Rollo's Museum

THE CURIOSITIES.

Jonas accepted the office of cabinet keeper. He inquired particularly of the children about the meeting of the society, and, as they stated to him the facts, he perceived that Rollo had been a good deal disappointed at not having been chosen to any office. Jonas was sorry himself that Rollo could not have had some special charge, as it was his plan at the beginning, and the others had only joined it at his invitation. When he observed, also, how good-naturedly Rollo acquiesced,-for he did at last acquiesce very good-naturedly indeed,-he was the more sorry; and so he proposed to Rollo that he should be assistant cabinet keeper.

"I shall want an assistant," said Jonas, "for I have not time to attend to the business much; I can give you directions, and then you can arrange the curiosities accordingly; and you can help me when I am at work there."

Rollo liked this plan very much; and so Jonas said that he might act as assistant cabinet keeper until the next meeting of the society, and then he would propose to them to choose him regularly. He told Mary of this plan, and she liked it very much indeed.

The children had various plans for collecting curiosities. They had meetings of the society once a week, when they all came into the play room, bringing in with them the articles which they had found or prepared. These articles were there exhibited and admired by all the members, and then were put upon the great work-bench, under the care of the assistant cabinet keeper. They remained there until Jonas had time to look them over, and determine how to arrange them. Then he and Rollo put them up in the cabinet, in good order.

Mary did not collect many articles herself; but she used to tell the children what they could get or prepare. They made some very pretty collections of dried plants at her suggestion. They would come to her, as she sat in the house at her work, and there she would explain to them, in detail, what to do; and then they would go away and do it, bringing their work to her frequently as they went on. In respect to collections of plants, she told them that botanists generally pressed them, and then fastened them into great books, between the leaves, arranged according to the kinds.

"But you," said she, "don't know enough of plants to arrange them in that way,-and, besides, it would be too great an undertaking for you to attempt to prepare a large collection. But you might make a small collection, and select and arrange the flowers in it according to their beauty."

Lucy said she should like to do this very much, and so Mary recommended to her to go and get as many flowers as she could find, and press them between the leaves of some old book which would not be injured by them. Lucy did so. She was a week or two in getting them ready. Then she brought them to Mary. Mary looked them over, and said that many of them were very pretty indeed, and that she could make a very fine collection from them.

"Now," said she, "you must have a book to keep them in."

So Mary went and got two sheets of large, light-colored wrapping paper, and folded them again and again, until the leaves were of the right size. Then she cut the edges.

"Now," said Mary, "I must make some false leaves."

"False leaves!" said Lucy; "what are they?"

"O, you shall see," replied Mary.

She then cut one of the leaves which she had made into narrow strips, and put these strips between the true leaves at the back, where they were folded, in such a manner, that, when she sewed the book, the false leaves would be sewed in with the true. But the false leaves, being narrow strips, only made the back thicker. They did not extend out into the body of the book between the leaves; but Mary showed Lucy that when she came to put in her flowers between the true leaves, it would make the body of the book as thick as the back. They would make it thicker, were it not for these false leaves.

"Yes," said Lucy, "I have seen false leaves in scrap books, made to paste pictures in. I always thought that they made the leaves whole, first, and then cut them out."

"No," said Mary, "that would be a great waste of paper. It is very easy to make them by sewing in narrow strips."

Mary then asked Lucy to sit up at the table, and select some of her prettiest flowers,-some large, and some small,-enough to fill up one page of her book; and then to arrange them on the page in such a way as to produce the best effect; and Lucy did so. Then she gummed each one down upon the page, by touching the under side, here and there, with some gum arabic, dissolved in water, but made very thick. When she had done one page, she turned the leaf over very carefully, and laid a book upon it, and then proceeded to make selections of flowers for the second page. In this manner she went on through the book, and it made a very beautiful book indeed. Mary put a cover and a title-page to it; and on the title-page, she wrote the title, thus:-

A

COLLECTION

OF

COMMON FLOWERS,

BY

LUCY.

When it was all ready, it was presented to the society, and put into the cabinet, where it was long known by the name of "Lucy's Collection." She wrote the name of each plant under it, as fast as she could find out the names; and, whenever visitors came to see the museum, she would ask them the name of any of the flowers in her collection which she did not know, and then wrote the name down. Thus, after a time, nearly all the names were entered; and so, whenever the children found any flower which they did not know, they would sometimes go and look over Lucy's collection, and there perhaps they would find the very flower with its name under it.

This museum lasted several years; and the next spring, Rollo made his collection of flowers, which was larger than Lucy's. Mary helped him about it. At first, he was going to have it in a larger book; but Mary thought it would be better to have all the books of a size, and then they would lie together very compactly, in a pile; which would not be the case if they had several books of different sizes. She said if any one wanted to make a larger collection, he had better have several volumes. Rollo made volume after volume, until at last his collection consisted of six.

There was one collection of leaves; Henry made it. His object was to see how many different-shaped leaves he could get. He did not regard the little differences which exist between the leaves of the same tree, but only the essential differences of shape; such as between the leaf of the oak and of the maple. Two or three pages were devoted to leaves of forest-trees, and they looked very beautiful indeed. Leaves, being naturally flat, can be pressed very easily, and they generally preserve their colors pretty well. One page was devoted to the leaves of evergreens, such as the pine, fir, spruce, hemlock; and they made a singular appearance, they were so small and slender. A little sprig of pine leaves was put in the centre, and the others around. Then there were the leaves of fruit-trees and plants, such as the apple, pear, peach, plum, raspberry, strawberry, currant, gooseberry, &c., arranged by themselves; and there were half a dozen pages devoted to bright-colored leaves, gathered in the autumn, after the frost had come. These pages looked very splendidly. The names of the plants to which all these leaves belonged were written under them, and also the name given by botanists to indicate the particular shape of the leaf; these names the children found in books of botany. Such, for instance, as serrated, which means notched all around the edge with teeth like a saw, like the strawberry leaf; and cordate, which means shaped like a heart, as the lilac leaf is, and many others.

There was also a collection of brakes that Rollo made, which the children liked to look over very much. There is a great variety in the forms of brakes, or ferns, and yet they are all regular and beautiful, and are so flat that they are easily pressed and preserved. But of all the botanical collections which were formed and deposited in this museum, one of the prettiest was a little collection of petals, which Rollo's mother made. Petals are the colored leaves of flowers,-those which form the flower itself. Sometimes the flower cannot be pressed very well whole, and yet, if you take off one of its petals, you find that that will press very easily, and preserve its color finely. So Rollo's mother, every day, when she saw a flower, would put one of the leaves into a book, and after a time she had a large collection,-red, and white, and blue, and yellow, and brown, in fact, of almost every color. Then she made a little book of white paper, because she thought the colors and forms of these delicate petals would appear to better advantage on a smooth, white ground. She then made a selection from all which she had preserved, and arranged them upon the pages of her little book, so as to bring a great variety both of form and color upon a page; and yet forms and colors so selected that all that was upon one page should be in keeping and harmony.

But it was not merely the botanical collections in the museum which interested the children. They had some philosophical apparatus. There was what the boys called a sucker, which consisted of a round piece of sole leather, about as big as a dollar, with a string put through the middle, and a stop-knot in the end of it, to keep the string from coming entirely through; then, when the leather was wet, the boys could just pat it down upon a smooth stone, and then lift the stone by the string; the sucker appearing to stick to the stone very closely. Rollo did not understand how the sucker could lift so well; his father said it was by the pressure of the atmosphere, but in a way that Rollo was not old enough to understand.

Then there was what the boys called a circular saw, made of a flat, circular piece of lead, as large as the top of a tea cup. Jonas had hammered it out of a bullet. There were saw-teeth cut all around the circumference, and two holes bored through the lead, at a little distance from the centre, one on each side. There was a string passed through these holes, and then the ends were tied together; and to put the circular saw in motion, this string was held over the two hands, as the string is held when you first begin to play cat's-cradle. Then, by a peculiar motion, this saw could be made to whirl very swiftly, by pulling the two hands apart, and then letting them come together again,-the string twisting and untwisting alternately, all the time. There were various other articles of apparatus for performing philosophical experiments; such as a prism, a magnet, pipes for blowing soap bubbles, a syringe, or squirt-gun, as the boys called it, made of a reed, which may be said to be a philosophical instrument.

Jonas made a collection of specimens of wood, which was, on the whole, very curious, as well as somewhat useful. As he was at work sawing wood from day to day, he laid aside small specimens of the different kinds; as oak, maple, beech, ash, fir, cedar, &c. He generally chose small, round pieces, about as large round as a boy's arm, and sawed off a short piece about three inches long. This he split into quarters, and reserved one quarter for his specimen, throwing the others away. This quarter had, of course, three sides; one was covered with bark, and the other two were the split sides. As fast as Jonas got these specimens split out in this manner, he put them in the barn, upon a shelf, near the bench; and then, one day, he took them one by one, and planed one of the split sides of each, and then smoothed it perfectly with sand paper.

Rollo, who was standing by at the time, asked him why he did not plane them all around.

"O, because," said Jonas, "they are for specimens, and so we want them to show the bark on one side, and the wood on the other side, in its natural state; and the third side is enough to show its appearance when it is manufactured."

"Manufactured!" said Rollo.

"Yes," said Jonas; "planed and varnished, as it is when it is made into furniture."

"Are you going to varnish the sides that you plane?"

Jonas said he was; and he did so. He planed one side, and one end. He varnished the planed side, and pasted a neat little label on the planed end. On the label he wrote the name of the wood, and some very brief account of its qualities and uses, when he knew what they were. For instance, on the end of the specimen of walnut, was written in a very close but plain hand-

Walnut, very tough and hard. Used for handles.

After Jonas had got as many specimens as he could, from the wood pile, he used to cut others in the woods, when he happened to be there, of kinds which are not commonly cut for fuel. In this way he got, after a time, more than twenty different kinds, and when they were all neatly varnished and labelled, it made a very curious collection; and it was very useful, too, sometimes; for whenever the boys found any kind of a tree in the woods which they did not know, all they had to do, was to cut a branch of it off, and bring it to the museum, and compare it with Jonas's specimens. In this way, before long, they learned the names of nearly all the trees which grew in the woods about there.

There was a curious circumstance which happened in respect to Rollo's hemlock-seed. It has already been said that this supposed hemlock-seed was really a chrysalis. Now, a chrysalis is that form which all caterpillars assume, before they change into butterflies; and the animal remains within, generally for some time, in a dormant state;-all the time, however, making a slow progress towards its development. Now, Rollo's great chrysalis remained in a conspicuous position, upon the middle shelf in the cabinet, for some weeks. Rollo always insisted, when he showed it to visitors, that it was a hemlock-seed. Jonas said he knew it was not; and he did not believe it was any kind of seed. But then he confessed that he did not know what it was, and Rollo considered that he had his father's authority for believing it to be a hemlock-seed, because his father had said he thought it might be so, judging however only by Rollo's description, without having seen it at all. Rollo always asserted very confidently that it was a hemlock-seed, and that he was going to plant it the next spring.

In the mean time, the humble caterpillar within, unconscious of the conspicuous position to which he had been elevated, and the distinguished marks of attention he received from many visitors, went slowly on in his progress towards a new stage of being. When the time was fully come, he very coolly gnawed a hole in one end of his glossy shell, and laboriously pushed himself through, his broad and beautiful wings folded up compactly by his side. When he was fairly liberated, he stood for two hours perfectly silent and motionless upon the shelf, while his wings gradually expanded, and assumed their proper form and dimensions. It was rather dark, for the doors were closed; and yet sufficient light came through the crevices of Jonas's cabinet, to enable him to see the various objects around him, though he took very little notice of them. It was a strange thing for him to be shut up in such a place, with no green trees, or grass, or flowers around; but having never turned into a butterfly before, he did not know that there was any thing unusual in his situation.

He began, however, in the course of six hours, to feel decidedly hungry; so he thought he would creep along in search of something to eat. He tried his proboscis upon one curiosity after another, in vain. The magnet, the sucker, pebbles, shells, books, every thing was hard, dry and tasteless; and at length, discouraged and in despair, he clambered up upon Jonas's specimen of maple, poised his broad, black, leopard-like wings over his back, and hung his head in mute despair. He would have given all his newborn glories for one single supper from the leaf which he used to feed upon when he was a worm.

It was just about this time, that Rollo, Lucy, and Jonas happened to come together to the cabinet, to put in some new curiosity which they had found. As soon as Rollo opened the doors, he perceived the hole in the end of the chrysalis, which lay directly before him. He seized it hastily.

"There now," said he, in a tone of sad disappointment, "somebody has been boring a hole in my hemlock-seed!"

He took up the empty shell, and looked at the hole.

"Why, Jonas," said he, "how light it is!"

Jonas took the chrysalis, weighed it in his hand, looked into the hole, and then said, quickly,

"It is a chrysalis, I verily believe; and that is where the butterfly came out."

"What!" said Rollo, in a tone of utter amazement.

"That hole is where a butterfly came out," said Jonas, "I have no doubt;-and if we look about here a little, we shall find him."

They immediately began to look about; and the butterfly, as if he understood their conversation, and perceived the necessity of a movement on his part, just at that instant, expanded his wings, and floated off through the air into the middle of the room, towards the bright sunshine which came in at the door. He alighted upon the edge of a barrel, which stood there. Rollo was after him in a moment, with his cap in the air. The butterfly, however, was too hungry to wait. He was again upon the wing. He soared away across the yard, towards the garden, and disappeared over the tops of the trees. Rollo and Lucy looked for him for some time among the plants and flowers, but in vain.

"Never mind," said Jonas, when they returned. "The butterfly had rather be free; but he has left you the chrysalis shell, and that, notwithstanding the hole, is a greater curiosity now, than it was before."