in reptiles, in volcanoes, in anthropology, you read him with each of
these subjects in mind. I recently had in mind the problem of the
soaring condor, and I re-read him for that, and, sure enough, he had
studied and mastered that subject, too. If you are interested in seeing
how the biological characteristics of the two continents, North and
South America, agree or contrast with each other, you will find what
you wish to know. You will learn that in South America the
lightning-bugs and glowworms of many kinds are the same as in North
America; that the beetle, or elator, when placed upon its back, snaps
itself up in the air and falls upon its feet, as our species does; that
the obscene fungus, or _Phallus_, taints the tropical forests, as a
similar species at times taints our dooryards and pasture-borders; and
that the mud-dauber wasps stuff their clay cells with half-dead spiders
for their young, just as in North America. Of course there are new
species of animal and plant life, but not many. The influence of
environment in modifying species is constantly in his mind.

VI

The naturalist can content himself with a day of little things. If he
can read only a word of one syllable in the book of nature, he will make
the most of that. I read such a word the other morning when I perceived,
when watching a young but fully fledged junco, or snowbird, that its
markings Were like those of the vesper sparrow. The young of birds
always for a brief period repeat the markings of the birds of the parent
stem from which they are an offshoot. Thus, the young of our robins have
speckled breasts, betraying their thrush kinship. And the young junco
shows, in its striped appearance of breast and back, and the lateral
white quills in the tail, its kinship to the grass finch or vesper
sparrow. The slate-color soon obliterates most of these signs, but the
white quills remain. It has departed from the nesting-habits of its
forbears. The vesper sparrow nests upon the ground in the open fields,
but the junco chooses a mossy bank or tussock by the roadside, or in the
woods, and constructs a very artistic nest of dry grass and hair which
is so well hidden that the passer-by seldom detects it.

Another small word I read about certain of the rocks in my native
Catskills, a laminated, blue-gray sandstone, that when you have split
them open with steel wedges and a big hammer, or blown them up with
dynamite, instead of the gray fresh surface of t