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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.
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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 |
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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 |
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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
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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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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- |
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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 |
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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 |
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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- |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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
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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 |
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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 |
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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- |
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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 |
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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 |
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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, |
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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 |
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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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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.
|
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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 |
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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)...................................................... "
|
|
pear 62 |
pear062.jpg |
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
|
|
pear 63 |
pear063.jpg |
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
|
|
pear 65 |
pear065.jpg |
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).............................................
"
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