3o8 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



A Marine Army on the March. 



BY JOHN S. FERNALD, BELFAST, MAINE. 



An army of porpoises on the march 

 was one of the most interesting sights 

 witnessed by the party of gold hunters 

 on board the bark William O. Alden 

 during her voyage in 1849-50, from 

 Belfast, Maine, to San Francisco. Al- 

 though nearly sixty years have elap- 

 sed the life habits of these Cetaceans 

 have changed but little, if any, and 

 similar marches might be witnessed at 

 the appointed seasons and places at 

 the present day. Unlike their cousins, 

 the seals, and their greater relatives 

 among the marine mammals, the 

 whales, and the salmon, cod, mack- 

 eral and other food fishes of the two 

 great oceans, these denizens of the 

 mighty deep have not been hunted 

 very extensively by man ; hence their 

 migrations, feeding grounds and breed- 

 ing places experience little change as 

 the decades roll by. 



Mr. Henry J. Woods, one of the 

 "Forty-niners," now of Newton Centre, 

 Massachusetts, made the following 

 entry in his diary of the voyage, the 

 account being the next in order after 

 his report of leaving the island of 

 Juan Fernandez : 



"The next day we saw a school of por- 

 poises going the opposite way from us, 

 the army extending on each side as 

 far as the eye could reach. They 

 swam in regular files, like soldiers, each 

 following his file leader, and so intent 

 were they on the business in hand that 

 they paid no attention to us, but simply 

 opened the ranks, by right and left 

 oblique movement, to allow the vessel 

 to pass through, and immediately 

 closed up again. We wondered, as we 

 watched them, whether they were a 

 great army going forth to battle under 

 a brave and skillful leader, or were 

 they following a natural instinct in 

 search of food by migration to other 

 feeding grounds." 



why one thing is beautiful to us and 

 another not — why persons, combina- 

 tions, etc., that are beautiful to one are 

 often not so to another — and why one 

 man sees so much beauty in the world, 

 another so little. The explanation is, 

 that beauty and love are correlatives ; 

 they are the objective and subjective 

 aspects of the same thing. Beauty has 

 no existence apart from love, and love 

 has no existence apart from beauty. 

 Beauty is the shadow of love 

 thrown upon the outer world. We 

 do not love a person or thing because 

 the person or thing is beautiful, but 

 whatever we love, that is beautiful to 

 us, and whatever we do not love, is 

 not beautiful.— Dr. R. M. Bucke. "Walt 

 Whitman." 



Love Creates Beauty. 



But the Poet is the master of beauty, 

 and his mastery consists in command- 

 ing and causing things which were not 

 before considered beautiful to become 

 so. How does he do this? Before this 

 can be answered we must understand 



An Incident In Birdlife. 



BY L. M. BRAINERD, LA GRANGE, ILL. 



One warm forenoon in late August, 

 the Idler lay in his hammock under the 

 huge willow that made the whole back- 

 yard of the suburban lot a shady re- 

 treat. Strong winds from the south 

 swung the lithe branches to and fro in 

 steady rhythm and hurried great 

 masses of white clouds steadily north- 

 ward. Seven or eight young robins 

 were running about under a row of 

 raspberry bushes that marked the 

 north limit of the lawn, but the Idler 

 had forgotten them in the joy of weav- 

 ing dreams among the clouds, when he 

 was disturbed by a peculiar snapping 

 noise, as if some crackling twig had 

 suddenly grown actively animate. 



Turning quietly to find the cause, 

 the Idler saw a young robin, not a rod 

 away, hopping excitedly back and 

 forth, now charging with vicious peck 

 at some tumbling object in the grass, 

 then retreating with ridiculous precipi- 

 tation. Eager to see what prey drew 

 forth such a violent exhibition of 

 energy, the Idler drove Sir Robin off 

 and picked up a luckless cicada, then 

 able to do nothing but flop about, head 

 down and wings persistently snapping. 

 Deciding that the cicada was already 

 too far along in the fulfillment of his 

 destiny, for human interference, his 

 observer tossed him back upon the 

 close-cropped clover and withdrew to 

 watch the game. 



