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.