D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections and University Archives

A Natural History of Pearson's Falls
and Some of Its Human Associations

Special Collections QH 105 .N8 P43


Cover, "Natural History of Pearson's Falls,"
D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, UNC at Asheville 28804
Title Natural History of Pearson's Falls
Alt. Title A Natural History of Pearson's Falls and Some of Its Human Associations
Identifier http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/books/booklets/
natural_history_pearson's_falls/default_natural_history_pearson's_falls.htm
Creator Peattie, Donald Culross, 1898-1964
Subject Keyword Natural history ; Pearson's Falls ; Pearson's Falls Glen ; Western North Carolina ; Carolina mountains ; Garden Club of Tryon, NC ; Charles William Pearson ; Captain Pearson ; Asheville-Spartanburg railway ; Southern railway ; Pacolet river ; Polk county ; Tryon ; botany ; deciduous forests ; forests ; glen ; wild life preserve
Subject LCSH Natural history -- North Carolina -- Pearson's Falls
Botany -- North Carolina -- Pearson's Falls
Date digital 2009-03
Date original 1930s?
Publisher Garden Club of Tryon, North Carolina
Contributor

Garden Club of Tryon, NC

Type Source type: text
Format [digital] image/jpeg/text ; [booklet] ; 66 p. ; 19 cm 
Source Special Collections QH 105 .N8 P43 
Language English
Relation  
Coverage temporal 1930s?
Coverage spatial western North Carolina
Rights Any display, publication or public use must credit D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Copyright retained by the authors of certain items in the collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Donor n/a
Description  A small booklet printed by and for the Garden Club of Tryon, North Carolina to benefit the upkeep and protection of the wild life preserve in which the glen of Pearson's Falls is located.  Contents include history of the discovery, exploration, and protection of the glen; accounts of the flora, bacteria and slime-moulds, fauna, and soils and rocks; a catalogue of ferns and seed plants at the Falls and in the Peaks above; and photographs of the Falls and several examples of the area's flora.
Acquisition n.d.
Citation Natural History of Pearson's Falls, D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804
Processed by Special Collections staff,  2009
Last update 2009-05

 

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Natural History of Pearson's Falls

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A Natural History

of

Pearson's Falls

and

Some of Its Human Associations

 

 

 

BY

DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE

Author of "The Flora of the Tryon Region," "Trillium in North and South Carolina," "Botanizing on Mt. Mitchell," "The Romance of Andre Michaux," "Shortia, the Flower that Was Lost for a Century," "The Real Audubon," etc.

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 This small work is written by one who has spent golden hours at Pearson's Falls. It is sold only for the benefit of the wild life preserve that has been created there, and has been printed by and for the Garden Club of Tryon, North Carolina, which saved the Glen from destruction.

     Those who purchase this booklet are assured that all profit is devoted to the upkeep and protection of the Glen, where so many generations have enjoyed themselves, and so many rare or new species have been discovered.

     I offer no apology to the scientist into whose hands the book may fall for the popular tone of these natural history notes. Those who wish to go more deeply into the science of the subject may refer themselves to the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Society, where articles and volumes deal with the birds, mammals, reptiles, and fungi of North Carolina, and in particular, my "Flora of the Tryon Region."

 

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PEARSON'S FALLS

Photographed by Roy Baird.

 

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CONTENTS
_____

                                                      Page

BEGINNINGS     -   -   -   -   -   -  -      5

FLORA        -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    11
     Fungi     -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    13
     Algae     -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    17
     Mosses  -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    17
     Ferns     -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    19
     Flowering Plants  -   -   -   -   -     20
     The Story of Shortia -   -   -   -     27

BACTERIA AND SLIME-MOULDS   -    32

FAUNA       -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -     34
     Invertebrates   -   -   -   -   -   -     34
     Lower Vertebrates   -   -   -   -     46
     Birds      -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -     49
     Mammals    -   -   -   -   -   -   -     53

SOILS AND ROCKS -   -   -   -   -   -     57

SUPPLEMENT : A Catalogue of Ferns and Seed
     Plants found at Pearson's Falls and in the
     Peaks above   -   -   -   -   -   -      58
                             ______

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece    -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -    3
Pearson's Falls    -   -   -   -   -   -   -     6
Huger's Red Trillium     -   -   -   -   -   22
Gleason's White Trillium   -   -   -   -    24
Showy Orchis -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   26
 

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BEGINNINGS
______
 

ANY millions of years ago a wrinkle like a smile began to crease the face of the continent that was to be called America, and the Blue Ridge was raised from the sea and the plains. This wrinkle was made of granite, the very bed-rock of the earth when first it fell, a spattered drop, from the sun's cauldron. There are no fossils in the Blue Ridge granite, which proves that these aged mountains have never again been under water since God breathed life into the dust. But the sun shone and the rain fell, and the winds of long ago walked about over those rocks, and so those mountains that must have been as barren as lunar scenery were sculptured and gentled, and life appeared, we know not whether as the result merely of putting a pinch of dust, a drop of water, and a little light together, or whether because some unascertained seeds of life rained down on this globe from stellar space. 
     Today, in the heart of those old mountains, you may find your heritage of beauty and wonder, the finished product of millions of years of life. As in a cathedral nave where one may admire the art of centuries, so one goes reverently up the glen called Pearson's Falls, where scenes from the story of life on earth are painted upon the carven walls and green windows. There, upon the brow of that tiny cavern, where a fine spray forever falls, hangs the weird, unmodern green of algae, first of the plants to enrobe the earth. Here are forests of mosses no higher than your thumb but higher far in evolution than the algae. Here the walking-fern steps daintily across the

 

 

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PEARSON'S FALLS 

Photographed by Donald C. Peattie.

 

page 7 pear007.jpg rocks, root to tip and tip to root, recalling the days of the giant tree-ferns when lizards like elephants sloshed and hissed across the continent, and where now from a flowering dogwood tree a redbird starts with his magical cry. The great hemlocks sigh, the brook rushes garrulously, and then, above all other sounds, you hear the light thunder of the falls. 
     Here, for thousands of years, the white sprite, the fall, has been in being, delicious, setting in motion a perpetual breeze which makes the maidenhair and the foam-flower to tremble ceaselessly upon their stalks, keeping a fleck of brown foam forever swirling about the little pool below. 
     The first white man to discover this Glen, so cleverly hidden in a fold of the mountains, may have been one of the settlers who reached this region upon the eve of the Revolutionary War, but more likely it was almost unknown, since even so recently as twenty years ago there was no road completely penetrating the Pacolet gorge, and fifty years ago there was no railroad. 
     When the Asheville-Spartanburg railway, now the Southern, was looking for a pass through the mountains, it sent among others a young engineer, Charles William Pearson, down the river of the laughing name, Pacolet. It was then that was discovered the nameless glen with the rhododendron blossoms snowing on the pool. In course of time Pearson bought this as part of a great tract which he secured to himself and upon which he settled and lived to the end of his days. His life, however, was not merely that of a farmer. He served through the War Between the States, and was Captain of Company H in the 63rd North Carolina Regiment. He helped to locate the railroad from Salisbury to Asheville and from Asheville to Murphy and assisted in the building of many
page 8 pear008.jpg other railroads of the South. His ancestry was a fine one, his ancestors having served the young state of North Carolina in official and judicial capacities. A pioneer, an engineer, a farmer, he was known everywhere as Captain Pearson, and his death removed one of the picturesque figures of the community. 
     Liberal with his possessions, he allowed the generations of young folks to enjoy the falls, and here, in the days of yellow surreys and colored coachmen, parties of the happy youth came with basket and banjo to picnic on the great flat table-rock beside the pool. Folk who can remember Tryon ten years ago and more will recall in particular that loquacious, mendacious and friendliest of these drivers, Charlie Mills, who alone knew where the Dutchman's-breeches grew, who boiled the fragrant coffee and broiled the pungent bacon, and over the embers told tall tales of slavery days he had never seen. 
     Scientists came also, and here it was, if I am not mistaken, that the late Arthur Middleton Huger, of Charleston,
discovered, somewhere in the 'nineties, the famous large red trillium that bears his name. In the same decade Mr. William Willard Ashe, North Carolina explorer for the Forest Service, penetrated the Pacolet gorge and collected rare new lindens and rhododendrons. Mr. E. C. Townsend, of Cornell University, explored the falls in 1897, and they were a favorite haunt of that eccentric, old-fashioned and insatiate naturalist, Samuel Green, who spent his life trying to improve the lot of his black brother and died, little appreciated, in Tryon in 1910, leaving behind him a fine collection of mosses, lichens, woods and leaves of North Carolina trees. Miss Margaret Morley, beloved towns woman, author of that charming animal story, "Little Mitchell," the delightful travel book, "The
page 9 pear009.jpg Carolina Mountains," and several sage and tasteful studies of sex and love-life in nature, was the first to discover the walking-fern at Pearson's Falls. The falls were also visited by Dr. Ezra Brainerd, President of Middlebury College, Vermont, the most famous of specialists on the violet, and by that keen woodsman, T. C. Harbison, of Highlands, North Carolina, collector for the Arnold Arboretum. In 1928, Dr. Edgar T. Wherry, botanist and chemist, made soil tests at Pearson's Falls, and for many years more amateur collectors than it is possible to enumerate, and gardeners whose delight this natural garden is, have come to examine and admire. 
     In 1931, Captain Pearson's son was faced with the disagreeable realization that he ought, for economic reasons, to divest himself of some of his extensive acreage, and he decided to accept the offer of a timber company for the glen and the surrounding woodland. It seemed certain that those ancient trees, those stately tulip poplars, grave hemlocks and strong oaks must go to the moloch of the saw-mill. 
     At this juncture the Garden Club of Tryon came forward to preserve and conserve this unique mountain property with its maidenhair and its trilliums, its elfish orchids and forests of moss, its splendid trees, the sanctuary of warbler and thrush, wren, redbird and mocker. Money was needed—and try to go to your banker and borrow money with a white-leaping brook as your security! But by the generosity of one of our honorary members, Mr. Clarence A. Lightner, of Detroit and Tryon, the money was advanced, a portion of it being promised as a gift, contingent upon the final payment, and there is every indication that the cause will be crowned with triumph. Pearson's Falls is now a wild-life preserve open to the
page 10 pear010.jpg public, but remaining the property of the Garden Club of Tryon, so that those who visit the glen are the invited guests of the Club, and will, of course, so conduct themselves.
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FLORA
________

     The most casual of visitors to Pearson's Falls will not fail to carry away with him a recollection of enchanting wildflowers, unless perchance he goes in winter. Even then he will bear away a remembrance of the splendid hemlocks and massed, evergreen rhododendrons. But on the whole evergreens are few in the Glen. The flora there is an almost virgin example of the great deciduous forests of eastern North America—that is, of trees that shed their leaves in autumn and perennial flowers and ferns that die down in winter, sending up fresh shoots in Spring from permanent underground parts such as roots, root-stocks or subterranean stems and bulbs. There are almost no annuals, very few evergreens, not many aquatic plants, absolutely no xerophytes of the type of cactus and sedum such as are to be found on dry, well-sunned mountain rocks hereabout. 
     The Northern visitor may see nothing very unusual in the type of vegetation to be found in the Glen, since much the same sort prevails in the North Atlantic states and in the Middle West. But the fact is that the deciduous climax forest, as ecologists term it, is really a fascinating minority in the earth's vegetable population. The tropics are almost uniformly evergreen, the subtropics chiefly so, the arctic regions and north-temperate zone the same. It is only in a few parts of the world, namely the eastern United States between the northern pine zone and the southern pine zone, and in parts of China, Japan, and Siberia, in Europe between the Scandinavian and Mediterranean evergreen zones and to a much slighter degree in the Southern Hemisphere, that dominantly deciduous

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pear012.jpg forests occur. Our own Western States are chiefly evergreen. 
     It is precisely in the natural areas of deciduous forest that men make the most serious inroads into wild life, the climate also suiting the European and yellow stocks best for intensive settlement, with the result that this beautiful type of vegetation, most appealing of all sorts to most of us, has now been driven to the wall on all the continents. 
     Trees with broad, filmy leaves, airy in their bud in spring, cool and shady but admitting plenty of light in summer, glorious in autumn, naked in winter when the delicate tracery of their boughs and twigs is revealed, trees like the beech and maple and oak, the linden, hickory, walnut, and ash, are rich in their associations for us; their
very names summon to the mind incidents of history, beloved paintings, personal and family recollections, traditions, legends, superstitions, articles of household furniture, old-fashioned medicines, dyes and tannins, and scenes from the cultural pattern of colonial and early republican life—not to mention European associations of more ancient date. 
     At Pearson's Falls you will see all these trees, and other splendid forest-dwellers, the tulip-poplar, the dogwood, the redbud, the shadbush, persimmon, wild cherry, silver-bell trees, sourwood, black-gum, black locust, witch-hazel, sassafras, spice-bush, hazel, alder, grey birch, cherry birch and butternut, all of them famous trees of the Carolina mountains, many of them of the most ancient geological lineage, members of genera most of whose species have long since been swept from the earth by its changing climate; indeed, we would not even know of their existence but for fossil records, showing that they were once widespread over the globe.
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     Today the wild life preserve of Pearson's Falls is a little museum of these fascinating last survivors. In autumn the leaves still fade and fall on the steep floors of the Glen forest, as in ages past, adding each year a little to the rich mould and loam in which the lovely wild flowers, ferns, moss and fungi spring up. It is likely that the identical ancestors of these trees and humbler plants have grown here, undisturbed, enchanting, for at least a million years—before the great glaciers gathered on the northern half of this continent and of Europe. 
     Up to the present, at least, no weed (I use the word in the meaning of an invading plant of foreign origin like the European dandelion, the tropical Jimson weed, the Asiatic honeysuckle) has ever been found in the Glen itself, though there are a few in the little meadow at its mouth. But the conservative old plant society of the Glen is rigidly hostile to undesirable additions and migrations, and there will be none unless roads and beaten paths should unwisely be made, or unfortunate "landscape effects" be tried. Also there are no directly harmful plants, such a poison-ivy, except the little wood-nettle, which stings the hand with a rash for a few minutes. Poisonous plants do occur—poisonous, that is, to eat, but it is imbecile to chew leaves or try mushrooms, roots and berries, without knowing what they are, and the "blanket law" of the owners of the Glen that no plants may be picked, no shrubs broken, will, if observed by the guests in the Glen, preserve them all from harm.

FUNGI

     In Spring one frequently sees the morelle (Morchella esculenta), which looks rather like a small, cylindrical piece of bath sponge on a short stalk. This is perhaps the

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pear014.jpg tastiest of American mushrooms, also the gamiest, for where it grew one year it does not grow the next; one may hunt diligently and with watering mouth without finding it. And then, one day, right under your feet, its saucy little shape confronts you. I have found it in the Glen, but never while hunting for it, and only within a range of a few weeks in Spring. 
     On the other hand, it is only in autumn and early winter that I have seen the puff-balls in the Glen; they too are edible when tiny as buttons; when mature they are too tough, but it is fascinating then to give their fat little sacks a squeeze with the fingers and watch the discharge of dark spores from their mouths, like a puff of smoke from a gnomish crater. One may continue this operation till the game becomes wearisome and still the puff-ball will not have exhausted its store of spores. In early winter, certain kinds of puff-balls burst open into several equal segments which relax to the ground in an inky star-shaped mass, from which the last of the spores has discharged itself ; wherefore the plant is sometimes called earth-star, as its Latin name of Geaster indicates. The spores themselves, fine as powdered wood-ash, will, like seeds falling to earth, give rise another year to new plants. The spores of fungi and of ferns, indeed, are almost seeds; the chief difference is that they do not, as seeds do, contain an embryo or tiny plantling. This development was left to the seed plants to evolve. 
     Similar to the craters and spores of puff-balls are those of the stinkhorn fungi sometimes seen in the Glen, occasionally in Spring, most often in Autumn and early Winter. These shoot forth their spores from the tiny hole in the enlarged tip of the fungus; the rest of the fungus consists of a swollen or ball-like base, and a curious, ephe-
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pear015.jpg meral veil around the long, pallid column. With their strong odors and impudent shapes they are among the most gnome-like and fantastic of all our fungi, and they are poisoners, to boot. 
     On the boles of trees one often encounters the bracket fungi, many of them species of Polyporus, of which the upper sides are shelf-like, the lower honeycombed, where the spores are stored. Some of these are soft and break off easily in the hand, showing inside firm gleaming "flesh." Others are very woody or rubbery and sometimes undoubtedly of great age. Colonies of algae, or lichens, and even of moss, come to dwell upon the old, indurated sorts just as though they were parts of a tree trunk. Under the bark they send in long hyphae or sucking strands which dissolve and digest and penetrate into the timber of senescent trees. In short, these are, strictly speaking, harmful fungi, but though they hasten the processes of decay, they do not completely cause them. The spores of the same fungi undoubtedly alight upon other trees in great numbers yearly without being able to obtain a toe-hold in the vigorous young ones. It is only when, by Nature's decree that nothing shall live forever, and a tree approaches its age of decay, that these bracket fungi are able to make headway. 
     Yes, the tree, however majestic, grows old at last, decays, falls, breathes forth its last green shoots and at length is nothing but "punk wood," but the bracket fungi grow larger, swell monstrously, send forth thousands and thousands of spores upon the forest airs, and in this strangely altered form carry on life. Graphically they illustrate the biologic axiom that life changes but does not cease. And we see that the place of fungi in nature is but one cog in a great wheel, the cycle of the element of
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pear016.jpg nitrogen through living matter. Doubtless they aid, too, in the revolution of the phosphorus cycle, and in the oxygen and carbon cycles. While these, and still other, smaller wheels revolve, the hands still move upon the scarred old face of the clock called Life, wound up by Whom we do not know, nor when, nor for how long, nor why. But when the spring runs down, as it is certain it must, no earthly power of which we can conceive shall ever rewind it. 
     So numerous are the fungi in the Glen—as many species, probably, as there are flowers—that many families of them must be passed by cursorily, including the beautiful Tremulas, that look like bits of red seaweed or slices of currant jelly, lining old twigs for a fewr days of rainy Spring weather, vanishing swiftly, leaving only a memory of morning sunshine passing through their quivering, cool bodies in shafts of ruby light. Even the amateur's favorite, the family Agaricaceae, must be lightly passed over. The famous edible mushroom of commerce (Agaricus campestris) is not found in the Glen, as it is a pasture plant, most abundant where animals graze, but some other species of Agaricus are occasionally seen and may be edible. The Russulas, clumsy, unsymmetrical, handsomely tinted mushrooms, are common on the ground, but are not to be trusted. On dead twigs and stumps one sees frail, pale little Collybias, peculiarly charming and friendly little mushrooms, rather like so many minute marmosets on a branch. There are "fairy rings" in the Glen, expanding colonies of agaricaceous mushrooms whose centers die as their peripheries expand, producing the enchanting effect known to all wood-lovers. Swiftly they grow in the night; swiftly they pass away, vanishing with one hot, dry day; or, if you try to collect and keep
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pear017.jpg them, they turn to ink, leaving only, in elfish malice, a stain and a smell.

ALGAE

     There is little space in which to mention the Glen algae, at least some of which are members of the genus Spirogyra, and hang, astonishingly, in long strands on the dripping caverns, almost as though they wrere aerial instead of aquatic plants. Most primitive of all plants, (unless bacteria are plants) the algae harbor in their slimy, emerald sargassos many tiny fresh-water animals, also most primitive in their kingdoms. Our Blue-Green Algae, in the Glen, are visible as mere slime, making it treacherous to walk on the wet rocks, glistening with them. The Green Algae are less lowly, more beautiful. But wherever one sees them, one may know that the water is not fit to drink. Under the microscope our Spirogyra leaps from a mere tangled mesh of scum into strands of exquisite beauty—delicate twisted bands of green, winding between walls of palest amber or crystal, like the fanciful work of old-fashioned wine-glass stems.

MOSSES 

     Of the Bryophytes of the Glen I can speak but briefly, having identified only a few of them; there was no evidence, so far as my studies carried me, that the mosses there were really exciting, but we must leave it to the moss enthusiasts, those rare but almost fanatic individuals, to find out for themselves. There are colonies of Polytrichum, a very dark green, rather stiff plant forming erect, tiny forests on rocks and some of the drier slopes— a moss of world-wide distribution, no less beautiful for being common, and rich in association with Old World literature. Its odor, mingled with that of ferns, lichens, the crushed-strawberry smell of red Trilliums, and of

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pear018.jpg loam and mushrooms, goes to make up the blended delicious aroma of the Glen. 
     Upon the dripping rocks, in the cool, ferny grotto-like cavern, and close to the waterfall itself, grow other mosses; pale emerald thin shoots of Jungermannia, Conocephalum, Mnium, tiny colonies of Catharinca, very lovely with clear spring water seeping through them, and sunlight, already filtered through the forest leaves, passing again through the fine green blades. So dainty are the leaves of mosses that they are only a few cells thick; mosses have scarcely any true root system, stems devoid of woody tissue, primitive leaves, and a reproductive system curious rather than highly effective (you will notice, in season, the little capsules waving atop a moss colony). The mosses, of ancient lineage and amphibious
habits, might be considered the Amphibians of the plant world— and, indeed, the chief amphibian of the Glen, the red salamander, loves to hide among them. 
     Before you turn away your attention, note, too, the strange liverworts—also Bryophytes, though not strictly mosses, but members of the fascinating Marchantia group. They encrust wet rocks with their flat green bodies or thalluses. Some look like lizards, with warty gray green surfaces, others are dark green and translucent (members of the genus Dumortiera), and resemble sea-weeds of the tribe of Ulva or sea-lettuce. When in fruiting condition they reveal marvels of intricate beauty under the microscope. Largely aquatic are their lives, and they are evergreen. Even in winter, when the Glen is leafless and flow-erless, they still make beautiful the little grottoes and wet caverns. Seen through the icy crystals of a sunny December morning, they are amongst the most enchanting of created things.
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                                                                FERNS
 
     But we must pass on to the Ferns, recalling that our modest little woodland species are to the great tree ferns that may have flourished here in ancient times, as lizards to dinosaurs. The tree Lycopods of the Carboniferous era, raining down their spores, were laying down in Pennsylvania, Alabama and Illinois, the vast coal resources of today. And in the times of the tree ferns the dinosaurs and pterodactyls were abroad in the land, reptilian kings of the earth, while we mammals were nothing but little rat-like creatures scuttering fearfully about. The ferns recall the reptiles and other lowly vertebrates, in being the first plants to have what might be termed the equivalent of an internal skeleton. All the ferns in the Glen, at least, have more or less woody tissue in them, enabling them to have relatively upright stems bearing a broad head of foliage. The leaves, too, are extended against the pull of gravity by means of a serviceable skeleton of fibres and veins, albeit so delicate a system that of all plants at Pearson's Falls the ferns give the
greatest impression of grace and airiness. 
     There are at present but thirteen sorts of ferns known in the Glen and its immediate neighborhood, all but one being members of the common Polypody family. So far as I know, the Walking Fern is not found anywhere else in Polk County; indeed, it is generally a rare plant; John Burroughs lamented that it had walked away from the vicinity of "Slabsides." But quaint though its habits are, it is not more beautiful than the Ebony Fern with its blackish-brown stalks, nor the Maidenhair, the most popular of all our ferns. The bracken is the largest fern and also the coarsest; the lady fern and wood fern and rattlesnake fern are also large, but dainty. The Christ-

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pear020.jpg mas fern, so called because it is so fresh and green looking at the holiday season, has that perfect combination of strength and grace that we admire in a beech tree or a Greek temple. The "sensitive" fern is not sensitive, but it is very lovely with its large, simple, pale green leaflets; the "brittle" fern is only a trifle brittle. It is a good chooser of charming spots in which to grow, and may be found behind one of the smaller cascades, under a shelf of overhanging rock green with liverworts, and seen through the shining water it is incredibly lovely.

FLOWERING PLANTS

     There is space only to mention the one conifer of the Glen, the Hemlock, famed tannin, timber and medicinal tree, with its sombre yet airy sprays of foliage, before turning to the true Flowering Plants, the high peak of plant evolution, the dominant masters of terra firma in this age. As there are rather more than two hundred of the flowering plants in the Glen or very near it, obviously only a few can be mentioned, and one must refer to the catalogue at the end of this book in order to find them all with their common and scientific names, each enrolled under the banner of its family. Nature lovers will recognize for themselves such familiar little beauties as trout lily, Solomon's seal (true and false), the common windflower and rue anemone, Dutchman's breeches, blood-root, wild strawberry, many species of violet, in particular the lovely Viola canadensis, redbud tree, dogwood, the common and sweet azalea, hepatica, mountain-laurel (which is no laurel, of course, but a member of the rhododendron family, and many-fold more beautiful than the true laurel of Europe), pretty robin's plantain, the first member of the Daisy family to show its bright eye in Spring, and Asters and goldenrod in Autumn.

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pear021.jpg    Before I tell of any flowering plants in more detail, it is worth while to note that the flora of the Glen, as regards the flowers at least, is chiefly Northern. The visitor from central New York State, for instance, will see many more familiar flower faces lifted to him than one coming from lower South Carolina, for most of the plants are members only of the Alleghenian zone. Somewhat less numerous are the species common throughout the eastern half of the United States—species no more Northern than Southern. A small group is made up of plants found only in the Carolina Blue Ridge—endemics, as they are called, and most of them are probably offshoots of the Northern species growing beside them. Last of all, we may mention a few plants of the Southern lowlands which find their way into this zone. 
     Many of the plants of the Glen are useful. Tannin is yielded by the hemlock, oak, walnut, sumac, and persimmon, and dyes by the walnut, butternut, yellowroot, sumac, red-root and touch-me-not. Medicinal properties listed by the American pharmacopoeia are derived from the ebony fern, rattlesnake fern, hemlock, Virginia snake-root, wild ginger, Trillium, yellow-root, black snakeroot, sassafras, spice bush, bloodroot, foam flower, witch-hazel, Indian physic, black cherry, wild-geranium, touch-me-not, may-apple, yam-root, moonseed, wild hydrangea and papoose-root. 
     Among the edible plants are the walnut, butternut, hickorynut, hazelnut, beechnut, pepper-root or toothwort, wild-strawberry, service-berry or shadberry (which the mountaineers called "Sarviss Tree"), wild-plum, chick-asaw plum, blackberry, wild-grape, sumac berries, of which a refreshing drink may be made, the pawpaw and persimmon popularly believed to ripen only after frost,
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                                            HUGER'S RED TRILLIUM 
(Trillium Hugeri), with its large leaves mottled in three shades of green and its maroon petals often five inches long, is the giant of trilliums and is deliciously fragrant.
                                      Photographed by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry. 

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pear023.jpg and the partridge-berry, which looks very jolly on the ground, scarlet amidst its dark green leaves, but you may find it more insipid than do the birds that eagerly devour it. The sugar maple is seen in the mountains just above the Glen, and I must not forget the red-root or New Jersey tea, out of the leaves of which tea was made during the Revolutionary War. And while one is speaking of substitutes, the bark of the beautiful dogwood tree must not be forgotten, for during the rigors of the blockade in the Civil War it was used to replace quinine, sorely needed for troops fighting in the malarial lowlands. It could be so used again, if ever the present-day monopoly of the Dutch on quinine should result in a quinine-famine. 
     A few of the plants in the Glen are new, or almost new to science. It was probably here or very close to Pearson's Falls that the splendid big red Trillium Hugeri, with its rhombic leaves mottled in three shades of green, its long maroon petals breathing the delicious crushed-strawberry odor, was first found by the late Arthur Middleton Huger, of Charleston. Melrose is also one of the original stations for Gleason's White Trillium, with its great rhombic, cream-colored petals and beautiful dark purple ovary, that is the rarest and certainly the most striking member of this fascinating genus. Collectors for the Arnold Arboretum and for the Forest Service at Washington have discovered rare new lindens in the region (country people call them basswood), and at least one variety of rhododendron was first taken in this neighborhood. At the very far side of the waterfall itself I had the good fortune to discover a new species of wild ginger or Asarum, and on wet rocks of the stream a new variety of crowfoot, while one of the type stations for a new color form of Phlox is also Melrose and its vicinity.

 

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                                                  GLEASON'S WHITE TRILLIUM 
(Trillium simile), rarest of all trilliums. The leaves are often 2>2 inches across, the petals cream-colored.  Photographed by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry. 

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pear025.jpg      This little study of the wildlife of one mountain glen is drawing to a close, and still its author has told nothing of the real beauty of the flowers! He could do this no more than he could write adequately of the bird life. One lovely name after another comes to his mind, bringing with it stories that could be told of some bits of lore, of history or of the romantic, wandering lives of the early American naturalists who first discovered our mountain wildflowers, such as Alexander Garden of Charleston, John Bartram ("Botanist extraordinary to the king") of Philadelphia, ploughman, Quaker, naturalist without benefit of Latin; John Clayton of Tidewater Virginia, correspondent of Linnaeus, for whom is named our dainty little Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) that was, by some odd chance, the first flower that Asa Gray, father of American botany, ever identified when, a boy, he hastened out into the fields of Spring with Dr. Torrey's quaint old "Botany." How say nothing of John Lyon, lonely Englishman for whom the beautiful purple turtle-head (Chelone Lyoni) was named, and who died more than a century ago at Black Mountain, N. C., his failing sight fixed on the dark, balsam-clad Mt. Mitchell range? You will find the glorious flower that bears his name, in Autumn, at Pearson's Falls, where it grows as vigorously as on Mt. Mitchell. But of his precious herbarium collection believed to be knocking about still somewhere in an Asheville attic, nothing is known. 
     I pass over the scores and scores of beloved plants that clamor to have their whole history told, their frailest beauties praised—like Enchanter's Nightshade, Sweet Cicely, Blue Milkweed, the blue-eyed wild Comfrey, the ghostly beech-drops, withered for their sins of parasitism to mere yellow skeletons of themselves, enchanting,
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SHOWY ORCHIS

Courtesy of the Wild Flower Preservation Society.

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pear027.jpg brown-eyed, white-lashed Aster divaricatus nodding from the crevices, the plant that country folk call "Farewell Summer"; wild hydrangeas, wild syringas, fragile, snowy-white meadow-rues trembling in the spray of the waterfall, pale touch-me-nots, St. John's-wort, showy orchis, starry chickweed, fire pink, bergamot and basil and odorous bee-balm, and the dittany, out of whose stems in wintry weather shoot curling crystals of frost thin as paper, Jack-in-the-pulpits, some enormous, some small as your thumb, some purple and chocolate-striped, some of a pale, elfish green. No, they are too many for me, and no words that I could use would be worth so much as would an hour's visit among them. The wild-flowers, it seems to me, are at their best in April, May and June— the blooming periods of the rhododendrons, in fact, when the early white kind, the later pink, and the very late great white species, shower their blossoms on the pool. This is, too, as Solomon sang, the time of the singing of birds.

THE STORY OF SHORTIA

     It is left to me only space enough to tell, in brief, the story of Shortia, which I transplanted to the Glen in 1919 in an endeavor to naturalize it. Though I placed it as inaccessibly as possible, many people, I fear, have scaled the rocks to wrest it from its place; many plants of the precious little store were borne away by citizens of Try on. It is my hope that these words may induce some of them to bring back the plants they took; all visitors to the Glen, and the author of these words, will thank them if they will restore the "flower lost for a century." 
     Or more precisely, its eclipse lasted ninety-eight years, for it was discovered by André Michaux in December, 1788. And what is Shortia, you ask, and who was

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pear028.jpg Michaux? Alas, there is no common name for the plant botanically known as Shortia galaci- folia. We have lost the Indian's name for it and the mountaineers have not, so far as I know, bestowed a name upon it. A high official in the Department of Agriculture has decreed that it shall be called "Oconee-Bells." If you like this name, by all means use it, but it is a book name, not a popular name. In Japan, where two other species of Shortia are found, it is called Iwauchuwa (ee-wah-yuh-chew-ah), but Shortia is its name among nurserymen and botanists, and I find that even the mountaineers up around Toxaway and Highlands call it that, knowing its romantic history very well. And it is not badly captioned, since it does honor to the memory of Dr. C. W. Short, one of the earliest botanists of the Kentucky mountains. 
     But what does it look like, this Shortia? That is part of the mystery of the story, and you must be content to hear the tale out. 
     It begins with André Michaux, explorer and botanist to his majesty Louis XVI and educated at Montpellier, where all the great French botanists from Lamarck to the De Candolles have studied. When he came to America in 1785, he was already renowned, having traveled around the Caspian Sea and through Persia in search of strange plants; in his Persian years he had not only mastered the language and eluded Kurdish brigands, but even cured the Shah of a wasting malady. 
     It was unwillingly that he came to America, in those early days of our republic, but before long he was an ardent lover of its forests and savannahs, a penetrating critic of the cocky backwoodsman, and a friend of George Washington. In an age when the Blue Ridge was ultima thulc for men of the Tidewater, who considered them-
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pear029.jpg selves brave, he traversed the glades of Florida, the prairies of Illinois, and penetrated even to I,ake Mistassinni, in Canada, to this day considered one of the most inaccessible spot* in North America. 
     But his first love was the Blue Ridge of North Carolina, lo which he made repeated trips, bringing hack from the mountains rare shrubs—our azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, mock-orange or syringas, and mountain-laurel—to he grown in his garden at Ten Mile Station, near Charleston. Here, too, he grew foreign trees which he was the first to give to our southern gardens, the chinaberry, the crepe myrtle, the tallow-tree, and the camellia. Some bushes of the last, planted by him, still bloom in his garden. He was the first man to grow the tea plant in South Carolina, and taught the mountaineers to gather ginseng and how to prepare it for sale in China, where it was in enormous demand. 
     His favorite route was to proceed up the Savannah River to its headwaters ; he was accustomed to take the eastern branch, which is the Keowee River and, crossing out of white men's land, enter the Nation of the Cher-okees. Here he would ascend Mt. Mitchell, Grandfather Mountain, and Roan Mountain, or turning west explore the Great Smokies, descending by the Tugaloo, which is the great west branch of the Savannah. 
     One winter dusk in 1788, Michaux was hastening back to his camp on the Keowee, when he encountered a little plant with scalloped leaves, which he had found nowhere else. It was out of flower. The Indian guides told him that the leaves had a nice taste if chewed and gave forth a pleasant odor when pinched. This he demonstrated for himself. In his diary for that day Michaux tells under the neat heading, "Directions for finding this Shrub," ex-
pear 30 pear030.jpg actly how to find his plant, of which he bore away only a single specimen, a root, leaf, and fruit capsule. It would hardly seem, however, that the great pioneer botanist was justified in calling it a shrub. Asa Gray spoke of it as an herb "with the leaf of galax and the habit of Pyrola," and this is still the best description of it; one might almost add—and the flower of a Primula. 
     Michaux was to die far from his beloved Blue Ridge, and from his son Francois, also a botanist,—in Madagascar, that graveyard of so many great Frenchmen. His unnamed specimen lay dusty in a Paris museum. Bartram and Frazer and Lyon crossed and re-crossed the Keowee without seeing anything of the little plant. 
     In 1839 Asa Gray was in Paris studying Michaux's collection. The plant from the Keowee was labeled nothing except "Les hautes montagnes de Carolinie." Something
about the very dry and dead little plant from Carolina piqued Gray's curiosity. He studied that one fruiting capsule with his lens and all his care, and from it was able to guess its family—the rare little Diapensia family, confined to a few species of which the pyxie moss of New Jersey, our common Carolina Galax, and Diapensia on the summits of the White Mountains are examples. More than that, Gray was even able to reconstruct the flower he had never seen, to predict what it would look like when it was found. 
     Several years later, thumbing a book of Japanese flower paintings, he came on a picture of the plant he had name Shortia. Not the same species, of course, but he was able from this old Oriental work to describe a little more accurately the broad outlines of Michaux's flower. 
     In 1877, after Gray had twice combed the Blue Ridge for Shortia (Michaux's diary, with its directions detailed
pear 31 pear031.jpg to the number of paces from a certain path, must have been unknown to him), a small boy, the son of Dr. Hyams of Marion, N. C. (a well-known herb doctor of his day), discovered a bank covered with Shortia near his home. The father hastened down to the rolling Catawba, dug up all the plants, sold them to museums, and Shortia was lost again. 
     It was in 1886 that Professor Charles S. Sargent, of the Arnold Arboretum, in company with several assistants, picked on the banks of Bear Camp Creek, near Highlands, a curious leaf which he bore back at nightfall to his camp. Drawing it from his vasculum, he turned to Mr. Boynton, of Highlands, and asked him what it was. Boynton denied any knowledge. Stiles said in a joking way, "That's Shortia, of course." And that is just what it was,—Michaux's long-lost station had been rediscovered. 
     In the last years of Asa Gray's life he was presented on one of his birthdays with living Shortia in flower. So ended the search for this little sylvan sprite, whose range is but a few square miles of the earth's surface, whose history must be ancient since its nearest relatives grow near Fujiyama's snows, whose name will be forever romantically linked with those of Short, the kindly doctor ; Michaux, the adventurous Frenchman ; Gray, the grave student ; and Sargent, the woodsman. 

 

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BACTERIA AND
SLIME-MOULDS
 
________ 

     Before taking up the fauna of the Glen it will be worth while to mention two groups of organisms that are neither clearly plants nor animals. Bacteria are present, undoubtedly, in great quantities at Pearson's Falls, though doubtless they are harmless sorts. Few visitors come to the Glen when it is dark, but those of us who have done so have noticed the phosphorescence of many logs and bits of decaying matter. The phosphorescence is given off by bacteria. The characteristic and pleasant odor of the loam is also due to soil bacteria, just as the odor of milk and cheese is bacterial in nature. Soil bacteria are usually very large (for bacteria) and are of the utmost service to the natural economy of the Glen, as it is their scavenging business to attack and digest dead leaves and other plant debris, and release to the soil the precious fertilizing element of nitrogen. So in the great cycle of growth and decay that we call life, bacteria are among the house-wrecking organisms which make the construction material of outworn life available for use again. The more bacteria the soil contains, the richer will be its flora. 
     Slime-moulds are occasionally seen in the Glen; they often look like granulated egg-yolk, the grains connected by cobwebby fibers. Despite their name, they are often pretty and bright-colored, a little like dyed lace. Though they would seem at first sight to be plants of a low fungoid nature, yet there are many animal-like qualities in these curious colonies that delight to inhabit old logs. Not the least of the animal characteristics of the slime-moulds

pear 33 pear033.jpg is their motility. They move slowly along together, even against gravity, over the soil and across decaying logs, though for some mysterious reason the slow processional is usually made at night. Their very place in nature is a mystery; botanists and zoologists both claim them, and yet others would classify them apart from either the plant or the animal kingdom.
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FAUNA
______

     The present writer does not pretend to be a trained zoologist, and his observations on the fauna of Pearson's Falls are those of the delighted observer and random collector. 
     The animals of Pearson's Falls are mostly members of the Transition or Alleghenian faunal zone. A few are perhaps more characteristic of the Upper Austral or Carolinian zone which predominates, for instance, at the level of Tryon, while many species are common to both.

                                                        INVERTEBRATES 
    
Brief mention will first be made of some of the animals belonging to orders related to insects, and often popularly called insects, though in reality they are not, being merely members of that gigantic sub-kingdom the arthropods, which may be loosely defined as invertebrate animals with the skeleton external, the body being articulated and the limbs jointed. This even includes the crustaceans or lobsters and crawfish. I have never seen any crawfish in the brook in the Glen, though they occur in the Pacolet at lower altitudes. The water probably is too clear and too precipitous, and they no doubt prefer a muddy rather than a sandy substratum. But a minute crustacean does occur in the Glen, and is exceptional in not being aquatic. If you turn over a big stone, you will almost certainly see a soft-bodied, grayish-pink, small, roundish creature which looks like a minute armadillo. This is the slater or pill-bug, also called sow-bug and wood-louse, though it is neither a bug nor a louse. This is our most prim-

pear 35 pear035.jpg itive arthropod; perfectly harmless, not at all ornamental, and fleeing the light.

                                                                         MYRIAPODA 
     Scarcely higher in the scale of evolution are the millipedes which are sometimes found curled up inside mushroom stems. They may be mistaken for centipedes and are often classed with them under a super-group, Myria-poda, though this is thought by some an artificial grouping, as the two branches are little kin to each other. Our millipedes serve no better purpose, from the point of view of humans, than to furnish food to many of the finest song birds of the Glen, who snap them up eagerly and hastily convert them into music. The millipedes in the Glen are probably a species of I ulus ; they are roundish in cross-section, dark-colored and rather hard-shelled, with two pairs of legs to each joint of the body. They move slowly, betraying complete stupidity, and are perfectly harmless. They emerge from the ground and other hiding places chiefly at night and after wet days. 
     The little wood centipede (a member of the family Glomeridae), on the other hand, is a frail, almost a beautiful creature, who lives under bark and stones and does most of his hunting at night, but is often seen by day sunning himself or sleeping on warm rocks. His body is flattened; he has one pair of very fine long legs to each segment, and in contrast with the heavy millipedes he weighs less than a cigar ash, or seems to, and moves with airy speed and great cunning in his hunting. He is preceded by sensitive feelers, and protected in the rear by legs modified into poison stings, but our species is not in the least dangerous, and I never saw one that did not flee man as soon as even a slight motion is made. They do not appear before the hot months.

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                                                                               ARACHNIDA
    
Spiders are common in the Glen, but such modest little species are they that the casual visitor will hardly notice them; the daddy-long-legs are relatives of the spiders, however, and they roam swiftly about with an air of great importance and ridiculousness on their stilted legs, over leaf and ground; they are entirely harmless, for all that they look like minutiae of our nightmares. The woodtick, a characteristic woodland species, also of the class of arachnids, occasionally enters the human scalp, whence it must be "unscrewed."  To avoid them it is best to refrain from lying with one's head upon the ground. Chiggers are mites related to ticks, and their invisible larvae inhabit foliage and logs. They penetrate the skin, even through clothing, and cause irritation. Fortunately, the Glen is much less infested with them than the sunny woods, and they are seldom encountered before June.

                                                                                  INSECTS 
     We come now to the true insects. There are more kinds of insects than all other animals put together, with the plants thrown in. Even in such a little area as that of Pearson's Falls, only a few of the insects can be mentioned, lest they seem swarming into this book to fill up its pages. One does not, of course, see any of the familiar insects of open ground and sunny meadows, farms and orchards, and very few aquatic species, as the cold, rushing brook is hostile to most of those. But even reducing our scrutiny to a few of the commonest species of deep woodlands in the Transition zone, the most insufficient notice will have to be given to these fascinating organisms.

                                                                       APTERYGOTA 
    
When one ruffles old leaf-mold for beetles, one often catches a glimpse of a tiny, flat, silvery insect flowing

pear 37 pear037.jpg smoothly to a fresh hiding place. This is a Campodea, sometimes called bristle-tail or woodland silver-fish, though the feathery tails are really feelers. Campodea is one of the thysanurid insects, a creature of untold antiquity, whose present-day relatives are mostly tropical and represent a fragment of the once large super-order, the Apterygota, or wingless insects which are the humble starting point of the insect clan. The silver-fish is a very characteristic animal of the Glen, though so tiny it does not look strong enough or clever enough to harm anything, or even to know very well where it is going. From these weak, minute, stupid creatures to the social ants, the "mankind of insects," the story of insect evolution has unrolled through the ages, and fragments of that history are visible even in the restricted fauna of Pearson's Falls.

                                                                              ORTHOPTERA 
Most primitive of the winged insects are the class Orthoptera, typified by grasshoppers, but much lowlier than grasshoppers are the wood-roaches which dwell under stones and bark and have none of the air of evil dirtiness associated with house-roaches nor the bad odor of Blatta orientalis, the famous Old World species. Our little out-of-doors nocturnal hunter, on the contrary, is quite neat of appearance, is quick and innocuous, and it is strangely moving to think that his ancestors go back by fossil record to the time of the formation of coal, when ferns were trees and flowers had never been seen. 
     In the meadow at the mouth of the Glen one sometimes encounters the grasshopper and the cricket, familiar and friendly-seeming insects whose forms and habits we all know, but they are not typical of the forest itself. Rather, one sees there the cricket's arch-enemy, the mantis. Among the tropical, predaceous Mantidae, mimicry

pear 38 pear038.jpg enables some species to deceive their prey by holding their claws in such a manner that their victims mistake them for flowers. People who are perhaps disillusioned in regard to their own species are amused to think that the upraised forelimbs of the wicked mantis are hypocritical, prayerful hands, but this is a human misreading; our little wood-mantis advances on his prey with great frankness, lifting his snatching appendages with as much openness of intent as a Crusader raising his two-handed sword to attack his paynim enemy. His victims certainly make no mistake about the mantis's intentions, and if they remain rooted to the spot it is not because they are deceived but because they are paralyzed with terror.

     Insects appear to faint with fright rather easily, as indeed do spiders when, as we say, they "play dead." They are highly emotional creatures; it is easy to observe crowd-panic among ants, and mob anger also; and the sexual instinct, as Fabre has said, develops amongst insects at times into a sort of frenzy of feeling. I think it was Roosevelt, in his natural history writings, who said that only in nightmares do we experience the fears that are the daily portion of the hunted.

     One of the hunted orthopterans is the walking-stick insect (Diapheromera femoral a), which resembles a little twig in shape and color, even to the nodes or joints. When at rest—and he comes to rest at a footfall or the passing of a shadow—he probably escapes observation nineteen times out of twenty. But if you touch him he walks (he is wingless in the usual state) with a sort of outraged, shamed confusion, rather like that of a plain-clothes detective whose false whiskers have fallen off. One cannot help wondering whether the walking-sticks merely had luck in being born in the resemblance to a

pear 39 pear039.jpg twig, or whether a Divine Plan is at work in the universe, ordering all things with inevitable wisdom. Neither concept will satisfy the inquiring scientific mind, nor yet the notion that by trying to look like a twig some other insects . turned into a clever new species. Before you announce your own theory, it might be well to have a look at Lamarck's work, or Darwin's, or de Vries's, and learn from their mistakes ! 
     The most astonishing example of mimicry among the orthopterans of the Glen, however, is the leaf-insect (Phyllium siccifolium) , who, when he alights upon a leaf, is identical with his substratum in a way to arouse the admiration of the least observant. His translucent green wing has, apparently, the midrib of a leaf, and all its secondary venation down to the finest criss-crossing veinlets, even the margin and general outline perfectly simulate a leaf of the simple, deciduous, ovate order. 
     Katydids also occur in the Glen, but are only heard on summer nights, so that most visitors do not notice them ; nevertheless they are important orthopteran citizens of our little green realm. 

                                                                                HEMIPTERA 
    
One is obliged to pass over a great many orders and families of insects whose local members are not characteristic of the Glen fauna though they may pass through it, like the dragonflies, and even most of the Hemiptera, though they include many inconspicuous little insects of the forest. Among them are the quaint Brownie-Bugs or leaf-hoppers, those jolly, goblin-faced triangular brown bugs, as well as the common summer cicadas and the periodical cicada or seventeen-year "locust," one of the marvels of the American fauna, which breeds in this forest but of course is seldom seen.

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                                                                        COLEOPTERA
     The order Coleoptera or beetles is so numerous that one can do little more than mention leading families, but in general beetles are known by their hard wing-covers which the insect must lift before the membranous true wings beneath can be set in motion for the usually rather clumsy flight. It is the wing covers which give beetles, when seen from above, their trim, quaint appearance, like a back view of Mr. Pickwick. Beautiful colors are often noted on these wing-covers, sometimes of a smooth, lacquered, and maculated appearance as in the lady-bug family, sometimes due apparently to the prismatic refraction of light in the fine striations, giving marvelous blues and greens, rubies, or even bright gold. The scarab beetles are often very handsome; most of the bark beetles are less brilliant, but are neat and dark and alert and inclined to be pugnacious. Most amusing are the click-beetles (family
Elateridae), who, by means of muscular projections rather like automobile jacks in function, can, when you turn them on their backs, leap out of this position, which ordinarily renders a beetle absolutely helpless, with a snapping motion. 
     Related to them are the fireflies that few visitors observe because the pale green tail-lights of the winged males are seen only for a few weeks, at dusk, and again near dawn, in late spring and early summer, but one who has observed these little linkmen in the emerald dusks of the Glen can never forget them. The females are humble glow-worms that are seen around the springs and in damp spots, and shine so brightly that they are sometimes visible even in daylight, and at night appear like bits of phosphorescent wood. 
     The class of the flies (Diptera) must be passed over

pear 41 pear041.jpg for lack of space and detailed information. They are not particularly abundant in the Glen; and mosquitoes are almost wholly absent.

                                                                           LEPIDOPTERA 
    
The butterfly fauna of Polk County is one of the richest in the State, but the rare species recorded seem to belong to the Carolinian zone. The Glen is a bit sunless for most of the butterflies, but moths, which are chiefly nocturnal, are more abundant. Their long, curled-up tongues shoot out and down into tubular flowers to find the nectar, for many of the class Lepidoptera touch nothing but this ambrosial food in their adult state, though in the form of caterpillars they are voracious eaters. Many flowers exhale perfume only at night, apparently to attract moths. By day, most moths fly to the tops of the trees where they hang from the undersides of the leaves. An exception is the hummingbird-sphinx-moth, which hovers over tubular flowers in bright sunlight, the blur of his tiny wings and his long mouthparts like a bill, remarkably resembling the hummingbird. The luna moth (Actias luna), often considered the most beautiful North American species, of an unearthly green, is sometimes found in the Glen. The royal walnut moth is another characteristic species which sometimes visits the Glen; its larvae feed on the leaves of our typical deciduous trees, such as hickory, walnut, and ash. 
     One of the commonest sights is the swarming of the Lepidoptera. Much ado about nothing appears to be going on, where an excited cluster of butterflies or moths flutters round and round what would seem to be a perfectly imaginary object of interest—often nothing more than a sunny bit of rock beside the brook. It is an enchanting sight, but seems rather inane in purpose until

pear 42 pear042.jpg we realize that it means that a female has rested there, and though she has gone away, some mysterious clue of her passage has drawn scores of eager males to the spot. How do they know that a female has alighted there, and why, not finding her, do her swains still beat about where she is not, instead of setting out to look for her, as a mammal in rut will track his mate? It is customary to say that a powerful smell is left where the female has passed. But Fabre burned sulphur in a room where a female moth had alighted and put other strong repellant odors near the spot, and still the males came. The sense of sight was not involved, nor the sense of hearing, since the female was otherwheres. Fabre concluded that a sixth sense was possessed by insects. Before accepting this theory, it is necessary to ask yourselves if it is certain that Fabre's moths could smell the odors with which he sought to efface a possible odor left by the female, or whether, from a moth's point of view, they were insignificant beside the exciting oestrual odor. We do not ourselves perceive our own odor, which is apparent and often offensive to other species of animals. An aversion exists also between the different races of men. The Asiatics do not like the odor of the Occidental, and so on. And the attractions are as mysterious as the aversions. The male moth is able to forego the winged lady if only he may remain enthralled by the aroma of her passing. 

                                                                           HYMENOPTERA
    
We reach now the Hymenoptera, which includes the ichneumon and saw flies, the hornets and bees and fly-like bees and the ants. Unfortunately, few species from the Glen have been identified. One of these is Vespa maculata, the white-faced wasp or yellow jacket. Wasps, it may be said, are carnivorous and bees nectivorous, and

pear 43 pear043.jpg wasp stings in general are worse and more often inflicted without provocation than bee stings. Wasp nests, looking like a huge wad of newspaper reduced to ash, are sometimes seen near the Glen and probably at times within it. There is no animal on earth so bold as intentionally to stir up a wasp nest, but the fearless wasps at times become so troublesome to farmers and their animals that the men go out at night, when the wasps are quiescent, pour kerosene over the nest, and then set it alight. It is a cruel sport and a weird sight, with just the required thrill of danger. 
     One often sees our Vespa wasp stinging a caterpillar; the caterpillar does not die, but is merely stung into paralysis, and is borne off to the wasp nest, where he is fed to wasp larvae, sections of live caterpillar being cut off and distributed in the nursery. 
     The wild bees of the Glen have not been identified. Volumes might be written of bees and their social life, and some have been. I choose to mention here only their relation to the fertilization of flowers. Some flowers are pollinated by wind, some by water, by themselves, by birds, by snails, but chiefly by insects, including moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, mosquitoes, ants, and many more. In the Glen, I believe, bees do nine-tenths of the pollinating. Most of our flowers are adapted more or less to pollination by bees; or perhaps it is just as reasonable to say that bees are in a general way splendidly adapted to the pollination of most flowers. So neat is the adjustment between the shapes and habits of bees, and the shapes and needs of flowers, that in the case of some orchids only one species of bee can fit into a certain species of flower, like the adjustment of a Yale key to its particular lock. This symbiosis or intimate and interdependent relation-
pear 44 pear044.jpg ship between the life history and functions of two species is one of the most striking examples of sympathetic evolution in all of Nature. The mind declines the notion that mere chance has brought flower form and bee form into happy coincidence, as it is surely not mere chance that one's feet are mates. On the other hand, if one begins to look for ''purpose" and cosmic plan or intelligence on the part of plants and gratitude on the part of bees, as the medieval professors and theologians would have had one do, one is swiftly led into the cardinal heresy of teleology—a trap so wide and attractive that almost everyone who first begins to reason about natural phenomena falls into it. 
     Teleology is that line of thought which presupposes that a simple cause or causes may
be ultimately found to explain any phenomenon such as the mutual adaptations of bee and flower, and inversely that everything serves a useful purpose in a design which it is the business of science to uncover and laud, any evidence to the contrary being tabled as pieces of the puzzle not yet fitted in. The trouble with teleology is not that it is anathema to certain humorless professorial gentlemen, but that it has a paralyzing effect upon research and atrophies that precious skepticism of the man-from-Missouri. 
     There remain the ants to be noted in the insect phylum. None of the ants in the Glen seem to represent rare species, but rarity is esteemed only by those with the collecting mania, which is not allied to the scientific frame of mind. Common species of ants were not too poor for the essays of Fabre, that incomparable observer, as Darwin called him. 
     Any of us can become observers of ants, and it often happens that an amateur, with fresh sight, discovers
pear 45 pear045.jpg something that veterans have missed. Most fascinating of common ant activities is the formation of a train of porters. These defiles, often seen in the Glen, appear at first glance to be migratory, but usually turn out to be a two-directional traffic, as on a city street. The ants do not seem, however, to keep to the regulation left or right, but braid the two streams together, since constant meetings with individuals going in the opposite way seem to be essential to keep the sense of direction. The ants proceeding toward the nest are usually those burdened with morsels of dissected food, while those going out into the field proceed empty-handed (for the fore limbs function like hands). Trace the length of the chain, and you will be astonished at its extent and the number of ants necessary to make such a safari. They seem to travel very little by the sense of sight, and if you break up the chain the ants have difficulty in re-establishing the line, since the sense of touch would seem to be primarily important. 
     It is impossible to look at the society, politics, and industry of ants without making human comparisons; there is nothing improper in such comparisons, providing one remembers that among ants instinct is ninety-nine points and intelligence one point, while among humans intelligence has largely displaced instinct. Mystics and poet-entomologists hasten to assure us that we do ants wrong in this assertion, and they give many examples of ant intelligence, but the examples are open to question, and, anyway, it is no disgrace to an ant to be instinctive and not much of a compliment to say that it is intelligent. The word instinct cries for definition and yet can never be defined. This much can be said of instinct, though, that among other things it is an impulse to a patterned behavior with which the organism, be he ant, bird, or
pear 46 pear046.jpg human, is born. He does not and cannot acquire it by experience, experience merely making perfect his technique of it. The benign tyranny of instinct among ants will sufficiently explain the rigidity of ant society.

                                                 LOWER VERTEBRATES
     We come now to vertebrates, lowest of which are the fishes. "Are there many fish in this stream?" asked the Northern visitor of a native angler walking away from one of our mountain brooks. "There ought to be," replied the rustic sage, "I hain't never seen none taken out." So I may say that there ought to be rainbow trout (Salmo irideus) in the brook, and the pool at the foot of the falls is an ideal trout pool. The brook was certainly inhabited by this beautiful little trout once on a time, but long ago the stream was fished-out, as the Waltonians say. The stream should be re-stocked, now that the Glen has become a wild life preserve. 
     Of amphibians there are more. Frogs are sometimes seen in the Glen, especially the true frogs of the family Ranidae, but only toads are common. The Glen toads are largely nocturnal, and play a valuable role in eating quantities of slugs and insects which they catch by the lightning-quick darts of their long, sticky tongues. It is odd to think that our gentle Bufo arouses any horror in humans; toads can do little harm; their only protective device is their so-called venom (a secretion from the skin), much sought by witches and poisoners of old, which they emit when they are in great pain, as when in the jaws of a dog. This probably could not do one any harm unless it came in contact with the eyes or mouth. Toads may be gently picked up without any retaliation on their part, and they do not give one warts, Tom Sawyer to the contrary. Their enemies are snakes, owls, hawks,

pear 47 pear047.jpg and perhaps some mammals, and they must be easily caught in spite of their nocturnal habits, since one can readily locate them even on a very dark night by the clumsy, noisy, rustling progress they make over the forest floor with all its telltale leaves and twigs. Toads do not drink ; they absorb water through the skin from the damp earth, which is doubtless why they love the Glen. In spring one sees them even in daylight, in couples, and a toad in love is an attentive swain indeed. 
     Equally odd is the courtship of another amphibian that is common in the Glen, the red salamander, who looks like a lizard, yet is not scaly, but smooth and pink. He inhabits the cold springs, the wet moss and liverworts, where he hides in the day, being nocturnal. It is most comical to see two of these animals confronting each other, square-footedly, and with, it would seem, a suppressed grin, like
two children in the game of "No more talking, no more laughing.''  The small emitted spermat-aphoric cone which automatically affixes itself to the rock or earth substratum is swept up by the female in the cloacal lips, again recalling fertilization among fishes from which amphibians sprang, and reaffirming a biologic law that higher life forms repeat in vestigial structures and habits the history of their ascent.
     The red salamander of the Glen is an agile, trim, and pretty little creature who is easily caught by a swift motion of the hand, but as easily escapes by a few desperate squirms of his slippery, dainty little body.  Of all his accomplishments, the most remarkable is his ability to replace a lost limb (and a leg-of-newt is doubtless fine fare to reptiles and birds of prey) by a new one. 
     Lizards are also noted for their power to renew segments of their tails when broken; it is obvious that their
pear 48 pear048.jpg long dragging tails are a weak point with lizards. But they have the luck to possess tails which snap off where seized, probably with little or no pain. 
     It is no longer genteel, even for a Southern lady, to swoon with fear at the sight of a lizard, as did the wife of Robert Carter in Fithian's famous diary.  Lizards are harmless, even beneficial, since they eat insect pests, and their jolly appearance ought to win them an affection they seldom receive. They are, it is true, related to the once dreadful dinosaurs that roamed the world, but they are to them as kittens to tigers. 
     Most famous of our lizards is the chameleon (Anolis carolinensis) which, as all the world knows, changes color protectively to match the field on which it finds itself. This particular Chameleon has, however, but a brief range of color running from green to a brownish hue. 
     Of snakes I cannot speak much, since I have rarely seen one in the Glen in all my visits. It is reassuring to know that it is not the habitat of the rattler, the moccasin, or the copperhead, and there are no other poisonous snakes in this part of the world.  I have only seen the common blacksnake (Coluber constrictor), which is very large and looks alarming, but is not poisonous and will not strike unless tormented. The cliff species has the appearance of great courage, for he does not hasten to take himself away as the garter snakes and grass snakes do, but this is because it is his habit to remain upon the rocks, and if he hides, to secrete himself in their ledges. The only other snake to be found in the Glen is the spreading adder (Heterdon contortrix), which is also frightening to the timorous.  He hisses loudly and distends his body like a cobra, often holding his ground and hoping to disturb you by a horrid appearance.
pear 49 pear049.jpg The box-turtle or tortoise (Terrapene carolina) is another reptile to be found in the Glen, and the most timorous need not fear him. The infinitely slow, creaky progress he makes, his protective plates, and the hissing with which he conceals his timidity, recall the animal life of bygone ages. So slow and noisy is he, indeed, as he makes his laborious excursions, that it is a mystery how he can catch his prey. 
 

BIRDS

     The avifauna of the Glen is distinctly limited by the fact that no marsh birds, or field or orchard birds, are normally found in these forest trees, nor game birds, for the matter of that, though of course on their migrations many species pass transiently through the Glen. Even just outside its limits, along the course of the Pacolet, one sees and hears many familiar and pleasing species, like the song sparrow, that are not natural members of the choice bird society of the wild life preserve itself. 
     Few of the Glen birds, save the splendid Master Cardinal, are of brilliant plumage, or, if bright-colored, are so small and retiring as to escape notice. And few are exclusively vegetarian or even omniverous; the vast majority have a fancy for insects and other animal fare. The chief families who frequent the Glen are warblers, vireos, sparrows, flycatchers, titmice, woodpeckers and thrushes. 
     The little screech owl and the great horned owl are heard at night, and their vigor assures the listener that they have been well sustained by their fare. It includes small birds, mice, snakes, rabbits, squirrels, rats, chickens, toads and the like. The cry of the big Bubo virginianus has been translated by someone's nimble imagination as "Who cooks for

you-all?"  I have also heard the whip-poor-will at night somewhere in the depths of the forest, but I think he prefers the Carolinian zone. The sweet

pear 50 pear050.jpg sound of mourning doves is heard here in spring and summer. The woodpeckers include the noisy flicker, the downy and hairy woodpeckers, and the red-headed woodpecker, all industrious carpenters who drill the bark of trees for the subcortical insects, but who also eat sow-bugs and ants, sumach and cat-briar berries, and mistletoe when they can get it. 
     It is a marvelous sight to see a woodpecker applying his ear to the bark to listen for the noise of the wood insects boring their harmful way into the trees. When the bird has located his prey his drilling powers are astonishing and must spread terror among the creatures beneath the bark. 
     The flycatchers include the phoebe, that industrious chaser of insects, and the wood pewee, whose monotonous "See! See, sir!" is the voice of the dog-days, persistent even through the heat of noon. 
     The brown creeper (Certhia familiaris americana) has a bill all too weak to penetrate the bark for his insect fare, so he must be content with what he finds in the crevices which he inspects all day, pursuing his dizzy way in spirals. 
     The black and white creeper (Mniotilta varia) is really a warbler with the restless spiral habits of the creepers and their lack of attractive song, who also cleans the trees of bark vermin. The other warblers are generally handsomer and more musical. Most of our warblers are species of Dendroica, such as the black-throated blue, the black-throated green, the chestnut-sided, and yellow warblers. They are a various and fascinating group, and he who knows all the warblers apart, male and female, is wise indeed. In general, these wood sprites keep high out of sight in the tops of trees, whence they let fall at
pear 51 pear051.jpg times, as if in reverie or rapture, such fragments of their songs as it pleases them to bestow. 
     The beauty of bird songs may be judged by the emotions and reveries they awake in us, and for me the tameless happiness and swift melodies of the warblers will never be surpassed by any bird music. Only to remember the "Beecher-beecher, beechee, beechee, beech" of a warbler I once heard for a whole spring at Pearson's Falls is to see the magic charm of the whole Glen, the swaying of the maidenhair, the passage of white clouds through blue sky high over beech and hemlock, to hear the laughter of the brook, the drumming of fine spray on the great rhombic leaves of Trillium and scent the rich odor of the fecund loam. 
     No bird of them all is more beloved in the Carolinas than the little winged creature that is named for them, the Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus). What a glorious energy it has, pouring out its song with amazing intensity and volume from its tiny body! "If you hear a barrelful of song in a pint of bird," said someone, "it's a wren." It flies for but a short distance, beating its wings rapidly and jerking its tail. This tail plays a part in all it does. When the bird is silent, the tail is erect; when the heartening song pours forth, it is dropped downward. The wren knows nothing of any vow of silence, and his clear, determined note brings brightness even to the somber recesses of the Glen's most shadowy coves. 
     To the handsome finch family belongs our red-bird or cardinal. I hope you will see him flash across the thundering waterfall from one dogwood tree in airy flower to another, uttering his exultant cry, "Whooit, wooit, wooit, whee-you!" The mountain children speak of his song as "hollerin'," and it is little else.
pear 52 pear052.jpg      Of the sparrow family, my favorite is Zonotrichia albicollis, the white-throat or Peabody bird, whose notes of piercing sweetness, descending in quarter-tones in a touching chromatic, are the most haunting strains in the American forest, and the far-famed nightingale does not surpass them for clarity and passion. But where our little winter bird lets his voice drop from a high note, the nightingale, also beginning on one, goes higher still, up and up to a heart-breaking pitch on which, with a fine sense of drama, he lets his voice swell out unexpectedly like an experienced coloratura. Our white-throat's simple performance is pensive and sorrowful. He seems perpetually to be bidding us good-bye, to be saying, "Long ago, long ago, long ago!" as if then were the only happy time, and he will continue this even upon days of pouring spring rain; indeed, he delights, apparently, in the silvery downpour, and hastening from covert to covert, he casts his spell as if ventriloquistically, and with intent to astonish. 
    The thrush family includes, besides the European nightingale, the hermit thrush, our common wood thrush, and the veery or Wilson's thrush (Hylocichla fuscescens), the most modest member of the family in the Glen. His sweet, soft, rather swinging "Vehu, vreha, vrehu!" is a common sound in the depths of the green wood, and he often serenades well into twilight. The wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) is a much more moving singer, and no twilight or dawn is complete without him. He sings most, of course, in the mating season, but his song is continued into July up to the moulting season, so that either there is some wooing to be done well into the summer, or else he entertains his mate through the tedium of incubation. In the fine weather of spring he may begin at
pear 53 pear053.jpg four in the afternoon and sing till seven. As the season advances the span of moments between the refreshing fall of twilight with its longed-for coolness, and the dark, becomes shorter and shorter, and we in the South listen breathlessly in July to the few notes of benediction he utters, until at last he is heard no more.

MAMMALS

     Not much can be said of the mammals in the Glen, as the species that survive the constant hunting of the mountaineers are mostly nocturnal and extremely wary. To be absolutely assured that this or that animal had a home there, it would be necessary to set traps, and this is opposed to the policy of a wild-life sanctuary. The Virginia deer, the black bear, and the mountain lion are gone; the fox is said to persist, but I never saw one in the Glen. A raccoon I have seen, and there is little doubt that certain other species pass through there at night, since they are common in the region. 
     The famous marsupial, the opossum (Didelphis virginiana), is the most primitive of local animals. Little need be told any American about the habits of this quaint, rather stupid creature, since he is celebrated in the lore and literature of the Southern States. That his mate transports her young in abdominal pouches, that they play "dead" when overtaken, are well-known facts about these nocturnal, arboreal, omniverous creatures. They may have been sufficiently well adapted to life before the coming of the white man, but they are no match for him with his gun and his hound. When pressed by dogs they take refuge in trees, but the axe and the torch soon bring them down, and their feigning of death does not deceive the astute hounds. Only their fecundity enables them to survive as a species, and it is well that they find a haven

pear 54 pear054.jpg at Pearson's Falls. It is interesting to remember that they are related to the kangaroos of Australia. 
     The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is a far more skillful animal. His slyness is fox-like, and though he is sometimes treed by dogs, he has learned that this is fatal to him and does not often commit this mistake save when the hounds almost have him in their jaws. Once treed, he is smoked out by his persecutors, who are often avengers of his raids upon mountain farms for chickens and geese. Like a highwayman, his eyes peer out through a black mask and his ways are stealthy. He also is nocturnal and arboreal, and often steals along the branches in search of bird's eggs and fledglings, and finding them, destroys and kills with speed and little mercy. His hide fetches a fair price, so that he is closely harried and needs a sanctuary, though no wild-life preserve will deter him from his raids. One can only say that God in His wisdom created carnivores, of whom man is one, and that pity is not natural to any of the animals save man. 
     Rats and mice are no doubt inhabitants of the Glen, although they can get much better fare by frequenting agricultural districts. Bats are seen by those rare persons who remain until twilight, pursuing midges and other crepuscular insects through the air with inimitable grace and skill. I do not know what species of bats inhabit the sanctuary. One rarely gets a good look at a bat save when one is injured and falls to the ground. Bats are said to inhabit hollows of trees at times, but owls and woodpeckers, I should think, would leave them few vacant apartments of that sort. I believe that the bats of the region chiefly inhabit caves; the roof of a small cave visited on Tryon mountain was simply covered with brown bats, and there are far more caves in the mountain than
pear 55 pear055.jpg most people realize. I do not see how anyone can he horrified by these little flying mice. How can one help enjoying their pixie faces, their fantastic wings, their goblin ears, marvelously complicated and acute? 
     It is probable that Pearson's Falls is known to the Southern or wood rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus), but I do not think it is his preferred habitat; one often sees him in the Carolinian zone, lured by vegetable gardens and sown fields. Squirrels, too, no doubt inhabit the Glen, but the mountaineers have pretty well done for them in our region. They are most abundant at present in the balsam zone of the high mountains, and their place in the Glen is largely taken by the chipmunk or ground-squirrel (genus Tamias), who is too small to be worth molesting, but is as gay and friendly as he is diminutive. 
     We arrive now at his majesty the skunk (Mephitis), that portly and fearless member of the weasel family. I have not seen any skunks at Pearson's Falls, but I have certainly known that they passed that way. However, do not think of the skunk as too menacing. If his lordship passes close to you it is best to stand still; the skunk makes no unprovoked attacks. He is far from stupid and even (when de-natured) a gentle and amusing pet, but he is too dreaded to win affection, and is, to boot, rather ridiculous with his waddling obesity. His one undeniable beauty is the famous white stripe down his back, giving distinction to his fine black fur. He is said to stroll out to take the air with all his family in single file of a fine summer evening, but I have not met any of these dignified family processions. Skunks are carniverous and nocturnal by preference, but one does sometimes encounter them by daylight. I believe they do not hibernate in this mild climate.
pear 56 pear056.jpg      High in the family tree of the mammals is our wild cat (Lynx rufus), a nocturnal and partially arboreal animal of considerable daring and cunning. Besides the small mammals and birds which he undoubtedly feeds on, he has the temerity to attack farm poultry. At Caesar's Head I stayed with a mountaineer who was enraged with a wild cat that was killing his sheep, one or two a night. A trap proved his undoing. As we came on the trap he flew into a rage, snarling and spitting and flinging himself about in spite of his captured paw, and the bullet with which the farmer dispatched him seemed merciful indeed. He looked rather like a large tom-cat, was rust-colored, and had a strong, unpleasant odor that was noticeable even to us humans when we picked him up. No doubt, other animals smell this at a distance, and so give the fellow a wide berth. 
     I once knew an old gentleman up on Tryon Mountain who claimed to have been attacked by a wildcat in the night, and to have had a terrific fight with it, being armed only with a stick. If this story be true, the cat must have been a female defending her kittens, for even a wildcat ordinarily flees from man. Reprisals by the farmers for poultry raids are natural, and a wild-cat hunt is the most exciting sport of the region. With men yelling and shooting, hounds leaping and baying, youngsters racing about, wild as the cats themselves, all lighted by the fat pine flambeaux, the scene is one of the most exciting imaginable, at once picturesque and terrifying.

 

pear 57 pear057.jpg

SOILS AND ROCKS
________

     The underlying rock of Pearson's Falls is Whiteside granite, a very old and fine-grained rock, composed of orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars, quartz, biotite, and muscovite; there is, in addition, more or less of Henderson granite, which is darker and coarse and contains large crystals of porphyritic orthoclase feldspar. In the brook one sees many beautiful pebbles of milky quartz, sometimes white, sometimes pinkish; and in the quartz sand along the brook are to be seen innumerable sparkling grains of mica and of fool's gold or iron pyrite. 
     The soil, except for the sand along the course of the brook, is of the series called Porter's loam. The
first three or four inches are generally composed of blackish or gray loam highly charged with organic matter—a rich humus very much of the type desired in average garden soils. Beneath this there is a yellowish brown loam of granular texture, while the subsoil is a reddish brown clay-loam. 
     A few soil tests have been made by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry at Pearson's Falls.*   The soil of the upper forested slopes is low subacid, but the soil of the lower slopes, which have not been leached by run-off and seepage, is even less acid, having the lowest acidity in the county, identical with that of the brook water itself.†  It is, indeed, a soil almost at neutrality, or midway between acid and alkaline, an almost ideal garden
soil, which explains the predominance of many plant families loving ''sweet" soils, like the Lily, Buttercup, Saxifrage and Violet Families. 
________
   *For details see introduction to my "Flora of the Tryon Region."      
   †The water of the brook, by the way, should not be drunk unless boiled. One had best carry his own drinking water.

 

pear 58 pear058.jpg

SUPPLEMENT

A Catalogue of Ferns and Seed Plants Found at
Pearson's Falls and in the Peaks Above
________

FERNS (Pteridophytes)

Virginia Polypody (Polydium virginianum) ..........................evergreen

Bracken (Pteridium latiusculum)..............................summer perennial

Maidenhair (Adiantum pedatum)................................spring perennial

Beech Fern (Phegopteris hexagonoptera)..................      "          "

Walking Fern (Camptosorus rhizophyllus)...........................evergreen

Ebony Fern (Asplenium platyneuron)....................................      "

Lady Fern (Athyrium asplenioides)..........................summer perennial

Silvery Spleenwort (Athyrium thelypteroides)...........     "            "

Christmas Fern (Polystichum achrostichoides).....................evergreen

Wood Fern (Thelypteris marginalis) ....................................      "

Brittle Fern (Cystopteris fragilis)..............................summer perennial

Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis)...........................     "             "

Rattlesnake Fern (Botrychium virginianum).................spring perennial

PINE FAMILY (Pinaceae)

Canadian Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis).....................................spring

                                              CALLA FAMILY (Araceae)                           
Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) ...................................spring

   "     "    "       "    (Arisaema pusillum) ......................................    "

GRASS FAMILY (Gramineae)

Spear Grass (Poa cuspidata).....................................................spring

Manna Grass (Glyceria nervata)..............................................summer

Brome Grass (Bromus purgans)...............................................     "

Fescue Grass (Festuca obtusa).................................................spring

Panick Grass (Panicum microcarpon).......................................summer

     "          "    (Panicum clandestium)........................................      "

SEDGE FAMILY (Cyperaceae)

Cyperus strigosus (no common name)......................................summer

Cyperus retrofractus (no common name)..................................      "

Cyperus echinatus (no common name)......................................      "

Fifty-eight

pear 59 pear059.jpg Fimbrystylis autumnalis (no common name).............................. autumn

Bulrush (Scirpus sylvaticus)......................................................summer

Sedge (Carex prasina) ...........................................................     "

Sedge (Carex laxiculmis).........................................................     "

Sedge (Carex laxiflora)............................................................     "

Sedge (Carex plantaginea).........................................................spring

Sedge (Carex pennsylvanica).....................................................    "

Sedge (Carex lucorum)..............................................................    "

Sedge (Carex lentonervia).......................................................summer

Sedge (Carex Harperi)..............................................................spring

Sedge (Carex virescens)..........................................................summer

Sedge (Carex aestivalis)...........................................................     "

SPIDERWORT FAMILY (Commelinaceae)

Virginia Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana).............................spring

Mountain Spiderwort (Tradescantia montana)..........................summer

RUSH FAMILY (Juncaceae)

Rush (Juncus marginatus).........................................................summer

Wire Rush (Juncus tenuis) .......................................................     "

Soft Rush (Juncus effusus)..........................................................spring

Mountain Wood-Rush (Luzula carolina)......................................   "

Common Wood-Rush (Luzula intermedia)..................................    "

LILY FAMILY (Liliaceae)

Blazing Star (Chamaelirium luteum).............................................spring

Bunch-flower (Melanthium latifolium)........................................summer

Corn Lily (Uvularia puberla)........................................................spring

    "      "   (Uvularia sessilifolia) ...................................................     "

Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum)...........................................     "

Turk's Cap Lily (Lilium superbum)............................................summer

False Solomon's Seal (Smilacina racemosa).................................spring

Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum commutatum).................................   "

Disporum lanuginosum (no common name)...................................   "

Huger's Red Trillium (Trillium Hugeri)...........................................   "

Common White Trillium (Trillium erectum album)..........................   "

Small White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum parvum).......................   "

Catesby's Trillium (Trillium Catesbaei)...........................................  "

YAM FAMILY (Dioscoreaceae)

Southern Yam-root (Dioscorea glauca).......................................spring

pear 60 pear060.jpg

IRIS FAMILY (Iridaceae)

Crested Dwarf Iris (Iris cristata)..................................................spring

Purple Dwarf Iris (Iris verna).......................................................    "

ORCHID FAMILY (Orchidaceae)

Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum)....................................spring

Showy Orchis (Orchis spectabilis)................................................   "

Frog-Spike Orchis (Habenaria clavellata)..................................summer

Nodding Pogonia (Pogonia trianthophora).................................      "

Rattlesnake Plantain (Peramium pubescens)...............................      "

Twayblade (Liparis liliifolia).........................................................spring

Adam-and-Eve (Aplectrum hyemale)..........................................spring

Cranefly Orchis (Tipularia discolor)............................................autumn

WILLOW FAMILY (Salicaceae)

Pussy-Willow (Salix humilis) .......................................................spring

WALNUT FAMILY (Juglandaceae)

Black Walnut (Juglans nigra)........................................................spring

Butternut (Juglans cinerea) ...........................................................   "

Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata)..................................................   "

BIRCH FAMILY (Betulaceae)

Alder (Alnus rugosa)....................................................................spring

Cherry Birch (Betula lenta) ...........................................................   "

Gray Birch (Betula lutea)...............................................................   "

Ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana)....................................................   "

Hop-Hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) ...............................................   "

Hazelnut (Corylus americana) .......................................................   "

BEECH FAMILY (Fagaceae)

Beech (Fagus grandifolia)............................................................spring

White Oak (Quercus alba)...........................................................   "

Rock Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana).......................................   "

NETTLE FAMILY (Urticaceae)

Wood-Nettle (Laportea canadensis)..........................................summer

DUTCHMAN'S PIPE FAMILY (Aristolochiaceae)

Virginia Snakeroot ( Aristolochia serpentaria)...............................spring

Wild Ginger (Asarum acuminatum)...............................................     "

Wild Ginger (Asarum rubrocinctum).............................................     "

 

pear 61 pear061.jpg

PINK FAMILY (Silenaceae)

Starry Chickweed (Stellaria pubera)............................................spring

Fire Pink (Silene virginica)..........................................................     "

PORTULACA FAMILY (Portulacaceae)

Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)..............................................spring

BUTTERCUP FAMILY (Ranunculaceae)

Shrub Yellow-root (Zanthorhiza apiifolia)....................................spring

Popcorn Spikes (Cimicifuge americana).....................................autumn

Black Snakeroot (Macrotrys racemosa)....................................summer

Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)...............................................spring

Windflower (Anemone quinquefolia)...........................................     "

Tyrolian Windflower (Anemone trifolia)......................................      "

Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) ..........................................summer

Liverleaf (Hepatica triloba)..........................................................spring

Crowsfoot (Ranunculus abortivus) .............................................    "

         "       (Ranunculus recurvatus and variety fontinalis)............     "

         "       (Ranunculus fascicularis) ..........................................     "

Meadow Rue (Thalictrum dioicum) ...........................................     "

      "          "   (Thalictrum dasycarpum) ....................................summer

      "          "   (Thalictrum clavatum) ...........................................spring

False Bugbane (Trautvetteria carolinensis).................................summer

Rue Anemone (Anemonella thalictroides).....................................spring

MAGNOLIA FAMILY (Magnoliaceae)

Cucumber Tree (Magnolia acuminata)..........................................spring

Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)...............................................    "

SWEET SHRUB FAMILY (Calycanthaceae)

Sweet-shrub (Calycanthus floridus)..............................................spring

MOONSEED FAMILY (Menispermaceae)

Moonseed (Menispermum canadense).........................................spring

CUSTARD APPLE FAMILY (Anonaceae)

Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) ...........................................................spring

BARBERRY FAMILY (Berberidaceae)

May-apple (Podophyllum peltatum) .............................................spring

Papoose-root (Caulophyllum thalictroides) ...................................    "

LAUREL FAMILY (Lauraceae)

Sassafras variifolium .....................................................................   "

Spice Bush (Benzoin aesitvale)......................................................   "

 

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POPPY FAMILY (Papaveraceae)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).............................................spring

FUMITORY FAMILY (Fumariaceae)

Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra Cucullaria)..................................spring

MUSTARD FAMILY (Cruciferae)

Pepper-root (Dentaria laciniata)..................................................spring

Mountain Water Cress (Cardamine rotundifolia)...........................     "

      "              "        "    (Cardamine Clematitis) ............................     "

Bitter Cress (Cardamine sylvatica)................................................     "

SAXIFRAGE FAMILY (Saxifragaceae)

Early Saxifrage (Saxifraga virginiensis).........................................spring

Mountain Lettuce (Saxifraga micranthidifolia)...............................   "

Foam Flower (Tiarella cordifolia) ................................................   "

Alum-root (Heuchera villosa)....................................................summer

Alum-root (Heuchera americana)..............................................      "

Alum-root (Heuchera Curtisii).................................................... spring

Alum-root (Heuchera pubescens)...............................................    "

Golden Saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum).........................    "

HYDRANGEA FAMILY (Hydrangeaceae)

Mock-orange (Philadelphus grandiflorus)....................................spring

Wild Hydrangea (Hydrangea radiata).......................................summer

WITCH HAZEL FAMILY (Hamamelidaceae)

Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)..........................................autumn

ROSE FAMILY (Rosaceae)

Indian Physic (Gillenia trifoliata)................................................spring

Goat's Beard (Aruncus sylvester) ...........................................summer

Shad Bush (Amelanchier canadensis)........................................spring

Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana)........................................    "

Avens (Geum virginianum)......................................................summer

Blackberry (Rubus canadensis).................................................spring

Black Cherry (Prunus serotina).................................................    "

Wild Plum (Prunus americana)..................................................    "

Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia)........................................   "

SENNA FAMILY (Caesalpiniaceae)

Redbud Tree (Cercis canadensis).............................................spring

 

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BEAN FAMILY (Fabaceae)

False Indigo (Amorpha glabra).................................................spring

Black Locust (Robinia pseudo Acacia).....................................    "

Tick Trefoil (Desmodium laevigatum)......................................summer

  "         "     (Desmodium paniculatum) ...................................      "

Wild Vetch (Vicia caroliniana) .................................................spring

GERANIUM FAMILY (Geraniaceae)

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum)......................................spring

CASHEW FAMILY (Anacardiaceae)

Sumac (Rhus glabra) .............................................................summer

MAPLE FAMILY (Aceraceae)

Red Maple (Acer rubrum)........................................................spring

Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum).................................................... "

HORSE-CHESTNUT FAMILY (Aesculaceae)

Horse Chestnut (Aesculus octandra) ........................................spring

TOUCH-ME-NOT FAMILY (Impatientaceae)

Pale Touch-Me-Not (Impatiens pallida).................................summer

BUCKTHORN FAMILY (Rhamnaceae)

Red-root (Ceanothus americanus).............................................spring

GRAPE FAMILY (Vitaceae)

Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)..........................spring

Chicken Grape (Vitis cordifolia)................................................    "

River-bank Grape (Vitis vulpina) ..............................................    "

LINDEN FAMILY (Tiliaceae)

Basswood (Tilia venulosa).......................................................summer

Basswood (Tilia Michauxii) .....................................................     "

ST. JOHN'S-WORT FAMILY (Hypericaceae)

St. John's-wort (Hypericum mutilum).......................................summer

VIOLET FAMILY (Violaceae)

Green Violet (Hybanthus concolor)............................................spring

Bird-foot Violet (Viola pedata var. lineariloba)............................    "

Blue Violet (Viola papilionaceae)................................................    "

White Violet (Viola blanda)........................................................    "

      "       "     (Viola pallens) ......................................................    "

Michaux's Yellow Violet (Viola rotundifolia)...............................    "

pear 64 pear064.jpg Yellow Violet (Viola eriocarpa)..................................................spring

Canada Violet (Viola canadensis)................................................   "

White Violet (Viola striata)..........................................................   "

Wild Pansy (Viola Rafinesquii).....................................................  "

PASSIONFLOWER FAMILY (Passifloraceae)

Small Passionflower (Passiflora lutea) ......................................summer

WILLOW-HERB FAMILY (Epilobiaceae)

Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia)................................................summer

Willow-herb (Epilobium coloratum)..........................................     "

Enchanter's Nightshade (Circaea latifolia)..................................     "

Sundrops (Kneiffia fruticosa) ...................................................     "

TUPELO FAMILY (Nyssaceae)

Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica)......................................................spring

PARSLEY FAMILY (Umbelliferae)

Bur Snakeroot (Sanicula gregaria)...............................................spring

   "            "      (Sanicula canadensis)...........................................    "

Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza Claytoni)..............................................    "

Honewort (Cryptotaenia canadensis)............................................    "

Golden Alexanders (Zizia Bebbii).................................................    "

Meadow Parsnip (Thaspium aurem)..........................................summer

DOGWOOD FAMILY (Cornaceae)

Cornel (Cornus alternifolia).........................................................spring

Dogwood (Cynoxylon flordium)..................................................     "

HEATH FAMILY (Ericaceae)

Smooth Azalea (Rhododendron aborescens).............................summer

Common Azalea (Rhododendron mudiflorum).............................spring

Early Rhododendron (Rhododendron minus and var. mar-

     garettae).................................................................................   "

Early Rhododendron (Rhododendron carolinianum var.

     album)....................................................................................   "

Late Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum)........................summer

Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum) .........................................    "

Fetter bush (Leucothoe Catesbaei)..............................................spring

Deerberry (Polycodium stamineum).............................................     "

Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia)................................................     "

GALAX FAMILY (Diapensiaceae)

Shortia galacifolia (introduced) ..................................................spring

 

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EBONY FAMILY (Diospyraceae)

Persimmon (Diospyros virginianus) ............................................summer

STORAX FAMILY (Styracaceae)

Silver-bell Tree (Halesia Carolina)..............................................spring

OLIVE FAMILY (Oleaceae)

White Ash (Fraxinus americana).................................................spring

GENTIAN FAMILY (Gentianaceae)

Pennywort (Obolaria virginica)...................................................spring

Gentian (Gentiana decora).........................................................autumn

OLEANDER FAMILY (Apocynaceae)

Blue Milkweed (Amsonia tabernaemontana)...............................spring

MILKWEED FAMILY (Asclepiadaceae)

Milkweed (Asclepias quadrifolia)................................................spring

PHLOX FAMILY (Polemoniaceae)

Blue Mountain Phlox (Phlox stolonifera violacea).........................spring

HYDROPHYLLACEAE

Hydrophyllum canadense (no common name)..............................spring

Phacelia bipinnatifida (no common name)....................................     "

BORAGE FAMILY (Boraginaceae)

Scorpion grass (Myosotis virginica).............................................spring

Wild Comfrey (Cynoglossum virginianum)....................................    "

MINT FAMILY (Labiatae)

Horse Mint (Monarda clinipodia)................................................summer

Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa).............................................     "

Basil (Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides) .....................................     "

Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum montana)....................................     "

Dittany (Cunila origanoides)........................................................     "

Water Hoarhound (Lycopus sessilifolius).....................................     "

FOXGLOVE FAMILY (Scrophulariaceae)

Beardtongue (Pentstemon Brittanorum).......................................spring

Turtlehead (Chelone montana)....................................................autumn

        "        (Chelone Lyoni) .......................................................     "

Figwort (Scrophularia marilandica).............................................summer

Yellow False Foxglove (Aureolaria pedicularia austromon-

tana)..........................................................................................     "

 
pear 66 pear066.jpg Yellow False Foxglove (Aureolaria laevigata).............................summer

     "         "          "        (Aureolaria virginica) .............................     "

Purple False Foxglove (Agalinus tenuifolius)...............................autumn

BROOMRAPE FAMILY (Orobanchacaae)

Beech-drops (Epifagus virginiana)..............................................autumn

MADDER FAMILY (Rubiaceae)

Houstonia purpurea (no common name).....................................summer

Cleavers (Galium Aparine).........................................................     "

Bedstraw (Galium latifolium).......................................................    "

HONEYSUCKLE FAMILY (Loniceraceae)

Arrow-wood (Viburnum acerifolium)........................................spring

Rusty Viburnum (Viburnum rufidulum).......................................    "

BLUEBELL FAMILY (Campanulaceae)

Mountain Bluebells (Campanula divaricata)...............................summer

LOBELIA FAMILY (Lobeliaceae)

Lobelia amoena and variety glandulifera..............................,.....summer

DAISY FAMILY (Compositae)

White Snakeroot (Eupatorium urticaefolium).............................autumn

Pussy's Toes (Antennaria solitaria)............................................spring

Indian Plantain (Cacalia atriplicifolia).........................................summer

Goldenrod (Solidago Curtisii pubens).......................................autumn

        "        (Solidago Buckleyi) ................................................    "

        "         (Solidago monticola) .............................................    "

        "         (Solidago Bootii) ...................................................    "

Frostflower (Aster divaricatus) ................................................     "

        "         (Aster multiformis) ................................................     "

        "         (Aster patens) .......................................................     "

        "         (Aster Lowrieanus)................................................     "

Robin's Plantain (Erigeron pulchellis).........................................spring

Leafcup (Polymnia Uvedalia) ...................................................autumn

Ox-eye (Heliopsis helianthoides) ..............................................summer

Cone-flower (Rudbeckia laciniata)............................................     "

Sunflower (Helianthus decapetalus)...........................................autumn

Sunflower (Helianthus hirsutus).................................................autumn

Wild Goldenglow (Coreopsis latifolia) ......................................summer

Yellow Ironweed (Verbesina paniculata)...................................     "

Mountain Hawkweed (Hieracium paniculatum)..........................     "

Blue Sailors (Mulgedium villosum).............................................     "