Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/242

on a sheet of tinted paper at night, in the morning we shall find the spores deposited on the paper, perhaps forming a white, a brownish, or a blackish stain. Who shall count the myriads of germinating bodies thus originating from a single parent? Here, too, is work for the microscopist; for if he will take a fragment of one of the gills, or pores, or teeth, and submit it to observation under his instrument, he will see a new phase in the mysteries of vegetation, for the spores will appear, supported naked on short stems in groups or clusters of four; and if this is the first time that he has made such a use of his microscope, it will certainly not be the last.

We might refer also to the great variety of form exhibited by fungi, other than those having a stem and cap. To the cup-like but elegant bright orange Peziza, to the Cornucopia, to the waxy Clavarias, the lobed Tremellas, the shell-like Polypori, the eccentric Starry puff-balls, and the subterranean Truffles. As a contrast to the disagreeable odour of the "stinkhorn" already alluded to, we might enumerate those possessing a powerful but grateful fragrance; but enough has been said to indicate that there is something worthy of regard in the much-despised but little-known orders to which the "toadstools" belong.

Have any of your readers, in their wanderings over some lonely hill-side, ever noticed a solitary rook haunting the spot like an evil genius, and flitting from mound to hillock a few hundred feet in advance of the traveller? I am something of an anchorite myself, at least I love a silent walk when wearied sometimes will the din of the great city in which my lot is cast, and I cannot help feeling some sympathy for these odd birds, which nature has made gregarious, and which fate or misfortune has driven into solitude.

I have not made the common mistake, as may be suspected, of taking a crow for a rook, an error which nine-tenths of all townspeople are sure to fall into. I know the distinction well enough, and the difference in their habits, and am seldom sufficiently deceived, even for a moment, by the wild and vigilant "corone," to mistake his vigorous motions for the languid action of this melancholy "frugilegus." I use the epithet melancholy not only because he has that aspect, but to introduce one out of three hypotheses to account for a way of life so opposed to the usual gregarious habits of his race. It is at least possible that irrational creatures may be bred occasionally with that peculiar composition of the humours which constitutes a hypochondriacal temperament. I remember an old horse of my father's that used at times to heave the deepest sighs—a fact well known to the stableman, and he had, besides, the ill-conditioned look and occasional indisposition for work combined with wonderful spurts of energy at odd times, which certainly mark the rider—and if the rider why not the horse?—afflicted with this disorder; unless, indeed, it may be thought that old Herbert's proverb establishes a constant diversity of nature, "the horse thinks one thing and he that saddles him another." But, reasoning from analogy, may we not assign as one possible cause for the lonely habits of a sociable bird the possession of a melancholic system? He cannot hold up his head among the sprightly ones of his race—their senseless cawing grates on his nerves, and liable as he is, when in company, to aggravation from passing visits of cackling jackdaws and starlings, he retires into the wilderness to indulge in silence and constitutional spleen. Virgil indeed seems to think that impending changes in the weather may thus affect rooks in general—

But whatever truth there may be in this, it hardly applies to my supposed hypochondriac, for he, according to my observation, is not given to much speaking-he moves off mute and sad as you approach him, and giving himself an oblique twirl upwards to break his fall, settles down for, perhaps, the twentieth time with the least possible concussion to his bones.

A different, and, as some may think, a more probable conjecture is, that these hermits are mutilated or disabled birds, incapable of the sustained flight and active habits of their congeners. It is certain that the breeding season makes no difference in their mode of life, and unless we suppose them to be hermaphrodite, or in some way unequal to the cares of a family, we cannot account for their exemption from the passionate instinct that wild creatures have for increasing their kind. Many years ago, when I was living in the valley of Homesdale, I noticed one of these unfortunates haunting the fields at the back of my father's house. Spiritless as he secured, he kept a sharp look-out, and gave me some trouble before I could satisfy my curiosity by a long shot. He was lying on his back when I came up, and a moment's glance at his black legs, upreared in the air, revealed the cause of his solitary habits. One of the metatarsal joints was quite stiff, and enlarged to the size of a blackbird's egg. The three front claws were bent in a general direction backward along with the back claw, and on the stump end or knob the bird hopped and strode about. Doubtless a shot-corn had shattered the joint many weeks before, and the poor creature lad borne up through the irritation of such a wound, and had found shelter and forage for himself fill nature had wrought a mournful sort of cure. But he was a hermit for life.