Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/715

divided into sanitaria for different kinds of maladies. On a later visit the doctor was found going over a large number of mounted slides for the microscope which he had prepared, containing fungi and microbes taken recently from sick fishes. Dr. Lockwood's general and specific knowledge in so many fields, with his well-known love for the young and his lifelong experience as an educator, may readily account for the indescribable charm of his writings; but perhaps especially are these features discovered in his two little volumes of Animal Memoirs, of which a third volume, to embrace the reptiles and fishes, was to follow in due course.

Dr. Lockwood lived to be about seventy-five years of age, but time had dealt so kindly with him that his mind seemed to be expanding and ripening as the years went by. His tenacity of purpose in the pursuit of knowledge continued to brighten an intellect that was never dull, while his conversation glowed with the enthusiasm of youth and charmed with a delicacy of thought that was intellectually refining and pure. He was ever a student, but never a recluse. Seated by his beloved microscope, he seemed to play upon science as a master of the violin feels for its magical chords, and he caught by his sympathetic comment upon insect and animal life the attention of his hearers and held it firmly and harmoniously in touch with his own. His fondness for clearness of speech brought him the admiration of those who know science only by name, and his geniality and hospitality won for him the love of all who came within the circle of his home. In his home life he was ever gentle, considerate, and kind, and his love for his work was as absorbing as the simplicity of his life was sweet.

 

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One cause of the persistence of caged birds in singing is found by Mr. Charles A. Witchell in the result of their changed condition of life—that they have nothing to do but to sing. "The wild bird has always plenty to notice and consider—the approach of various creatures: men, beasts, hawks and other birds; the sounds which these produce, and which signify various degrees of safety or of peril; the indications of food in air or tree, or on the ground; and lastly the state of the atmosphere and the various weather signs which all birds observe—such incidents as these occupy the wakeful hours of the wild bird. But the caged bird—often secluded from all communication with his kind (one, perchance, of a gregarious species), without the necessity of seeking food, with a horizon limited perhaps by a smoky garden, perhaps by a dingy window—can take no exercise but in hopping from perch to perch, across and across his cage, and can hear no call-notes but his own, which he repeats again and again, and, if he has been reared in a cage, his own song, which he seems to utter as much for the sake of such occupation as it affords as to express by means of it any desire for a mate or any pleasure in his surroundings."