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Jul 3, 2010
Such fun were the children having discovering the wonders of Nature, that trees and birds, in particular, were correlated with almost every subject in schools. (That was before the days of "activities", then "correlations" was the big word in pedagogy.) And so we had trees and birds in geography, in spelling, in drawing, in language.
Jul 3, 2010
Natal's quivering blue horizon lay ahead, to the south. The wandering hippo of Zululand who had left his homeland so inexplicably, pounded on, and soon reached the vicinity of the big town of Stanger.
Jul 3, 2010
Richards Bay, in the heart of sunny Zululand, is not known to fame. Yet somewhere on its reedy shore there is a spot that merits a place in the mystic annals of the wild, for there began the strangest journey ever made by a denizen of the jungle lands of Africa.
Jul 3, 2010
The incident of the speeding duck hawk first appeared in The Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club, and was recounted by Ralph Lawson from information supplied by the aviator in question, in whom Lawson had full confidence.
Jul 3, 2010
One member of a covey of partridges has been observed flying at least 15 percent faster than the others when all birds were fleeing from a falcon. The distance flown before the testing distance was too short to enable maximum speed to be reached.
Jul 3, 2010
In 1900 an American pigeon flew 100 miles at the rate of 2,511.87 yards nearly a mile and a half per minute. Generally speaking, a bird has three types of flying speed normal, accelerated or maximum (generally when chasing or being chased) and, in many cases, migration.
Jul 3, 2010
In just a little time, the schoolchildren had become hooked on Nature. They had become studious, and curious. Each child tried to find out something about his own bird's feeding habits, and whether they were not, as most birds were, an asset to the farmer and the orchard grower.
Jul 3, 2010
The mountain chickadee appeared in great haste. But that is not surprising, as he was uncertain how long the bountiful cone crop would last before the gala feasting of his friends.
Jul 3, 2010
Indian Summer's lazy, blue smoke-haze settled low upon the purple hills. Dream-like peace and lassitude pervaded the magic September air. Birches were flaunting only a trim of gold, and osiers showed only an elusive tinge of magenta. Yet the coming heavy harvest among the conifers had already begun on pine flats shelving back from the curving, incredible blue of the swift Kootenai.
Jul 3, 2010
The ears of the razorback hog living in the Tellico Area of east Tennessee are large and prominent, and the tips usually flop over. The ears of the European wild boar are small, pointed and stand up straight.
Jul 3, 2010
Tellico Game Management Area in the rugged mountains of east Tennessee embraces eighty-seven thousand acres of wild-forested area, much of it just as the Indians left it. Prowling this primitive range is a herd of about seven hundred of the wildest wild animals to he found in North America today.
Jul 3, 2010
Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who spent his life pollinating peas in his cloister garden, and proving that nothing, after all, is so unlike as two peas in a pod. To a great extent he revealed the secret of heredity, showing that strains repeat themselves in a regular mathematical pattern, and, by breeding, can often be perpetuated, increased, eliminated, or blended.
Jul 3, 2010
A beehive is almost a necessity in apple and orange orchards. The bee is paid for its labors by the large amounts of pollen she carries away to her larval or baby bees in the hive.
Jul 3, 2010
Luckily not all or even most wind-borne pollens are venomous. Almost no one, for instance, is ever hurt by pine pollen, although it is extremely abundant in spring, and, provided with big air sacs, it has astounding buoyancyso great indeed that pine pollen has been found on the snows of Greenland, although the nearest pine forests are four hundred miles away across open sea in Labrador.
Jul 3, 2010
All around us in the air drifts a miraculous and potent dust of life. Invisible to the naked eye, a grain of pollen yet carries a spark of fecundating lifemale life. Some pollens ride the wind to seek their fortune, and you may see them rise in a golden cloud when you tease the curls of a slim alder, or tap the ripe tassels of a pine. Others enslave the dusty bee as she threads her way from flower to flower.
Jul 3, 2010
In many symbols used in early Christianity, the lily has been adopted in many ways, as seen for example, with the Easter lily. Since the lily blooms during the Easter season, it is only natural that it should be chosen as the symbol of our Lord's resurrection.
Jul 3, 2010
Since Nature is one of God's creatures, it was only logical that the symbols used by the early Christians as signs of their religion should have been so highly characterized with simple, emblematic fauna and flora.
Jul 3, 2010
The toxic principle in the group of poison ivy plants is the same in all of them. It is officially known as a "nonvolatile phenolic substance called urishiol," and it is found in all parts of the plant from seeds to roots. The most danger, however, is from the green leaves, although the smoke can be very poisonous to eyes and throat.
Jul 3, 2010
The safest way to kill crabgrass is to shade it, either by cutting the grass high, or by covering it with tarred paper, canvas, old rugs, and such. This also browns out the good lawn grasses, but they will soon recover, while the crabgrass, being an annual, can only come back from seed.
Jul 3, 2010
Weedkillers dont just kill weeds. Some lawns can be harmed too. The weedicide is injurious to Triple-A Bent grass and to Red Top, but Kentucky blue and other grasses, such as are found in the usual lawn grass mixture, are not harmed.
Jul 3, 2010
Weeds have never been noted for their host of friends; now they have lethal enemies. These are chemical killers that promise a turn in the tide of battle against plant pests of lawn and golf course, pasture and farm.
Jul 3, 2010
Several Mediterranean rock roses will form low, rounded bushes, all alive in May, June and July with flowers resembling large, single, white roses. I will duplicate rose-colored an pure white slopes of Asiatic Dolichos lignosus, large, pea-flowered and voluptuous looking; and such fragrant banks of multicolored sweet peas as one comes across along May and June roadsides in Santa Cruz County.
Jul 3, 2010
There have been many different species of European centaureas roving about in many States of America over recent times; Centaurea maculosa has gone wild on Martha's Vineyard. Several centaureas now roam the moister parts of Montana, coming into bloom just as the clematis passes from the star-flowered to the fluffy-seeded stage.
Jul 3, 2010
A man once wrote of the difficulties he experienced in observing animals out-of-doors, because of frequent interruptions by fellow human beings who could not imagine what he was doing. Some such feeling, although unexpressed, led us to rise at dawn and walk along the beach on the ocean side of Cape May. One of us carried a camera, tripod and accessories; the other an assortment of jars into which prized specimens could be placed as found.
Jul 3, 2010
Consistent adverse propaganda, politically-brewed control methods, conservational hocus-pocus, the raucous accusations of the uninformed, can relegate the Red Fox to the same dusty museum niche now occupied by the heath hen and the passenger pigeon. The trouble is, most people know so little about the fox and his place in the overall wildlife picture that they would not recognize one if they met him in a phone booth.
Jul 3, 2010
Civilization has brought foxes a sort of epicurean unemployment insurance. Wounded game, carcasses left by poachers, carelessly-managed poultry farms, garbage dumps, and untidy picnic grounds provide an endless free-lunch counter; and racing highway traffic specializes in pre-masticated lunches. The down-bill furrow is another boon that keeps the fox from walking on his heels.
Jul 3, 2010
Once upon a time North America was a fairly nice continent furnished with trees, animals, and Indians. Then the White Man came, cut down the trees, displaced the Indians, and harvested the animals. Depending on the point of view, this has been termed culture, civilization, survival of the fittest, greed, and burning the goose that laid the golden egg at both ends.
Jul 3, 2010
Neptune, as the planet was named, is the twin of Uranus, as Venus is of the earth. Its diameter is about 31,000 miles, its mass 17 times that of the earth and its surface gravity 1.1 times that of the earth. The planet's disk is circular, and sea-green like that of Uranus. The two worlds are probably very much alike in their physical constitution.
Jul 3, 2010
The density of Uranus is only about one and one-fourth times that of water, so that a body at its surface, weighing 100 pounds on the earth, would weigh only 90 pounds on Uranus. Although Uranus is the brightest of the three discovered planets, it cannot be found unless one knows exactly where to look for it, as it appears without the aid of a telescope only as a star-like object of fifth or sixth magnitude and near the limit of visibility to unaided vision.
Jul 2, 2010
Weeds are now so thick in the State of California that many spots that were formerly wild flower gardens have now become nothing but weed patches. A great many of these mischief makers came to this country as stowaways, and began life in the new country where ballast from sailing ships had been dumped; some came in baled goods; some in packing material.
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