No More Learning

In one place you might see minute ostrich-feathers, which
seemed the waving plumes of the warriors filing into the fortress; in
another, the glancing, fan-shaped banners of the Lilliputian host; and
in another, the needle-shaped particles collected into bundles,
resembling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears.
From the under side of the ice in the brooks, where there was a
thicker ice below, depended a mass of crystallization, four or five
inches deep, in the form of prisms, with their lower ends open, which,
when the ice was laid on its smooth side, resembled the roofs and
steeples of a Gothic city, or the vessels of a crowded haven under a
press of canvas. The very mud in the road, where the ice had melted,
was crystallized with deep rectilinear fissures, and the crystalline
masses in the sides of the ruts resembled exactly asbestos in the
disposition of their needles. Around the roots of the stubble and
flower-stalks, the frost was gathered into the form of irregular
conical shells, or fairy rings. In some places the ice-crystals were
lying upon granite rocks, directly over crystals of quartz, the
frostwork of a longer night, crystals of a longer period, but, to some
eye unprejudiced by the short term of human life, melting as fast as
the former.

In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this singular fact is
recorded, which teaches us to put a new value on time and space: "The
distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a
geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches
out into the ocean, some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many
miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a
barrier to the migrations of many species of Mollusca. Several genera
and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only
a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the
Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other. . . . Of the one
hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to
the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the
Cape. "

That common mussel, the _Unio complanatus_, or more properly
_fluviatilis_, left in the spring by the muskrat upon rocks and
stumps, appears to have been an important article of food with the
Indians. In one place, where they are said to have feasted, they are
found in large quantities, at an elevation of thirty feet above the
river, filling the soil to the depth of a foot, and mingled with ashes
and Indian remains.
The works we have placed at the head of our chapter, with as much
license as the preacher selects his text, are such as imply more
labor than enthusiasm. The State wanted complete catalogues of its
natural riches, with such additional facts merely as would be directly
useful.

The reports on Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, and Invertebrate Animals,
however, indicate labor and research, and have a value independent of
the object of the legislature.

Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds cannot be of much value, as long
as Bigelow and Nuttall are accessible. They serve but to indicate,
with more or less exactness, what species are found in the State. We
detect several errors ourselves, and a more practiced eye would no
doubt expand the list.

The Quadrupeds deserved a more final and instructive report than they
have obtained.

These volumes deal much in measurements and minute descriptions, not
interesting to the general reader, with only here and there a colored
sentence to allure him, like those plants growing in dark forests,
which bear only leaves without blossoms. But the ground was
comparatively unbroken, and we will not complain of the pioneer, if he
raises no flowers with his first crop. Let us not underrate the value
of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how
few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history
of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being
gradually written. Men are knowing enough after their fashion. Every
countryman and dairy-maid knows that the coats of the fourth stomach
of the calf will curdle milk, and what particular mushroom is a safe
and nutritious diet. You cannot go into any field or wood, but it
will seem as if every stone had been turned, and the bark on every
tree ripped up. But, after all, it is much easier to discover than to
see when the cover is off.