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The World of Northern Evergreens Second Edition E. C.
Pielou Digital Instant Download
Author(s): E. C. Pielou
ISBN(s): 9780801463037, 0801463033
File Details: PDF, 2.98 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
THE WORLD OF

Northern Evergreens
other books by e. c. pielou

After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America
A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic
Fresh Water
The Energy of Nature
THE WORLD OF

Northern Evergreens
second edition

E. C. Pielou

Comstock Publishing Associates

a division of Cornell University Press
ithaca and london
Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this

book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press

First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pielou, E. C.
The world of northern evergreens / E.C. Pielou. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-7740-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Conifers—North America. 2. Evergreens —North America.
3. Forest ecology—North America. I. Title.
QK494.P54 2011
585'.2097—dc22
2011011639

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible

suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publish-
ing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC
inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or
partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit
our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In Memory of Patrick and Frank
 Contents

Preface to the Second Edition ix

Preface to the First Edition xi

1 Origin of the Evergreen Forests 1

Conifers and the Ice Age, 1 The Advantages of Being Evergreen, 3
The Advantages of Long-Lived Leaves, 4 Enduring the Cold, 5

2 Identifying the Conifers 7

How Plants (Including Trees) Are Classified, 7 The Ten Genera, 8
The Thirty-Two Species, 15 Conifer Families, 33

3 Reproduction of Conifers 35
Pollen Cones and Pollen, 35 Pollination, 37 A Contrast between Seed
Cones and Pollen Cones, 39 Vegetative Reproduction, 40

4 The Life and Growth of a Conifer 43

Wood, 43 Cut Stumps and Whole Trees, 45 Outside the
Cambium, 50 Leaves, 53 Roots, 55

5 Broadleafs Growing among the Conifers 59

Broadleafs in a Harsh Climate, 59 Poplars, 61 Birches, 64
Alders, 65

vii
viii contents

6 Two Kinds of Trees: Conifers and Broadleafs 67

Introduction, 67 The Ancestry of “Trees,” 67 The Basic Difference
between Conifers and Broadleafs, 68 Gymnosperms Are Woody, 69
The Speed of Living, 70 The Architecture of Trees, 71
Vegetative Reproduction, 72 The Aroma of Conifers, 72

7 Life on the Forest Floor 74

The Soil, 74 Forest Flowers, 75 The Floor of the Boreal Forest, 78
Valuable Dead Wood and Debris, 79 Open Water, 81

8 Parasites on the Conifers 84

The Value of Rot and Decay, 84 Decay Fungi, 84 Rusts, 86
Dwarf Mistletoe, 90

9 Insects and Conifers 93

Insects as Feeders, 93 Beetles, 94 Caterpillars and Pseudocaterpillars, 97
Sawflies, 101 Bugs, 101 Parasitoids, 105 Ants and Others, 106

10 Some Mammals and Birds of the Forest 108

Food and Shelter, 108 Seldom Seen Mammals, 108 Squirrels and
Their Relatives, 111 A Rodent and a Lagomorph, 113
Big Herbivores, 115 Carnivores, 117 Big Omnivores, 118 Birds, 119

11 Natural and Unnatural Interference 125

Fire, 125 Forest Succession, 129 Snow and Wind, 130 Air Pollution
and Acid Rain, 134 Logging, 135

12 The Big Picture 138

Introduction, 138 Forest Regions, 138 What Controls Which Species
Grow Where? 141

13 Global Warming and the Forests 143

Introduction, 143 The Physics of Climate Change, 143 How Will
Climate Change Affect the Forests? 145 Fire and the Forests, 147
Insects, Lightning, Wind, and Snow (Again), 148 The Value (If Any)
of Predictions, 149

Index 153
 Preface to the
Second Edition

The world has changed since 1988 (the year when the first edition of
this book appeared). At last it is dawning on governments that forests are
more than just a source of timber. They provide, as well, indispensable
“ecological services.” Were they to disappear, climate change would speed
up because the world would lose its greatest carbon sink.
Ways to estimate the monetary worth of ecological services have re-
cently been devised. So far, they have been carried out in detail in only a
few places in the world. For example,* a closed-canopy forest in Kenya
(East Africa) was found to supply $320 million in services, every year,
from 1600 square miles (about 4100 km2).
As the true worth of forests comes to be appreciated, naturalists’ knowl-
edge is regarded with more respect than it was in the days when their
activities were looked on as no more than an enjoyable hobby. Their ex-
pertise has become useful and widely appreciated. The purpose of this new
edition is to introduce new material on the evergreens in northern North
America and to bring the earlier book up-to-date.
Some particulars: I have described the contrast between conifers and
broadleafs (formerly, and less precisely, known as “hardwoods”) in much
more detail. The enormous gap between these two kinds of plants is

* Jen Fela, “Reforestation Key to Economic Growth in Kenya,” in Frontiers in Ecology

and the Environment, vol. 8, no. 2, 2010, p. 63.

ix
x preface to the second edition

obscured by labeling them all simply as “trees.” It conceals their great dis-
similarity. They have been evolving divergently from each other for more
than a hundred million years (see chapter 6). New chapters are devoted
to the forest floor (chapter 7) and to the geographical extents of different
forest ecosystems (chapter 12). The effects of logging are discussed in
chapter 11, and how global warming is affecting the forests and vice versa,
in chapter 13.
Some paragraphs have been added on animals whose connections with
their special habitats are unusually close, for example, caribou, some griz-
zly bears, and beavers.
And much else besides. No branch of science, and that includes natural
history, ever remains static.
E. C. Pielou
Comox, British Columbia
 Preface to the
First Edition

For many people, certainly for the majority of North Americans with
homes in the northern half of the continent, coniferous trees constitute a
large fraction of all the “living material” they will see in a lifetime. Nat-
uralists, hikers, backpackers, canoeists, cross-country skiers—in fact all
those whose work or recreation takes them outdoors in northern North
America—are accustomed to seeing coniferous trees by the tens of millions,
whether they consciously notice them or not.
Outdoor people have a wide spectrum of interests. Specialists tend to
specialize in “interesting” items: a birder is more likely to concentrate on
owls than on starlings, and the average plant-hunter finds orchids more
fascinating than crabgrass. Because of this preoccupation with the hard-
to-find, the beautiful, and the unusual, most of the commonest objects
in nature are apt to be ignored. They are simply there, part of the back-
ground. But to assume that because a thing is common it is therefore un-
interesting is a mistake.
For most outdoor people the fact that they will encounter rank upon
rank of coniferous trees in excursion after excursion in the future nei-
ther pleases nor displeases them. They don’t even think about it. If there
are innumerable coniferous trees in your future, why not take advantage
of the fact, look at the trees more closely, and learn something about them?
Knowledge cannot fail to bring interest and appreciation.
Learning to identify the different species of coniferous trees is only a
beginning. Once you know the trees, many things can be observed if you

xi
xii preface to the first edition

know what to look for. There is, however, a world of difference between
seeing and interpreting. The ability to interpret is the hallmark of the true
naturalist, and developing that ability is one of the pleasures of being a
naturalist. The well-informed naturalist understands and enjoys a thou-
sand things that the uninformed one doesn’t even notice; and the more
people who understand and enjoy the woods, the more there will be to
protect them.
E. C. Pielou
Denman Island, British Columbia
THE WORLD OF

Northern Evergreens
 Chapter 1

Origin of the
Evergreen Forests

Conifers and the Ice Age

Of all the people who enter a northern forest, only a handful ever ask
themselves these two questions: Where has the forest come from? And why
are the great majority of its trees conifers rather than deciduous, broad-
leafed trees —“broadleafs” for short.
The answers are by no means obvious. The questions have engaged the
interests of ecologists and motivated years of research. What has been in-
vestigated and measured is not, for the most part, observable on a hike in
the woods, but the hike would certainly be more interesting for somebody
knowing about the questions, and the answers that have been discovered
so far.
Consider the first question, where have the trees come from? The only
certain answer is that the trees in the area we are concerned with, the area
that was ice-covered at the end of the last ice age, must have descended
from ancestors that lived elsewhere.
About 18,000 years ago, when the ice sheets of the most recent ice age
had reached their maximum extent (figure 1.1), they covered nearly all of
northern North America. The glaciated areas must have been like Green-
land and Antarctica were until recently—barren expanses of ice, devoid of
plant life. Then, as now, the ice was on the verge of disappearing. Condi-
tions in the unglaciated regions near the margin of the ice sheets must have
been bleak. The contrast with conditions now is worth contemplating.

1
2 the world of northern evergreens

Figure 1.1. The area in North America covered by ice sheets at the end of the last
ice age.

Once the climate began to warm up and the ice sheets started shrinking,
newly exposed land became available for small plants, and hardy evergreen
forests gradually invaded the area. Seeds were blown in from the south.
At the time of maximum glaciation, evergreen forests stretched across the
continent south of the ice margin; even the Great Plains were forested. East
of the continental divide the most abundant trees were spruces and jack
pines (the evidence that allows us to visualize the forests of the distant past
is described in chapter 3). The forests south of the ice on the west coast had
a richer mix of tree species and may have been much like they are now.
The northward march of the forests into the newly ice-free land was
inevitably slow. There was no soil to start with—only lifeless mixtures of
boulders, gravel, sand, and clay, laid bare by the melting ice. The development
of soil adequate for trees must have taken a considerable time. Different
 origin of the evergreen forests 3

species of trees arrived to occupy their present geographic ranges at differ-

ent times. Those that survived the ice age farther south than the spruces
and jack pines had farther to come.
And those that require shade had to wait until forests of sun-loving trees
were casting enough shade for the shade-growers to invade. For example,
hemlock is believed to have reached what is now northern Michigan about
3000 years later than white pine.1
The climate continued to change as it has done throughout time, inde-
pendently of the current global warming (the topic of chapter 13). It was
thought to have warmed fairly steadily between 18,000 and 10,000 years
ago, except for a temporary cold interval around 12,000 years ago. In
any case, warming resumed and temperatures reached a maximum about
8000 years ago, even before the ice sheets had completely melted. Because
of the very long time required to melt huge masses of ice at the then-
prevailing temperatures, probably around 2° Celsius higher than now
(2010), two remnants of the original ice sheets persisted, one on each
side of Hudson Bay, until 6500 years ago. They finally disappeared after
the time of maximum warmth. Because of the slight downward trend of
temperatures until very recently, some species of evergreen have lost ground
and do not, nowadays, grow as far north as they did 8000 years ago.

The Advantages of Being Evergreen

The second of the two questions posed at the beginning of this chapter
was, why are the great majority of the trees in the northern forests ever-
green conifers? Why conifers rather than broadleafs? To say that conifers
are better adapted to the environment is no answer. The question then
simply becomes, in what way are they better adapted? The answer cannot
be simple, because conifers do better than broadleafs in two contrasting
environments. They obviously thrive in the mild, moist climate of the Pa-
cific coast, and they also prosper, if less luxuriantly, in the harsh cold, dry
climate of the subarctic.
Consider the Pacific coast rain forest first. The mild winters and abun-
dant rain create an ideal climate for many trees, not only for conifers.
Poplars, aspens, and alders (about which more in chapter 5) flourish in
rain forest and grow much larger than do inland representatives of their
species. But the magnificent conifers, the enormous trees that arouse the
wonder of everyone who sees them, greatly outnumber the broadleafs.
4 the world of northern evergreens

It is believed that it is their evergreenness that makes conifers superior

to broadleafs in the Pacific Northwest. Because they have green leaves
all through the year, conifers can perform photosynthesis whenever the
weather is warm enough. They can profit from warm spells in late fall,
early spring, and even in winter, when the broadleafs are leafless. There-
fore, they are actively growing during a much larger fraction of the year
than is possible for broadleafs.
For rain forest, the most stressful time of the year comes during the
summer drought. This is unusual, for everywhere else in our area winter
is more stressful than summer. Water shortage affects both conifers and
broadleafs, but the broadleafs are much less able to cope with this adver-
sity because their big, thin leaves dry out more quickly than do the small,
needlelike leaves of the conifers (more on this in chapter 4). Thus the an-
nual drought comes at a time when the broadleafs are most vulnerable, the
time when they are in leaf.
In the north country, on the other hand, the ability to photosynthesize
on any warm day of the year is no use to a tree growing where the only
warm days are in summer. There must be some other explanation for the
success of conifers in the vastly different conditions of the far north.

The Advantages of Long-Lived Leaves

The success of evergreen conifers vis-à-vis broadleafs in the north prob-
ably has less to do with the effect of cold on the trees, and more to do with
its effects on the soil. In a cold climate, dead vegetation takes a long time
to decay because the bacteria that bring about decay act slowly in the cold.
In a word, humus is slow to form. And if the ground is dry, dead vegeta-
tion simply dries out, without forming humus. Some dry soils are little
more than dry sand, and others are merely thin, dusty coatings over hard
bedrock. (For more on forest soil, see chapter 7.)
The question that now arises is, why should conifers do better than
broadleafs on poor soils? Once again, evergreen leaves probably confer an
advantage. In this case the advantage is that evergreen leaves last for sev-
eral years. Therefore an evergreen conifer, unlike a deciduous broadleaf,
does not have to grow a new set of leaves every spring, and its demands
for nourishment are correspondingly less. Moreover, evergreen leaves can
begin photosynthesis earlier in the year than leaves on deciduous trees can,
because the latter have to grow before they can function.
 origin of the evergreen forests 5

The deciduous conifers in our area (tamarack and two other larch spe-
cies, or collectively, “larches”) are an awkward exception to this gen-
eralization. How can they “afford” to grow new sets of leaves each
year? A strong contributing cause is this: Larch leaves are small and widely
spaced so that on a given tree, they shade one another to a lesser degree
than do those on both evergreen trees and broadleafs. All larch leaves
are more or less equally well illuminated and photosynthesize sugars with
maximum efficiency.2 This accords with the subjective impression of light-
ness and brightness that larches give, and it is also an objective, scientifi-
cally measurable fact. The conclusion is that larches are as well adapted as
evergreen conifers to the evergreen forest habitat; they will be treated as
“honorary evergreens” throughout this book.
Compared with broadleafs, conifers lead more frugal lives. Their life
processes take place more slowly (details in chapter 6). In short, conifers
live on a “waste-not-want-not” system; broadleafs, on an “easy-come-
easy-go” system. This enables conifers to “make do” with inferior soils.

Enduring the Cold

If there is one adaptation that is more important than any other to a
very far northern tree, it is cold hardiness. Trees and tall shrubs have to
endure the lowest air temperatures that winter brings, temperatures that
would kill a lightly clothed person in a very short time. Ground-creeping
shrubs, and herbaceous plants that die back to ground level in winter are
insulated, respectively, by the snow blanket that covers them and by the
soil they are imbedded in.
All the trees in our area, broadleafs as well as conifers, are hardy in the
ordinary, gardener’s sense of the word. That is, they are unharmed by com-
paratively mild frosts, provided they have had time to become dormant
before freezing weather sets in. But from a tree’s point of view, there are
two sharply different intensities of frost, mild and severe, with the dividing
line between them at a temperature of about – 40° Celsius (– 40° F).
The trees in our area are adapted to escape frost injury in one of two
quite different ways: some do it by supercooling; the rest, by extracellular
freezing. Supercooling protects only at temperatures above – 40°, whereas
extracellular freezing is effective at any naturally occurring temperature,
however low. Therefore we have two kinds of trees, hardy and very hardy.
The hardy trees are those that rely on supercooling to survive the winter;
6 the world of northern evergreens

they cannot grow where minimum winter temperatures fall below the crit-
ical value. The very hardy trees are those capable of extracellular freezing.
They can survive even in the neighborhood of Snag, in Yukon Territory
south of the Arctic Circle, which holds the venerable record, set in 1947,
of having once been the coldest spot in North America.
The two frost-proofing methods used by trees work like this.3 In hardy
trees, the liquids inside the cells become supercooled (that is, they don’t
freeze) as the temperatures drop because there are no minute particles in
the cells, or roughening on their inner walls, to act as nuclei around which
ice crystals can begin to form. Below – 40°, they freeze anyway. In very
hardy trees, the liquids inside the cells ooze out into the numerous spaces
among the cells of the tissues at risk, and freeze in these spaces. This is ex-
tracellular freezing. The ice crystals, being outside the cells, do no harm.
Only four conifers are capable of extracellular freezing: jack pine, tam-
arack, and white and black spruce. And only three broadleaf trees are
equally hardy: paper birch, trembling aspen, and balsam poplar. These are
the only trees that grow in the very northernmost forests.

Notes
1. M. B. Davis, “Quaternary History and the Stability of Forest Communities,” in Forest
Succession: Concepts and Applications, D. C. West, H. H. Shugart, and J. B. Botkin, eds.
(New York: Springer, 1981).
2. S. T. Gower and J. H. Richards, “Larches: Deciduous Conifers in an Evergreen World,”
in BioScience, vol. 40, 1990, pp. 818–26.
3. M. J. Burke et al., “Freezing and Injury in Plants,” in Annual Review of Plant Physiol-
ogy, vol. 27, 1976, pp. 507–28.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 XXXVI

THE BULL, THE GIRL, AND THE RED

S H AW L
here is no incident in all the realms of literature, from the
“penny dreadful” up to the three-volume novel, that has
afforded so much material for the pen of the writer of
fiction as the delightful episode of the bull, the young girl
with the red shawl, and the young girl’s lover. Sometimes the cast
includes the lover’s hated rival, but the story may be told without
using him.
It is thirty-odd years since I first came across this thrilling
adventure in the pages of a child’s book, very popular at the time.
How well I remember how my young blood—to be exact, my seven-
year-old blood—thrilled as I mentally watched this frail girl, with a
start of just three feet, lead the tremendous and horribly savage bull
in a three-hundred-yard sprint, only to trip at last on the only
obstruction in the ten-acre field; how, just as the bull reached her,
she flung her red shawl a few rods to the right; how the bull, leaving
her, plunged after it; how she, weak and trembling, ran to the stone
wall and managed to vault it just as her lover, a brawny blacksmith,
who had seen the whole affair at too great a distance to be of
immediate service, reached the wall and received her in his arms.
“Oh, Kenston,” she murmured, “you have saved my life!” And then
she fainted, and I believe the bull ate up the shawl; at any rate, its
part in that particular story was ended.
 I have always felt that, thrilling as this scene was, it had not been
worked for all it was worth; but an extensive reading since then has
brought me to the conclusion that, first and last, it has been worked
for its full value.
The next time that I read the enthralling narrative I was some
years older, but the memory of the other telling was still fresh within
me; and so, when, in the second chapter, I read about a savage old
bull, one Hector, the property of Squire Flint, the meanest man in
the county,—not that his meanness had anything to do with the
story, but it is one of the conventions that a savage bull shall be
owned by a cross, crabbed, and thoroughly stingy man,—I say, when
I had read thus far my pulse quickened. Inexperienced as I was, I
somehow sensed the coming situation. I seemed to know as by
clairvoyance that, however limited the heroine’s wardrobe might be
in some respects, there was one article of apparel that she surely
possessed, or would possess in time to meet the exigencies. True
enough, in the very next chapter her maiden aunt, a saintly old lady
of ninety, died and bequeathed to her sorrowing niece a red pongee
shawl of great value—as a bull-enrager. The book had seemed prosy
at the start, but now that I knew what was coming, and that it was
that that was coming, I read on breathlessly.
Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love
with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they
take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk
would lead them! The mad bull—in this case it was mad, although
any old bull will do, mad or not—was rampant in a lot a mile south
of the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I
knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture
before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing
over a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along,
intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,—in the
middle of a particularly hot July,—so that the girl could have an
excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the
actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a
moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their
 feet, turned and saw Hector,
his horns gyrating with rage,
his eyes bulging out, and his
head lowered as he thundered
along straight for the pongee
bequest. To take her under his
strong arm and to rush forward
were the only things for the
young man to do, and he did
them; and then the rest ran as
per schedule. I believe that in
this case the young man threw
the girl into a tree and then
plunged down a woodchuck’s
hole. At any rate, the girl was
unharmed. That is the one
unalterable formula in
constructing these bull stories:
save the girl unharmed. You
may break the young man’s leg
or arm, and you may do what
you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through
unscathed.
It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and in
that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the red
shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to be
infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier chapters,
and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too, the
girl was in deep mourning—for her lover! But the ten-acre lot was all
right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he would find a
way to run the act with a small cast and no properties. So I read on,
and after wondering, together with the girl herself, what could have
caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up and head down,
the full length of a particularly long pasture, she and I found out
when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had picked up her
cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant scarlet. She had
no lover, for, as I say, he had died—two chapters before the book
was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so she inserted
the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then opened it, and
while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she reached the fence
and vaulted it in the usual way.
The possibilities of the incident are by no means exhausted, and
so far from “Amos Judd” being the last story in which it was used, I
saw it in a tale published this month, and this time with the full
paraphernalia of hated rival, lover, red shawl, and all; but for me it
had lost its zest. To be sure, if they would make the hero an athlete,
and have him bravely stand his ground while the girl climbed to the
top of an enormous elm, and then, just as the bull lowered his head
to toss him, have the hero jump high in the air and make the bull
pass beneath him, and as he reached ground again seize the bull,
not by the horns, but by the tail, and, swinging it three times around
his head, dash it against a tree and stun it,—that is, if its tail were
securely welded to its body,—there would be an original treatment of
the subject. And if its tail were but loosely fixed to it, the hero could
pull it out, and the bull, filled with chagrin, would walk off, dismayed
and humiliated.
But, pending that form of the story, I am studiously avoiding all
novels that contain heroines with red shawls, or that make early
reference to fierce bulls, or that speak of a certain ten-acre lot
peculiarly adapted for lovers’ peregrinations; for, like the successful
burglar, I know the combination.
 XXXVII

C O N C E R N I N G D I S H -WAS H I N G
as the reader ever considered how much time is wasted
every day by busy women in the work of washing dishes?
Of course, if a man has plenty of money and, from
philanthropic motives, engages a girl to perform this
unpleasant—I had almost said “duty”—this unpleasant task, I
suppose we cannot, strictly speaking, regard her time as wasted, for
she might else be loafing in an intelligence-office without gaining a
scrap of that article. I refer to the lives led by weary housewives
who, having no aid from a hired housemaid, day out and day in will
make themselves thin by the never-ceasing and perfectly useless
grind of dish-washing; for the dishes don’t stay clean for more than
a few hours.
For years I ate my meals in selfish content, little recking at what
cost the clean service was gained, until I discovered that my sister,
who is also my housekeeper, had sold her piano, not having time to
play upon it. I was shocked to think what a power this custom of
dish-washing had over the minds of the feminine portion of our
public.
But this dreadful waste of time that is going on in thousands of
homes in this country every day was brought home to me in a still
more striking manner not long after. My sister went away to visit a
friend, and left me to keep bachelor’s hall. I had always had a good
taste for cooking, although hitherto my practice had been confined
to boiling eggs and buttering hot toast on a plate at the back of the
stove. The first meal that I prepared, a breakfast, consisted of
oatmeal, steak, fried potatoes, bread, butter, milk, and water. We will
pass over the meal itself, as its discussion is foreign to our purpose.
Indeed, the less said about it the better. It was nine when I had
finished eating, and dumped my dishes and knives and forks into
tepid water. I am a fast worker, but the clock in the neighboring
church had ceased striking twelve when my last dish was wiped and
put away.
I had hoped to do a little writing that morning, but it was now
time to get luncheon. Luckily, that meal called into play very few
dishes, and by two, or half-past, I had made an end of my second
stint. Feeling elated that I had a whole afternoon on my hands, I
prepared a course dinner. I found some cold soup in the refrigerator,
and I bought a bluefish, five or six pounds of beef for roasting, some
Parker House rolls, and a lemon-pie for dessert. There were lettuce
and eggs in the house, and plenty of canned vegetables. I also
made some good coffee, with the aid of a French coffee-pot, that
indispensable adjunct of a well-ordered household. I found that the
courses were very hard to manage so that they would follow in their
proper order. They weren’t even satisfied to finish together like
evenly matched racers, but the roast was burned five minutes before
I thought of warming up the soup, and ten minutes before I had
scaled the fish. Then the latter wouldn’t broil readily until most of it
was in the fire. The vegetables I forgot entirely, and I decided at the
last moment to deny myself the salad, as dinner was waiting and I
was hungry. I might add that I inadvertently cut the pie with the
fish-knife, and that cast a damper on the dessert. However, as I
said, the coffee was good—and, anyhow, I am digressing.
 It was seven when I emptied my dishes into the water, and I
worked with a will, as I had a very exciting novel that I was desirous
of finishing. It was a few minutes past eleven when I emptied my
dish-pan for the last time, and then I was ripe for bed.
As time wore on I became more dexterous in the use of the dish-
cloth and -towel, and the day before sister returned I devoted but
six hours to dish-washing. To be sure, I had given up course dinners,
because they took too many plates, and for other reasons that need
not to be quoted here.
As I say, I am a fast worker, and yet it took me over six hours a
day to clean the crockery. Assuming that a woman can do it in eight
hours, she wastes half of her waking moments in drudgery beside
which the making of bricks without straw would be a pastime.
There is absolutely nothing in the dish-washing habit to
recommend it. It is ruinous to hands and temper, and, indeed, I do
not see but that it is immoral. Anything that puts us in the proper
mood for swearing is immoral, and there is nothing in the whole
housekeeping routine so conducive to highly spiced language as
dish-washing.
And to what purpose is this waste of time? I won’t go so far as to
advocate a return to the fingers that were used before forks for the
purpose of conveying food to the mouth, for that would but relieve
us from the washing of cutlery; but I will say that the man who will
invent a cheap yet very ornate dinner service that may be destroyed
after once using will have earned the undying gratitude of the
women of this country and a princely fortune besides.
And when he has invented it, sister may go on another visit.
 XXXVIII

A PERENNIAL FEVER
he world hears much of the dangers of typhoid and yellow
and scarlet fever, and the skill of physicians is ever
employed to reduce those dangers to a minimum; but in
every country, at all seasons of the year, there is a fever
that numbers its victims by the thousand, and yet no doctor has
ever prescribed for it, nor is there any drug in the pharmacopœia
that will alleviate it.
The malady to which I refer is hen fever.
If a city woman intends marrying a city man, and then moving out
a little way into the country, as she values her peace of mind, let her
make sure that he is immune. Unless, indeed, both are prepared to
come down with it at once. For it is unlike all other fevers in that a
man and his wife may have it together and be happy; but if he or
she have it alone, then woe be to that house.
The germs of hen fever are carried in a chance conversation, in a
picture of gallinaceous activity, in the perusal of a poultry-book. A
man hears or looks or reads, and the mischief is done. The subtle
poison is in his blood, although he knows it not.
Hen fever takes various forms. With some it is manifested in a
desire to keep a few blooded fowls and breed for points; with
another, to keep a few birds for the sake of fresh eggs and broilers:
but in whatsoever form it come, it will cause the upheaval of its
victim’s most cherished plans and habits.
 He may have been an ardent admirer of Shakspere, and in the
evenings it has been his wont to read aloud to his wife while she
knitted; but now, little recking what she does, he reads to himself
“Farm Poultry” or “The Care of Hens,” or—and this is the second
stage of the disease—he reads aloud to her that hens cannot thrive
without plenty of gravel, that cracked wheat is better than whole
corn for growing pullets, that the best way to cure a hen of eating
her own eggs is to fill one with mustard, etc.

Time was when he had an opinion on politics, on finance, on

literature, on the thousand and one things that make for
conversation, and his neighbors dropped in to hear him talk
engagingly of what he had read or seen; but now, when they come,
he tells them that his brown Leghorn hen laid twenty eggs in
twenty-five days, while his buff Cochin laid only eight in the same
time; that his white Plymouth Rock is crop-bound, and his
Wyandotte rooster has the pip.
 Lucky indeed is his wife if he stick to the good old way of hatching
chickens by hens instead of kerosene-oil; for if he get an incubator
she had better get a divorce. How many homes have been wrecked
by patent incubators will never be known.
But even if the fevered one stick to the natural method of
hatching, there will be many times when his wife will wonder why
she left a comfortable and sociable home to spend her evenings
alone; for he will be in the hen-house, setting hens, or washing
soiled eggs, or divesting nestlings of the reluctant shell, or dusting
his whole flock with the snuff-like insecticide, or kerosening their
roosts.
With some the fever never abates; with some it is intermittent;
some have it hardest in the spring of the year, when hens are laying
their prettiest, and profits may be figured in money as well as on
paper. But whether it be light or heavy, hen fever will run its course
without let or hindrance; and, as I have hinted, happy is the wife
who comes down with it simultaneously with her husband; for,
though their neighbors will shun them as they would a deadly
pestilence, yet they will be company for each other, and will prate
ceaselessly, yet cheerily, upon the best foods for laying hens, the
best exposure for coops, how many hens can live in one house with
best results, when a chicken should be weaned of bread, what breed
of hens is least idiotic, and kindred topics.
As for me, I am free to come and go among hens; to look on their
markings with unmoved eye; to view their output with normal pulse;
to hear “the cock’s shrill clarion” without pricking up my ears; to
read of the latest thing in incubators without turning a hair: for I
have survived the fever; I am an immune.
 XXXIX

“A M I C U S R E D I V I V U S ”
osephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might
well be applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of
us has not at some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,”
a “qualis ab incepto,” as it were, permeating his whole
being, and bringing vividly before the retina the transitory state of all
things worldly? As Chaucer said:

For who so wolde senge the cattes skin,

Than wol the cat wel dwellen in here in.

For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward

materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so
many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all
of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.
It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,”
said:

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

but how pat is the application to-day! We are as clouds. You who
boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of
ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all
remember those lambent lines of his—I cannot translate adequately,
so I will quote from the original German:
 Fräulein Anna, das Papier in Deutschland ist wie das Papier in Amerika.

Ages ago Sophocles had worded it in almost the same phrase:

Oh, race of mortal men oppressed with care!

What nothings are we, like to shadows vain,
Cumb’ring the ground and wandering to and fro.

The greatest poets, from Le Gallienne down to Shakspere, have

been aware of this evanescent property in the cumbrous and
exsufflicate prowlers amid these “glimpses of the moon.” Well may
we say with Cæsar, “Quamdiu se bene gesserit.”
There is always a touch of
ozone in the words of Horace,
and we find him saying of this
very thing, “Precieuse ridicules
pretiosa supellex.” Could it
have been said better? How
airily he pricks the bubble of
man’s self-esteem! “Dressed in
a little brief authority,” man
plays his part amid mundane
happenings tremelloid and
sejant, and with a sort of
innate connascence, a primitive
conglutinate efflorescence, he
approaches nearer and nearer,
day by day, to that time when,
as Shakspere hath it, “the
beachy girdle of the ocean” will
resolve itself into its
component parts, and man as man will cease to exist.
But, to pass to a more inchoate view of these things,—to the
“opum furiata cupido” of the ancient Latins,—what is there in all this
that tends to lessen a man’s self-glorification, his auto-apotheosis?
Victor Hugo can tell us:

Petit bourgeois père La Chaise

Pour prendre congé tour de force
Connaisseur tout Thérèse
Façon de parler Edmund Gosse.

The author of “Les Misérables” was himself a man, and he knew.

And no less a man was Coplas de Manrique, and in his beautiful
lyric, “Caballeros,” he says:

Tiene Vd.-Usted mi sombrero

Tiene Vd.-Usted mi chaleco
No lo tengo, no lo tengo
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi.

“Noblesse oblige,” and it behooves all of us, however mighty our

positions in life, to unbend a little and try to mollify these
manducable and irresoluble phases of molecular existence, to the
end that we may accomplish a “vis medicatrix naturae” and a “vade
mecum” that shall be valuable to us in our journey to the tomb and
through nether space.
So, then, may we “with an unfaltering trust approach our grave,”
and, as Schiller says so musically:

Ich kann nicht mit der linken Hand schreiben.

 XL

THE PROPER CARE OF FLIES

t is a fact beyond cavil that ninety-nine flies out of a
hundred perish every year for lack of proper care on the
part of housewives; that the attention that is lavished
upon the house-cat, if expended upon the house-fly,
would cause him to stay with us throughout the twelvemonth.
I have devoted years of patient study to the busy buzzers, and I
speak as one having authority. Flies need warmth as much as
humans do—nay, more than their biped brethren, for we can stand
the early autumn frosts without a fire, but it is those few days that
kill off the little fellows that have been our winged companions
through the summer season, singing in the new day, sampling our
butter and meats, and tickling us half to death with their erratic
pilgrimages and divagations. A little forethought on our part, a
speedier lighting of the furnace fires, and flies in midwinter would no
longer be a rarity.
This well-nigh universal carelessness is due to a woeful ignorance
as to the habits of the fly, and not to intentional cruelty. Why, we
know more about the ways of the wapiti than of the most common
occupant of our houses. To give an instance, most people refer to
the fly as a scavenger, a lover of tainted meats and vegetables. This
is only because he is so often forced to eat tainted meat or go
without altogether. There are fresh milk and fish for the cat, dainty
tidbits for the dog, millet and rape for the canary; yet how many
Christian people think to provide something tempting for the flies?
But too often we begrudge them the crumbs that fall from the table.
So far from flies loving “high” meat, it is an acquired taste with
them. This had long been a theory with me, but it is only a year
since I proved it by an interesting experiment. I secured a setting of
flies’ eggs,—not thoroughbred eggs, but just the ordinary barn-yard
variety,—and I set them under a motherly bluebottle fly, after I had
made her a comfortable nest in a pill-box. I saw to it that she had
the proper food for a setting fly—not mush and milk, but flakes of
hominy and grains of sugar once a day. I also dusted her nest
thoroughly with insecticide and covered her with a tea-strainer so
that she would be secure from molestation from other flies. For
three weeks she was faithful to her duties, and then, one morning, I
saw that she had experienced the sweet joys of motherhood, for
there, on the edge of her nest, sat thirteen—mark the number—
cunning little flies, pluming and preening themselves with innate
skill. I could scarce keep back the tears.
 For a few days I let the little flock follow their mother, and then I
shut them up away from her in my guest-chamber and began their
education. The sweetest milk was theirs from the start, and after a
week of bread diet, that their feathers might be strengthened, I
began to give them small scraps of porter-house steak and
Southdown mutton. It was wonderful to see how the little beggars
throve. One night I slept in the guest-chamber, and they awoke me
before the robin’s matin song, although they were not three weeks
old. Their tread had a firmness, a titillating power, that never comes
to a tramp fly or to one improperly nurtured. Then, their buzzing
was so sonorous that sleep was impossible once they tuned up, so I
was in no danger of becoming a drowse-abed.
When they were two months old I determined to test my theory. I
procured some meat from the larder of a gormand friend of mine,
and brought it into my guest-chamber in an air-tight box. Then I
opened the box and awaited developments. If flies are natural-born
birds of carrion, then they would rush upon this stuff with avidity. I
hid behind the arras—if I am quite sure what arrases are—and
watched my little pets with some concern. They flew over to the
meat, sniffed it disdainfully, buzzed with ire for a few seconds, and
then flew to the ceiling with every appearance of disgust. Then the
largest one signaled to his fellows, and they flew down once more,
lifted the “condemned beef” in their talons as firemen seize a life-
preserving net, and sailed to the open window, where they dropped
it. In five minutes’ time it was black with flies that had not received
proper nurture. Was I pleased? I was delighted. I set forth a feast of
sugar on top of my bald head, and sat in the guest-chamber until my
pets had made an end of eating.
The nineteenth century is nearing its close, and the house-fly is
not a perfect insect; but, housekeeper, it lies with you to improve the
breed. Exercise a little care in the choice of their food, and when the
biting days of early fall come upon the land, make provision for
warming your little guests of the summer days, and if the winds of
winter whistle sharp they will be answered by the hot little buzz of
myriads of flies.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Contractions such as “he ’s” and “she ’d” (with a space) have been changed to “he’s” and
“she’d” (without a space).
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful
comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or
archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg xii: ‘Harper’s Bazar’ replaced by ‘Harper’s Bazaar’.
Pg 124: ‘what the concensus’ replaced by ‘what the consensus’.
Pg 237: ‘dainty titbits’ replaced by ‘dainty tidbits’.
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