Part 42 (1/2)
No. 7 (page 60, _first note_). At Pie di Mulera, at the outlet of the Val Anzasca, near the princ.i.p.al hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one inches in circ.u.mference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of the church of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards of which the panels were made could not have been less than ten inches wide. Statues and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine wood, are mentioned by ancient writers.
No. 8 (page 63, _second note_). Cartier, A. D. 1535-'6, mentions ”vines, great melons, cuc.u.mbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours,” as common among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence.--_Bref Recit_, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a.
No. 8 (page 65, _second paragraph_). It may be considered very highly probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting hundreds of species.
No. 9 (page 66, _first note_). Although the vine _genus_ is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular _varieties_ are extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined, and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern sh.o.r.es of the Morea.
No. 10 (page 68, _first note_). In most of the countries of Southern Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions, and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the gra.s.ses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases, they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above the sea.
No. 11 (page 73, _last paragraph_). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use.
No. 12 (page 74, _second note_). See in Th.o.r.eau's _Excursions_, an interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Ma.s.sachusetts.
No. 13 (page 86, _first paragraph_). It is said at Courmayeur that a very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains, still linger about the Grande Jora.s.se.
No. 14 (page 92, _first note_). In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called _ragnaje_, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authors.h.i.+p is not now ascribed to that eminent writer.
No. 15 (page 93, _second note_). The appearance of the dove-like grouse, _Tetrao paradoxus_, or _Syrrhaptes Pallasii_, in various parts of Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented the Frisian island of Bork.u.m for more than five months.
It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared again altogether.
No. 16 (page 94, _note_). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, ent.i.tled, _La vie Anglaise_, p. 119, it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not unfrequent on the British coast.
No. 17 (page 100, _first paragraph_). I cannot learn that caprification is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.
No. 18 (page 112, _first note_). The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.
Toussenel, quoting from official doc.u.ments, states, that upon the offer of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, _twelve thousand_ vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in 1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four of which proved fatal.--_Tristia_, p. 176 _et seqq._
No. 19 (page 121, _first note_). The Beduins are little given to the chase, and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the desert. Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of Europe. On one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some violence in Arabia Petraea, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents which had not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in the midst of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then took his departure, _insalutato hospite_.
No. 20 (page 122). It is possible that time may modify the habits of the fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them to the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fis.h.i.+ng, for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circ.u.mstances where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant in fish.
No. 21 (page 131, _note_). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals--which he ill.u.s.trates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, _The Danish Woods_--thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is falling swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by destroying moles and mice.--_De Danske Skore_, p. 12.
No. 22 (page 135, _note_). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi, conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose the Mississippi to have been ”a comparatively clear stream,”
conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--_Report_, pp. 435, 436.
The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion, and the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in its upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie region, has been suggested. The sh.o.r.es of these supposed lakes have not, I believe, been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth of this hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than the mere bursting of the barrier which confined the waters.
No. 23 (page 143, _note_). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of human industry on the atmosphere, an article in _Aus der Natur_, vol.
29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465 _et seqq._
No. 24 (page 159, _second paragraph_). All evergreens, even the broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and therefore more organic heat is developed?
No. 25 (page 191, _first paragraph_). In discussing the influence of mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the popular belief, that mountains ”attract” to them clouds floating within a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quant.i.ty, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater ma.s.ses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing hundreds of tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains?
No. 26 (page 198, _note_). elisee Redus ascribes the diminution of the ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694.
No. 27 (page 219, _note_). The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found that _fifty thousand_ trees had been employed in building them. The builders ”seemed,” says Hudry-Menos, ”to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest quant.i.ty of timber possible without crus.h.i.+ng them.”--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 June, 1864, p. 601.