Read Ebook: The Plague of Lust Vol. 2 (of 2) Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity by Rosenbaum Julius

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"The bird is so vain of its beautiful plumage, that it will not let a speck of dirt stay on it; but is continually examining its feathers to see that they are perfectly clean. When wild, it always flies and sits facing the wind, lest its elegant plumes should get ruffled.

"It lives partly on insects, such as grasshoppers, which it will not touch, unless it has killed them itself, but chiefly on the seeds of the teak tree and a kind of fig.

"There were once a great many strange stories about this bird. As the natives of Guinea used to cut off their legs, and dry them, and sell them, of course they reached Europe without feet. So the people there got up a report that the bird lived always in the air, floated by, its light feathers; that it used its shoulders for its nest; that it rested only by hanging from a branch by its tail-filaments; that its food was morning dew; with other reports as droll as these. There are several kinds of Birds of Paradise, but the one in the cut is the most common, and is that of which these fables are told."

The next bird Uncle Brown showed Charley, was a very curious looking one, named the Toco Toucan, a native of the American tropics. It has, as you see, a monstrous sized bill, though it is not nearly so heavy, as it looks, being mostly of a honey comb make. This bill seems to have in it a great many nerves and so to be very sensitive, as the bird scratches it with its foot, and also appears to enjoy holding meat and fruits, with its tip, both of which prove the bill to have feeling in it. It feeds on all sorts of eatable things, but is especially fond of mice and little birds, which it kills by a strong squeeze, and then tears to pieces and devours.

The topmost branch of a tall tree, called the Mora, when dead, is the favorite resort of the Toucan, where it cannot be reached by the gunner. It seems to fancy itself more beautiful, when its tail is trimmed, and it therefore uses its beak to do this, as the barber employs his scissors to trim our hair. When asleep, the Toucan takes great care of its bill, covering it nicely with the back plumage, so that the whole bird looks like a great round ball of feathers. Its body is about eighteen inches long.

Next uncle Brown showed Charley a bird, called the Parrakeet. It was a very pretty one, with a green body, a red bill, and a rose-colored band round its neck, from which it is sometimes named the Rose-ringed Parrakeet.

This bird is often tamed, and, from its gentle disposition and pleasant ways, is a great favorite. It seems very fond of ripe walnuts halved, and while picking out the meat, makes a little clucking noise, showing that it is pleased.

It is soon taught to repeat words and short sentences and to speak quite plainly. Sometimes, when angry, it screams loudly, and seems to practise any new accomplishment when it thinks that nobody can hear it.

Another Bird, added to our Boy's Museum, was called the Brush Turkey, because it is found mostly in the thick brush-wood of New South Wales. The gentleman, who first made it known to the public, tells also of a very curious way, in which the bird makes its nest. It never uses its bill, as other birds do, but tears up grass and dirt and sticks with its foot and flings it backward into a heap, and thus clears the ground, for some distance round, so thoroughly, that hardly a grass blade or leaf is left.

Having finished the pile and waited till it has become heated enough it lays its eggs, not side by side, as in common cases, but places them, with the large end upwards, from nine to twelve inches apart, perfectly upright and buried at nearly an arm's length. The eggs are covered up, as they are laid, and left until the heat hatches them. Sometimes a bushel of them are found in one heap, and are very fine eating. When this Turkey is disturbed, it runs swiftly through the under-brush, or springs upon the low branch of some tree, and leaps from limb to limb till it reaches the top.

Another bird, called the Mound Making Megapode, from its big feet, is somewhat like the Brush Turkey, laying many eggs; it digs holes five or six feet deep and deposits the eggs at the bottom. The natives gets these eggs by scratching up the earth with their fingers--a very hard task, since the holes seldom run straight. Some of these mounds are enormously large, one of them being found to measure fifteen feet in height and sixty feet round the bottom. These birds live in the close thickets on the sea-shore and are never found far inland.

Besides these birds Mr. Brown presented Charley with a glass case containing a number of different kinds of Humming Birds stuffed so as to look alive and some of them perched on artificial trees, and others attached to concealed wires, so as to appear as if they were flying. This case of Humming Birds was the chief ornament of the Museum; greatly was Charley's delight at being its possessor.

Mr. Wilson, the great ornithologist, says, "I have seen the humming bird, for half an hour at a time, darting at those little groups of insects that dance in the air, on a fine summer evening, retiring to an adjoining twig to rest, and renewing the attack with a dexterity that set all other fly-catchers at defiance." Their feet are small and slender, but having long claws, and, in consequence they seldom alight upon the ground, but perch easily on branches, from which also they generally suspend themselves when sleeping, with their heads downwards. Their tail is broad. Their nests, about an inch in diameter, and as much in breadth, are very compactly formed, the outer coat of grey lichen, and lined with the fine down plucked from the stalks of the fern and other herbs, and are fixed to the side of a branch or the moss-grown side of a tree so artificially, that they appear, when viewed from below, mere mossy knots, or accidental protuberances. They are bold and pugnacious, two males seldom meeting on the same bush or flower without a battle; and the intrepidity of the female, when defending her young, is not less remarkable. They attack the eyes of the larger birds, when their needle-like bill is truly a formidable weapon; and it is affirmed, that if they perceive a man climbing the tree where their nests are, they fly at his face, and strike him also in the eyes. Most of the species lay only two eggs, and some of them only one. They have been tamed--a female, with her nest and eggs, brought from Jamaica to England, was fed with honey and water on the passage, and the young ones, when hatched, readily took honey from the lips of the lady to whom they were presented, and one, at least, survived two months after their arrival.

HOW CHARLEY ARRANGED HIS MUSEUM.

After uncle Brown had gone home, Charley determined he would begin to be industrious at once. So he went up to his room, and began to arrange his shelves, which his father had put up for the purpose. As he put each one in its place, he examined it very carefully, and tried to recall every thing his uncle had told him about it, so that it might be fixed fast and clear in his memory, for he wished to tell his father and mother and his favorite playmates the wonderful things he had heard. He looked sharp too, to find in them other curious things, which his uncle Brown hadn't mentioned, that he might ask him about them when he came out again, or hunt them up in the books his uncle was to bring him.

As fast, as he put up a bird or shell, he wrote down, on a slip of stout paper, in a large, neat hand the place and name of the bird, or animal, that once lived in the shell, and where was its native place, and fastened it with tacks above it.

Though he worked very steadily, it occupied all his spare time, out of school, for several days.

Next he asked his father to get him a good sized blank book to make a catalogue of his Museum, which his father did very willingly. Then Charley wrote down in this the name and the native place of each of his birds, and under this he recorded all his uncle told him about them. He left besides, under each name, a page or two blank, so that he might have room to set down whatever else he might find out about them.

All this took his spare hours for several days more, and after finishing his labels on his Museum and his Catalogue, he felt quite proud of their orderly and neat appearance and he had good reason to feel satisfied for they made a very pretty show. Then he invited his father and mother to walk up and see what he had done, for he had before requested them not to come up, till he got ready for them. They were both very much pleased with all his doings, and praised him a good deal. They said, they hoped that he would be as neat and orderly in all he did, as he had been here, for it would help him very much in his studies or in his business matters. They told him there was a good saying, which he had better write down and put up over his little desk, so that he could often see it, "A place for every thing, and every thing in its place." They said, too, it was an excellent plan to write down, as he had in his catalogue, all the particulars he knew about anything, for he could understand and remember them better, when they had once been all put on paper.

STUFFED SKINS.

"Now, Charley," said Mr. Brown at his next visit, "I've got some new curiosities for your Museum; that is, stuffed animals. You know I told you, about your birds, that the skin was taken off carefully and filled out plumply with some dry, soft substance. Just so it is with these animals."

Here, first, look at this Ermine, which, for a very long while, has been so famous for its beautiful fur, that kings and nobles have paid a high price for it to trim their robes, This fur in summer is dark colored, but in winter it is an elegant white, except on the tip of the tail, where it is jet black.

The Ermine lives in the northern parts of the Old and New Worlds, and it preys on hares and rabbits and almost every other creature it is strong enough to master.

I will tell you a story about the Ermine. Mr. Sturgis, of Boston, was formerly engaged in trading with the natives on the north west-coast of America, for furs.

The natives had no currency. But the skin of the Ermine, found in limited numbers upon the northern part of the continent, was held in such universal estimation, and of such uniform value, among many tribes, that it in a measure supplied the place of currency. The skin of this little slender animal is from eight to twelve inches in length, perfectly white, except the tip of the tail, which is jet black.

Urged by some Indian friends, in 1802, Mr. Sturgis obtained and sent home a fine specimen, with a request that a quantity should be ordered at the annual Leipsic fair, where he supposed they might be obtained. About five thousand were procured, which he took out with him on the next voyage, and arrived at Kigarnee, one of the principal trading places on the coast, early in 1804. Having previously encouraged the Indians to expect them, the first question was, if he had "clicks," for sale, and being answered in the affirmative, great earnestness was manifested to obtain them, and it was on that occasion that he purchased five hundred and sixty prime sea-otter skins, at that time worth fifty dollars a piece at Canton, in a single fore-noon, giving for each five ermine skins, that cost less than thirty cents each in Boston. He succeeded in disposing of all his ermines at the same rate, before others carried them out--but in less than two years from that time, one hundred of them would not bring a sea-otter skin.

And here is a Pine Marten, which, as you see, has also very beautiful fur, which brings a high price. Notice what a long, slender body, short muzzle, and sharp teeth it has. It is a great robber, and kills rabbits, birds, chickens, and young ducks in great numbers, creeping slyly up to them, darting at them, and piercing their necks with its sharp teeth. It is found almost all over the world. Here is a story about the Marten which I have copied from a book.

There is another strong instinct which the Marten evinces even when tamed. It has an implacable hostility to cats, and lets slip no opportunity of springing upon them and giving them a mortal wound. In the forests, diminutive as it is in comparison, it battles stoutly with the wild cat; and we shall venture to quote from "The British Naturalist" an account of one of these battles, as from an eye witness. "In the year 1805, a gentleman, on whose veracity we can depend, witnessed one of those combats in the Morven district of Argyleshire. In crossing the mountains from Loch Sunart southward, he passed along the bank of a very deep wooded dell, the hollow of which, though it occasionally showed green patches through trees and coppice, was one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet from the top. The dell is of difficult access, and contains nothing that would compensate the labor, and thus it is abandoned to wild animals, and, among others, to the Marten, which, though the skin fetches a high price, is not so much hunted there as in more open places; because, though they might succeed in shooting it from the heights above, they could not be sure of removing the body. Thus it is left to contend with the mountain cat for the sovereignty of this particular dell, and both are safe, except when they approach the farm-house at the bottom of the hill. The contest then lasted for more than a half an hour, and both combatants, were too intent on each other's destruction to shun or fear observation. At last, however, the Marten succeeded in falling upon the right side of the cat's neck, and jerking his long body over her, so as to be out of the reach of her claws; when, after a good deal of squeaking and struggling, by which the enemy could not be shaken off, the martial achievements of puss were ended in the field of glory."

Next comes a Ruffed Lemur, as it is called from the half-circle of white hair, which you see on each side of its face. Notice, too, Charley, the big patches of white on its back and sides, and its long bushy tail, longer even than its whole body.

"It is a native of Madagascar, which, you see on your map, is an island south-east of Africa. It lives in the thick woods, and sleeps all day, but when night comes, it starts forth after its food, which consists of fruits, insects, and small birds. It is a little bigger, you see, than a common cat. The Lemur, of which there are several varieties, is a good deal like a monkey in his habits and some of them look like monkeys.

"You've seen, Charley, tigers in the Menagerie. Notice how much this animal resembles a tiger, being shaped and striped like it, but a good deal smaller, and measuring three feet long and eighteen inches high. You can perceive, then, why it is sometimes called tiger-cat, though its most common name is Ocelet. It is a native of Mexico and Peru, and if caught young, is easily tamed. When it is wild, it feeds mostly on Monkeys, which it takes by its cunning.

"Here's one more animal for you, Charley, called the Canada Lynx, which would make you laugh, if you could see it alive and moving. It doesn't walk or run, but sticks up its back and jumps forward with all four feet in the air at once. If you apply that measuring rule of yours to it, y

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