from the associations the book will have with the kind travellers who remembered us when far away.
I greatly treasure my own specimens of oleander gathered on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, the carob-leaves from Bethlehem, sycomore fig from Jericho, pomegranate from Jerusalem, and olive-sprays from the Garden of Gethsemane. Pleasant hours have been spent in reading about each tree, and the passages in Scripture where they are mentioned are invested with a deeper interest from one’s knowledge of many facts connected with each which otherwise would have passed unnoticed.
For instance, the fruit of the carob or locust-tree may have been the food of John the Baptist; it is known to this day by the name of “St. John’s Bread,” and the sweet, nutritious pods are still eaten by the poorer inhabitants of Palestine. It is also more than probable that “the husks that the swine did eat,” mentioned in the parable of the Prodigal Son, were the long curved pods produced by this tree5; and it is also well known that the equal-sized, hard-shelled seeds of the carob were the original “carat” weights of the jeweller.
Thus we see how many interesting facts cluster around the name of a single Scripture tree. If a spray or leaf of any of the kinds mentioned is placed in the centre of a page, with some neatly written texts referring to interesting facts about its history and uses, we shall then have always at hand a delightful book, which will prove useful for many purposes. It will afford plenty of subjects for conversation when we wish to make Sunday afternoon a bright and happy time for some young people, kept indoors, it may be, by wet weather. Many a sick person’s weary hours might be cheered by such a book being lent, and in endless ways it will well repay the trouble of putting it together.
A collection of seedling trees, carefully dried between sheets of blotting paper in a press or under a weight, then fastened into a blank book with strips of gummed paper, with the English and Latin names to each, and a note of the age of the seedling, will form a pleasant memento of our forest rambles, and probably may lead on to further study of the same kind.
Lemon and orange pips will grow readily in damp moss under a glass, and can be transplanted into pots of earth, so that seedling plants are attainable even by those who live in towns. I was much surprised to find that tamarind seeds taken out of the jam would grow very quickly in cocoanut fibre if kept moist and placed near a hall stove. The secret appears to be that although the tamarinds are packed in barrels, and hot sugar is poured over them, yet owing to the thickness of the seed-coat the life principle is not destroyed.
To make our collection complete there should be seedlings of the other great division of plants, namely, those with only one seed-leaf, such as palms, cannas, bulbs, grasses, &c. A few date-stones kept in moist earth, and placed where they will have a slight degree of regular heat, will supply one of these specimens, and Canna seed, Indian corn, and other plants of the kind, grown in the same way, will supply other examples.