Part 22

The narrow spear-pointed leaves of the walking fern cling to the moss-covered rocks, and in graceful curves reach out until their tips touch the ground and take root again. These fronds in turn take up the march, and so they creep about the rocks wherever there is soil sufficient for them to get a foothold. They are also reproduced by spores in the regular fern-like way.

Notes

August Twenty-second

The fresh-water clam furnishes us with a good quality of pearl, and from the shells pearl buttons are made. Along the muddy bottom of our inland lakes and rivers, you may see the clumsy writing in the mud where they have crawled. During a clam's infancy it lives a parasitic life, embedded in the body of a fish. It then emerges and drops to the bottom of the lake or river, where it spends the remainder of its life.

August Twenty-third

"Those horrid tomato worms are eating all my plants. They are positively the most repulsive creatures I know." A few weeks later a beautiful sphinx moth flutters into your chamber window. Do you recognize it as your hated enemy? It is he,--a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

August Twenty-fourth

The cardinal flower, or red lobelia, lives in the marshes and along the streams, where it often trespasses so near the brink, that a slight freshet floods its roots. "We have no flower which can compare with this in vivid coloring." (Dana.) In some localities it has been in bloom for weeks.

Notes

August Twenty-fifth

Some evening after a thunder-shower, take a light and stroll along the garden path, or by the flower bed. Go slowly and step with caution, and you will see large numbers of angle worms--"night walkers" the fishermen call them--stretched out on the ground. Half of their length is hidden in the hole, ready at the slightest jar or noise to pull the remainder underground.

August Twenty-sixth

Woodchucks, or "groundhogs," are very busy at this season of the year. They work overtime even on moonlight nights, for they have a contract with Nature to blanket themselves with layers of fat half an inch thick. If the contract is not filled before winter sets in, death may be the forfeit. Eat, eat, eat; they spend every minute digging up the grass roots, and eating off the clover heads, and they often make excursions into the farmer's garden.

August Twenty-seventh

Butter-and-eggs prefers the unsheltered lands where the sun can beat upon it. It came from Europe and "like nearly all common weeds this plant has been utilized in various ways by the country people. It yields what was considered at one time a valuable skin lotion, while its juices mingled with milk constitutes a fly poison." (Dana.)

Notes

August Twenty-eighth

Be sure to kill any bee-like insect that you see hovering about your horse's fore legs, for it is a bot-fly. After the eggs have been attached to the horse's leg-hairs, they hatch and the horse licks the larvæ and swallows them. Attaching themselves to the walls of the stomach, they live there for some time, but finally pass through the horse and fall to the ground, where they transform into bot-flies.

August Twenty-ninth

The solitary sandpiper is one of the early migrating birds that is now returning from its northern nesting grounds. It is always found near water, singly or in twos and threes. It has a habit of holding its wings over its head as it alights, showing conspicuously their dark tips. Like all sandpipers, it is not supposed to perch in trees or bushes; nevertheless it does so frequently when a person approaches its young or its nest.

August Thirtieth

Have you ever watched a spider making its web? The sticky fluid, which becomes a silk strand upon coming in contact with the air, pours from several holes, or spinnerets, at the end of the body. The threads are guided by the feet, and when the spinnerets are held apart, several strands are spun, but by contracting them one heavy rope is made.

Notes

August Thirty-first

Most crickets die at the approach of winter, but some hibernate. It is only the males that sing, and they do it by rubbing together the inner edges of the outside wings. They live on the moisture from the roots of various kinds of vegetables, and are not above eating insects.

Notes

=September=

September First