St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1916-12-06


OF special interest To tie public as
well as to the classes in Nature Study
should he the principles taken up in
the Maseum-iessons OF the past
month: Parental Care of the Young.
Protective Resemblance of Living
Things in Their Surroundings. and the
Evolution of Animal Life.
The visitors to the Museum will find
very interesting exhibits illustrating
these principles. There is a synoptic
collection. showing the different types
of animals from the lowest and simpI-
est, the Ameba, which is little more
than mass of living jelly, but is
able to perform all the vital processes.
through the series of lower forms of
invertebrates, the worms, the lobster
and it's allies, the mollusks, and the
vertebrates: fish, frog reptiles birds
and mammals. This exhibit is the key
to the classifications of all the animals
of the museum collections This clas-
sification cannot be too highly valued,
a3 it represents the result of the sci
entific study of all the ages from Aris-
totle to the present time.
Another very suggestive and beau
tiful exhibit has been recently set up
to show some of the innumer-
able cases of close resembl-
ance between living forms and
their natural surroundings. There
is the weasel in its winter dress
of snowy white, the snow-hunting-
looking like the setting of fbeachgrass
and hudsonia on the snow-covered
beach, the horned-toad like the dry,
sandy soil. The flying squirrel is col
ored like the grey tree-trunks on
which it rests, the woodcock like the
mudfiats where it feeds, the bullfrog
like the muddy banks of the pond
where it lives, and the frogs eggs con-
cealed in their coating of transparent
jelly in the water. The ground birds
and their nests, as the ovenbird too,
are protectively colored to save them
from attack by enemies.
Very special resemblance is shown
between the Kallima butterfly in it's
rest-position and the dead-leaf on the
twig. The leaf-insects of Ceylon are
very like in color and form the foliage
among which they live, while the
walking-stick insects look like the
twigs, and the leaf-hoppers like the
| thorps on them. A most unusually
good resemblance is shown by u GER
tain Colligo butterfly to an owls
face. 1t even alights head downward
| to have the eye-like markings in the
! right position to carry out the re-
emblance. The close resemblance of
color and the form are Natures Won
| derful devices for the care of her
children.
| The subject Parental Care" in Ma
| ture deserves the thought of all. From
| the earliest stages, the parent instinc-
/ lively provides the food shelter need
ed for the embryo. The honey-bee
deposits in each cell with the egg, the
! food for it's early life, later it is fed
| by the small sized workers, who are
/ busy all the day gathering the honey
/ for the purpose. The milkweed but
terfiy lays her eggs on the food-plant
of the larva, so that its food supply
is sure, though the mother does not
| live to see her young.
Most ingenious are the devices by
which the eggs and larvae or emhry-
os are sheltered or concealed from
! their enemies. The frogs eggs are
yelled in jelly, transparent as the wat
err they lie in; the spider spins a CO.
j coon around her eggs, the mOllusks
! make a tough capsule or case for
their eggs and young, while the birds
and some fishes make nests and hide
their eggs away in very quiet conceal
ed places.
With the higher forms of life, the
! young are guarded for a long time
! by their parents and trained to choose
their food. to defend themselves from
their enemies and taught how to do
| the necessary things for their life.
Higher mammals are dependent upon
4 mother-loVe and care to bring out
| their intelligence and lead the race
! upwards. These lessons from Nature
are well worth our thought. AS Hulk
ley says: i" By Nature study we learn
| what is true in order to do what is
right"