Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1893 — FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS.

A FIGHTING BIRD. Pootor Franklin, when he recommended the adoption of the turkey as our national emblem in place of the often unclean and not particularly courageous bald eagle, had a great many good reasons to give on behalf of his candidate. Among them he did not fail to include its lighting qualities. A turkey cock is not a bird of prey, it is true, but he is a gallant fellow when he engages in battle, and decidedly more willing to meet an adversary of his own size than is an eagle; at least an eagle of the particular species selected to hold our American thunderbolts in his talons. We are used to hearing tales of unfortunate infants carried on by eagles, and likewise of rash boys in search of eagles’ eggs or young eaglets, who are attaoked by the wrathful parent birds while clinging to the sides of precipitous cliffs, and just esoape with their lives. A few—a very few—of these tales are probably true. But tot every youth terrified by a shrieking eagle flapping about his ears, how many young Americans have trembled at the gobble of a well-grown turkey cook, with his wattles flaming, his breast ruffled to the utmost, his wings half spread, and wrath in his every feather? How many have ignominiously fled before such an aroused monarch of the barn-yard? And now, if the capacity to slay be really an addition to the dignity of a bird of power, we find that the can claim that also. There have been various anecdotes of the arms and legs of small children broken by the blow of his mighty wing; but these do not count because the same tales are related of geese. But an antiquarian searcher amoDg ancient newspapers recently discovered in an old journal * published in Ncwburyport, the obituary notice of a man killed by a turkey. He was a very aged gentleman, it ap - pears, and slightly childish. A mild day of Indian summer having come, his relatives put him in a comfortable armchair on the porch, wrapped in a loose dressing-gown and wearing on his head, to keep off colds and neuralgia, a peaked red nightcap with a tassel on the end. ThCt(?he unfortunately'fell asleep; and as he drowsed, his head nodded; and as his head nodded, his nightcap wagged. The scarlet tassel bobbing thus conspicuously caught the eye of a turkey that was wandering about the place, undergoing his autumn fattening no doubt, and was regarded in the light of a challenge. Swelling and gobbling meeting with no response, the bird at length new at the poor old gentleman, plucked his nightcap off, beat him with his wings until he fell out of his chair, and as the paper puts it, “so ill-used and maltreated him as he soon thereafter died.” Perhaps, despite Doctor Franklin, to be eaten is a more suitable fate than glorification for so dangerous a bird.— [ Youth’s Companion.

a butterfly’s bath. Standing on tho banks of the Hop River in Jamaica one brilliant July day, watching the dragon-flies, or “darning needle*,” darting over the wiiter, I saw * sight that was entirely new to me, and one that filled me with wonder. A beautiful butterfly, of a sort common in the West Indies, known to the naturalists as Victorina Steneles, and oddly banded with pale green and deep black bars across its wings, floated lazily down to the water’s edge and settled on the damp sand. Walking quickly to the very edge of the water, where the breeze sent in little rippling waves, the butterfly waded in so that its body and head were completely submerged, and then slowly beat ita wings to and fro, seemingly in an attempt to cover them with the water also. Of course it could not do this, for it was so light in proportion to the expanse of its wings that whenever it attempted to force them under the water its feet lost their hold on the ground and for an instant it floated on the surface. Quickly flying up from this perilous position, it regained the shore and again began the attempt to get entirely under water.

All this was a most interesting spectacle to me, and I was entirely at a loss to understand its meaning. I had been a student of butterflies for nearly twentyfive years and a collector in many different countries, yet I had never witnessed such a sight before. The weather was not especially warm, in fact “the doctor,” as the Jamaicans call the strong sea breeze that daily makes life more endurable, was unusually cool that day. So it could hardly be for the purpose of cooling itself that the insect indulged in these strange proceedings, or it would have been a sight long since familiar to me and to other collectors. I was well aware that butterflies do get overheated and out of breath; often after watching two of them fighting furiously in the hot sunshine, or having raced them myself across the fields. I had seen them flapping their wings lightly up and down, thereby forcing the air more rapidly through the little holes at the base of the wings through which they do their breathing, and thus cooling themselves off. Falling to fathom such queer ani apparently unnatural actions on the part of this butterfly, I was just preparing to capture it to make a closer examination when I was thwarted by a third party. Evidently I had not been the only interested watcher, for at that instant a whip-poor-will dashed out from the gloom of the bordering woods and in his attempt to capture the butterfly effectually frightened it away. It was some months after this, on another stream in Jamaica, that I saw precisely the same performance repeated —again on the part of the beautiful banded Victorina. This time, however, I was more fortunate, and quickly had the butterfly in my net and a moment after it was between my fingers and under the powerful lens, which is my constant pocket companion. At once all was clear to me, for here and there on the hairy covering of its velvety body, but especially near the bases of the wings, were little bright carmine patches, which on close examination, after stirring them up with a pin, ptoved to be made up of scores of tiny rod parasites. If elding the butterfly carefully between my thumb and finger by the whig*

so as not to hurt It, I immersed it in the water and held it there until the kicking of its legs plainly told me that it was growing uncomfortable for want of air. Then, on re-examining it, I found that most of the tiny parasites had been drowned off; and after three or four such baths I could not find one remaining. Then I allowed my captive to fly away, and I have often wondered just what its thoughts—if any it had—must have been concerning the giant who thus aided it to get rid of its microscopic tormentors.

Since then I have ascertained, with the aid of a powerful microscope, that the minute parasite I discovered on the butterfly is armed with a most formidable proboscis, or beak, which is attached to a powerful pumping apparatus within its head. With this outfit and its eight legs, each armed with many claws, it is able to cling to the butterfly, and extract its life juices. Thus it is plain that these pests must become a terrible drain on the butterfly’s system, and it is in self-defense driven to this most effectual, though apparently very unnatural procedure of taking a bath—for taking to the water is about the last thing that most of us would expect of so fragile a creature as a butterfly.—[St. Louis Republic.