An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie

First published: 1935

Type of work: Essays on Nature arranged by days and seasons

Critical Evaluation:

AN ALMANAC FOR MODERNS is a collection of essays on Nature entered journal-fashion, one for each day of the year. Some of the essays are complete on a single page, while others run on for several pages. At the time the book was being written, Peattie was living in Illinois, at the childhood home of his wife. Like Gilbert White, he has written a natural history of his own American Selborne, but unlike White, he observes Nature with the eye of a trained scientist, bringing into his book the accumulated scientific knowledge of the twentieth century. It is for this reason that the book is an almanac “for Moderns.” Modern science has answered many questions since White’s time and—what is more important—it has provoked more questions than it has answered, questions which could not possibly have occurred to the serene, clerical mind of Gilbert White.

The almanac is filled with descriptions of local plants and animals, with now and then a glance at the stars and planets. Although Peattie has a naturalist’s eye for all living things, his observations on plants, birds, insects, and amphibians seem to outnumber all the others. Each description is a gem of scientific accuracy plus poetic insight. Epithets and similes abound: “that tombstone world,” the moon; the “cold batrachian jelly” which unites us with the amphibians; the “silky, silvery and perpetually talkative needles” of the white pine; the “click of a seed in a weatherbeaten pod,” describing the song of the chickadee; a “turret of inflorescence,” the goldenrod; the song of the grackles, like “the uncertain, ragged voice of a boy”; Equisetum, “like some wizened ancient race of men whose stature is cretin, whose language is cryptic”; ants, “the mankind of insects”; the Compositae, “a city . . . of little florets . . . enclosed within leaflike walls”; the “goblin flight” of bats, “seemingly so drunken.”

The almanac is not devoted to plants and animals exclusively. It also abounds with thumbnail biographies of naturalists, whose birthdays are thoughtfully observed on the calendar of days. Great names like Darwin, Lamarck, Pasteur, Audubon, Linnaeus, Thoreau, von Humboldt and Goethe appear with less-known names like Fabre, Wilson, Huber, Forel, Hudson, Rafinesque, de Vries, Nuttal, Reaumur, Michaux, and even Johnny Appleseed. These biographies add zest and human interest to the almanac.

About the only resemblance between Peattie’s almanac and the conventional drugstore variety is that it is organized according to the signs of the Zodiac. The first entry is made on March 21, the vernal equinox, in the sign of Aries, the Ram; the last, on March 20 of the following year, in Pisces, the Fishes. Spring is covered in the first ninety-eight pages of the book, from March 21 to June 20; summer, in the next 101 pages, from June 21, the summer solstice, in Cancer, the Crab, to September 21, in Virgo, the Virgin; autumn, in the next hundred pages, from September 22, the autumnal equinox, in Libra, the Scales, to December 21, in Sagittarius, the Archer; and winter, in the last ninety-seven pages, from December 22, the winter solstice, in Capricornus, the Goat, to March 20, in Pisces, the Fishes. Thus the year begins and ends with spring, the season of universal regeneration.

Although the nature lover will enjoy Peattie’s descriptions of plants and animals, the historian his thumbnail biographies, and the astrologer his zodiacal arrangement, what makes the book unique is its natural philosophy, based on direct observation of “those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things,” as Wordsworth expressed it. Peattie is one of those rare beings who combine poetry with science, and science with philosophy. As a rule, the scientist is interested in discovering and classifying cold facts which lead to workable hypotheses. He must depend upon accurate observation devoid of all human emotion. As W.I.B. Beveridge comments, in THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION, purists contend that scientists should ask “how” but never “why,” lest they be misled into the teleological view that an intelligent purpose, embodied in a supernatural agency, directs all life. The poet, on the other hand, is generally untrammeled by any passion for direct observations and cold facts. He prefers “why” to “how,” and sees all Nature through a veil of human emotions. Peattie combines both viewpoints.

Even Wordsworth, who observed more Nature than most, ignored petal and sepal, pistil and stamen, to elevate the lowly primrose into a symbol of the universal spirit pervading all living things. But Peattie demonstrates throughout AN ALMANAC FOR MODERNS that even pistils and stamens may arouse a sense of wonder in the observer, and may evoke questions which neither the scientist nor the theologian can satisfactorily answer. The sense of wonder is aroused in Peattie, not by meditations on death and the hereafter, not by the arcane messages of Revelation, but by the mysteries of life here on the planet Earth. Nothing in Nature is insignificant. The slime mold, for example, naked, unwalled protoplasm, mindless, senseless, formless, and yet a living something, may symbolize the mystery of life as well as man himself.

Peattie finds beauty and wonder in all of Nature. Being both scientist and poet, he can find manifestations of beauty which neither can find alone. Beauty is something that impresses our senses as pleasant and exciting. It cannot be measured in the laboratory, nor can it be explained as the gift of some benign supernatural being. Does it serve a useful purpose? Darwin thought so and proposed the idea of sexual selection. The colors and songs of birds, the hues and scents of flowers, attracted mates, insured reproduction, the loveliest colors and scents attracting superior mates and thus perpetuating beauty. The theologian, on the other hand, proclaims that beauty’s only purpose is to glorify God. Characteristically, Peattie agrees with neither. Beauty is “excrescence, superabundance, random ebullience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own high right.” Neither does sex need the justification of purpose. Nature has demonstrated time and again that sex is unnecessary for reproduction; it is neither more, nor less, than a part of life’s enrichment, to be accepted with a sense of its worth and reverence for its beauty.

Life itself, in all its limitless, bewildering variety, must be the religion of the naturalist. How and where did it originate? Three explanations have occurred to the mind of man: (1) special creation by an omnipotent Providence; (2) transportation, in the form of spores or bacteria, from another world; or (3) spontaneous generation in ancient seas or fresh-water ponds. Peattie believes that all three hypotheses evoke more questions than they answer. Philosophy is needed to synthesize all that science has learned about life—not the old, outworn, outdated philosophy of the past, but a new philosophy based upon the observations of science. Evolution is a unifying force in life, but not necessarily Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Perhaps there is something, after all, in Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Vitalist, mechanist, and supernaturalist are unable to explain life in its entirety. Teleologists, who find a deep, underlying purpose in life; new believers in the Great Design, a return to Aristotelian cosmology, all leave Peattie unimpressed because predeterminism does not allow deep investigation. Man is not a special creation, but the product of long evolution through eons of time, part and parcel of life right here on earth.

In his attitude toward religion Peattie describes himself as a kind of pantheist, but not a druid, worshiping oaks, or a Hindu, idolizing animals. He does not like catchwords or credos to repeat by rote, but he does like the historical or evolving view of biology because it does not lead to self-satisfaction, but only to more questions. Science is a ship afloat in a great sea. Those on board know less than Columbus did; they do not know where they sailed from or where they are going. The landlubber on board is terrified by this uncertainty. He can survive only by visualizing a safe harbor ahead. But the tough-minded (Henry James’s word for the stout of heart) glory in the quest. The naturalist loves and accepts all life and stands in awe before its multitudinous diversities and its countless mysteries. A degree of certainty may come only through the slow, careful probings of science. Meanwhile, the naturalist must keep an open mind.