THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION 



31 



rich mahogany colored tissues, stud- 

 ded here and there with bits of ghs- 

 tening, transparent quartz. Here I 

 had many hints of a world of life be- 

 yond the power of the unaided eye. 

 And here too the grosser fauna scram- 

 bled, hopped or wriggled. Everywhere 

 were tiny chrysalids and cocoons, 

 many empty. Now and then a ])laque 

 of eggs, almost microscopic, showed 

 veriest pin-pricks where still more 

 minute parasites had made their escape. 

 Contracting the field of vision to this 

 world where leaves were fields and 

 fungi loomed as forests, competition, 

 the tragedies, the mystery lessen not 

 at all. Minute seeds mimicked small 

 beetles in shape and in exquisite trac- 

 ery of patterns ; small beetles curled 

 up and to the eye became minute ^eeds 

 of beautiful design. Bits of bark simu- 

 lated insects, a patch of fungus seemed 

 a worm, and in their turn insects and 

 worms became transmuted optically 

 into immobile vegetation. Scores of 

 little creatures were wholly invisible 

 until they moved. Here and there i 

 discovered a lifeless boulder of emer- 

 ald or turquois — the metallic cuirass 

 of some long dead beetle. 



"Some of the scenes which appeared 

 as I picked over the mold, unfolded 

 suddenly after an upheaval of debris, 

 were startling. When we had worked 

 with the lens for .many minutes, all 

 relative comparisons with the sur- 

 rounding world were lost. Instead of 

 looking down from on high, a being 

 apart, with titanic brush of bristles 

 ready to capture the fiercest of thes 

 jungle creatures, I, like Alice in Won- 

 derland, felt myself growing smaller, 

 becoming an onlooker, perhaps hiding 

 behind a tiny leaf or twig. This feel- 

 ing became more and more real as we 

 labored day after day, and it added 

 greatly to the interest and excitement." 



The ordinary killifish, fuiidultis maja- 

 lis, of our brackish waters is thought by 

 Dr. S. O. Nash of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity to have a "direction sense" more 

 or less like that of certain migratory 

 birds . He notes that w'hen a school is 

 cut ofT in a tidal pool by the falliuig water, 

 the fish flop across the sand bar to the 

 sea. But they rarely make a mistake and 

 take a wrong direction. 



Death of J. Walter Davis. 



J. Walter Davis, for several vears a 

 resident of Stamford and for' a few 

 years a member of The Agassiz Asso- 

 ciation, died suddenly of heart trouble 

 at his home in Westport, Connecticut 

 on Sunday, April i6th. Mr. Davis left 

 Stamford last November, after living 

 there for sixteen years. He took active 

 interest in Y. M. C. A. and other relig- 

 ious work, and was an intense lover of 

 nature, but his occupation as a travel- 

 ing salesman, and his devotion to the 

 Y. M. C. A. and to the Baptist Church, 

 prevented him from devoting much 

 time to the pursuits of a naturalist. 

 His chief manifestation of interest was 

 by means of the camera of which he 

 was a skilled user. Mr. Davis belong- 

 ed to that grand class of business men 

 who find their recreation in some form 

 of outdoor avocation, although his time 

 for such was limited. 



In conversation he always manifest- 

 ed a cordial and evidently 'heartfelt in- 

 terest in the religious tendencies of the 

 AA, regarding the Association as one 

 of the prominent factors in religious 

 and uplift work in this community. 



The Agassiz Association extends to 

 members of the family, and to his 

 friends, its heartfelt sympathy, and to 

 the public in general the expression of 

 its high appreciation of him as a thor- 

 oughly hale and hearty man in every 

 sense of the words, a believer in the 

 omnipresent God, and a lover of His 

 works. 



Death of Miss Fielde. 



Students of insect life will regret the 

 death, on February 22, of Miss Alele 

 M. Fielde. 



Miss Fielde though she belonged as 

 a whole with the older group of obser- 

 ver naturalists, did a good deal of valu- 

 able experimenting on the psychology 

 of various ant species. She was, be- 

 sides, the inventor of the Fielde port- 

 able nest for ant colonies. Her scien- 

 tific work was rather an avocation 

 than the main business of her life, for 

 she was for more than twenty years a 

 missionary to China and Siam, and 

 wrote several books on China. After 

 her return to this country, she became 

 active in various civic and social move- 

 ments. Her death occurred at Seattle 

 at the age of seventv-seven. 



