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Alabaster Blue Sectory 23
Page 07
The AEquians in their numerous attacks upon the Roman territory generally occupied Mount Algidus, which formed a part of the group of the Alban Hills in Latium. It was accordingly upon this mount that the battles between the Romans and AEquians most frequently took place. In the year 458 B.C. the Roman consul L. Minucius was defeated on the Algidus, and surrounded in his camp. Five horsemen, who made their escape before the Romans were completely encompassed, brought the tidings to Rome. The Senate forthwith appointed L. Cincinnatus dictator.
The woodpeckers all build in about the same manner, excavating the trunk or branch of a decayed tree, and depositing the eggs on the fine fragments of wood at the bottom of the cavity. Though the nest is not especially an artistic work,--requiring strength rather than skill,--yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies--the jays, crows, hawks, and owls. A tree with a natural cavity is never selected, but one which has been dead just long enough to have become soft and brittle throughout. The bird goes in horizontally for a few inches, making a hole perfectly round and smooth and adapted to his size; then turns downward, gradually enlarging the hole, as he proceeds, to the depth of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, according to the softness of the tree and the urgency of the mother bird to deposit her eggs. While excavating, male and female work alternately. After one has been engaged fifteen or twenty minutes, drilling, and carrying out chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a loud call or two, when its mate soon appears, and, alighting near it on the branch, the pair chatter and caress a moment; then the fresh one enters the cavity and the other flies away.
We considered this point fully when speculating as to the presence of man in the Miocene: so we have nothing further to offer. We might, however, suggest that, if the hippopotamus amongst mammals could survive all the changing time since the Pliocene, as it has done, it seems no more than fair to admit equal power of endurance to the human species. The position then of the scientific world as to the Pliocene Age of man is, on the whole, more decided in its favor than for the Miocene Age. Quite a number of eminent scholars, whose conclusions are worthy of all respect, unhesitatingly affirm the existence of Pliocene man in Europe. Others are not quite ready to admit his existence in Europe, but do think he was in existence elsewhere. Still others, with all due respect for the discoveries of Capellini, think it more prudent to await further discoveries. The reader, who has followed us through this brief outline of the past, can join which of the classes he will, and be sure of finding himself in good company.
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