PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2647, 7 December 1904, Page 70

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

— Nature Notes.—

Rome, time ago a. Tapanui reader suggested adding to the many Witness departments what would practically be a Nature Study Column, and' the editor passed the note on to me. The idea, as I have said, is a good one, and I promised to find room for any notes, and to encourage the development of the observational powers of our young folk. There are many boys and girls — and boys and girls of an older growth — who possess information ■which would be of great interest to Witness readers, I am stire. Then, too, many teachers could send in notes of Nature lessons, which would be of great value to other teachers less gifted) or less favourably situated, and who- would gladly make use of what others could supply. I have given a note by T. M. G. — I'll assume in future that full names may be given unless a pen-name is also sent in — and to-day give another by the same correspondent,, relating to the cleanliness of birds. I have, too, at times, given extracts from articles Donald Macdonald has been contributing to the Melbourne Ai-gus. To-day I give one or two more of his observations, and a note or two from other sources.

Dear Pater, — I am an old correspondent of Dot's, and also take an interest in your "Ohats With the Boys/ which I think very interesting as well as instructive to both big and little folk. When reading the last Chat on Nature from tho Argus, written by .Donald Mac Donald, I thought that T would send in an observation or two. I quite agree that the average country boy sees far more of the peculiarities of Nature than the grown-up man does. Here is an instance that has puzzled irany a man who has not taken much notice of Nature when a boy. How is it that birds such aa thrushes, sparrows, linnets, etc., keep their nests so clean when rearing their young?" Well, I suppose you have often noticed l the robin and the tomtit, two of tho quietest of birds in the bush. When they find a grub or worm, and devour it, they evacuate immediately. The same thing happens when the mother bird feeds her young. The young birds evacuate, and' the parent bird picks the excrement out of the nest and drops it down, and' also cleans up any mess than is made while away. They have to do so, as the young birds are not able to shift -for themselves. — T. M. G., Mikonui. —Are Deciduous Trees Becoming - Evergreen?— ; • The,, following, by^' Donald Macdonald, applies to Australia. * 'Have we anything analogous in New Zealand? Sometimes we .notice oak trees, with last year's leaves' still clinging. to them while the mew spring foliage is bursting, and the fright, living green mingles strangely with the dead brown. I wonder whether, in the course of. time, the whole of those introduced deciduous trees may not become evei'green. This is dangerous ground for theory, but the thought will come. By the end of winter, so far as my limited observation -goes, there is not a d«ad leaf clinging to English oaks, and yet Australia is more windy than England. I have cycled through English lanes when day after day there was hardly a breath of wind — a very rare occurrence, as cyclists know, in Australia, for he who goes much awheel gets to know the ways of the winds. So it is not the winds that strip the English oaks and elms so bare early in winter, though it may be the damp, which, upon the authority of 'the gravedigger of "Hamlet" is a great destroyer of your dead bodies. Nature is very slow in her processes. That which the gardener may do in a season with the practice of hybridisation takes a few thousand years for Nature to accomplish. But there " is no. hurry ; she is not tied to a lifetime for her work, even though the limit of a human life were multiplied' tenfold. One can only note something unusual in the beginning o£ things, and wonder what may be the ultimate consequence ; andi so one wonders whether, as the ages go by, the oaks and elms may not fall into the habit of the gumtree, and shed' their bark while keeping their leaves. ■ The -next note is by the same writer :— — New Zealand Natural History. — < In , New Zealand' when Canadian moose were first turned down there was much speculation as to whether these strange, huge deer, the gnomes of the- North, would thrive^ in new pastures. They had, in the snow peaks, the cold, clear kikes, the steep hills, and the pine-lands of the West Coast a scenic reproduction of their Canadian home; but the lily roots, which the moose tears from their bed in the shallow lake 'bottoms, were wanting. The moose calves wandered out into the strange forest, however, where originally no animal of any kind grazed, and at once found- food' to their liking. When we speak of the natural food! of an animal or bird, it means only the food they. have becomo accustomed to in a particular locality. Under new conditions they find new pastures. At the Bluff the hors© that draws the oyster trucks is ready for his two or three dozen every time he can get a curious or well-disposed person to open them for him. In the old boiling-down days in Queensland, before the frozen meat and' canning trade developed, the station horses used' to- visit reguarly the heaps where the lean meat . was tipped after the taJlow had been takon from, it, and on this strange diot they fattened amazingly. The r&markable way^ in which> trout have increased in the streams of Australia and New Zealand' — increased not only in numbers, but in size — has often been a matter for discussion and comment. Without much reflection men have come to the vague that the more genial climate of Australia — which may certainly have an effect upon animals and birds — explains the prodigious growth of trout. The inevitable conclusion is that in yp&rs to come, as the fish increase in numbers, and their food supply decreases proportionately, the trout will shrink also to the dimensions common in English brooks, possibly even smaller, for every well-known trout stream or looh in the Old! Country is fished over by suoh a vast number of anglers that the stock) are kept down, and tag struggle for

1 existence mad© more easy to the survivors. In Australia the anglers will be few in proportion to the number of streams and fish, so that a few years hence we may expect to find many more trout in a bag. # but the era of big fish will have passed, both in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. ' When the old angler of the future, who may be th-o young beginner of to-day, tells of the big trout he caught in the Great Lake, or in the estuaries of New Zealand rivers, tho fishers of that coming time will smile the incredulous, but kindly, smile that discredits a fLsh story. ] And) so is this: — j —The Pepper Tree.— I have spoken of th© partiality of the blackbird for the berries of the pepper tree. A still more curious instance of preference for it is shown by one of our be-st-known insects, the emperor gum moth. As Mr Gillies points out in his interesting little book on insect studies, the x 3x 3e rP cr tree was brought from South America, yet the bright-coloured caterpillars — bred originally only upon gumtrees — are now constantly found feeding upon it. If the caterpillar found its way by chance on to the pepper tree it would be- compelled to cat or starve; and, having eaten, might find the new food, much to its taste. The selection, however, was "made for it by its parent, the emperor gum moth, which docs not itself eat the leaves,, but must have known in some strange way that this new tree would suit its caterpillar. Some spiders are quick to adjtpt their location to the change of the season. All the summer a large grey spider had its web on the boughs of a baniksia rose on the south side of a paling fence, where it was sheltered' from the hot north winds. With the first cold days of autumn it went over to the northern side of the fence, where it was warmer, and neither the web nor the watcher was exposed to the south-west winds.

— Land Birds in Mid-ocean. — "How it is that land bird?, in midocean, although at first very tame, instinctively recover their native wildness on approaching land?" "Darwin has shown that the fear of man is an acquired, and not a native, instinct, and from this wo may in£er that with other acquired instincts it would 1 be more readily lost or fall into abeyance than those instincts that are inborn. With strange surroundings, animals lend to lose these acquired instincts, as is well shown by the cowardice of the house dog in a strange house, the unruliness of the horse in strange harness and the like. The land bird in mid-ocean, being bereft of its accustomed landmarks, loses with them its acquired' instincts, until the sight of land restores its confidence in itself and gives it back all its faculties. A tameness from a similar cause- has often been noticed in wild animals during convulsions of nature, floocls and fire, and it is well known that panic, such for example as is produced" by a fire at sea, falling into the wateri or a - pestilence, will bring into abeyance all c man's acquired iiistincts, and reduce him to the primitive instincts of a- brutei beast." — Pearson's Weekly. ! — Seagulls.— ; There is at present an interesting quarrel in the making between bird-lovers and fishermen; for the fishermen wish to de- j clare war against the two million seagulls which congregate around! tho coast of the i United Kingdom. During the herring sea- j son these birds- live on the herring fry, j each bird (it is said) destroying about 12,000 promising, young fish. If these- had lived to maturity their total market value | would have been £24,000,000; so that each i gull costs the nation about £12. At pre- ! sent these birds are protected by act of I Parliament; lience the fishermen, " who ac- j cept the figures given abovp, would like j to see the act repealed and the gulls and j other coast birds exterminated. j j — Mark Twain on Birds. — ' i Mark Twain has a word to say, in his humorous pathetic way, about the species of naturalist "that writes books about birds.* ! and loves theni so that they'll go hungry I and tired to find) a new bird and kill it." j I "Their name," he adds, "is ornithologers ; ! and! I could 'a been an ornithologer myself, because I always loved birds anbl 1 creatures; and I started out to learn how to be one, ! and I see a bird 1 sitting on a dead limb ! of a high tree, singing, with his head tilted ; back andi his mouth open; and before I thought, I fired, and his song- stopped, and j j he fell down from the limb-, limp as a rag, I and I run and) picked him up," and l he was '. dead, and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about, this way and that, like his neck was broke, and there was a white ekin over his eye 3, and one | little drop of blood on the side of his head, ! and laws! I couldn't see nothing for the | tears; and I h'ain't ever murdered no ereaj ture since that warnlt doing me no harm,^ and I ain't going to." — F^om Boy's Own Paper.