NATURE-STUDY AND SCIENCE NOTES 273 



Gray Lady and the Birds. By Mable Osgood Wright. New York: 

 Macmillan. 1907. Pp. 435, 36 full-page illustrations, 12 in color. $175. 



This new book of bird stories strikes the reader as likely to be interesting 

 to children; but, of course, only time can determine what the children 

 will think of it. In brief this is the story: "Gray Lady," happening into> 

 a hillside country school one day in the early fall, makes an alliance with 

 a band of youngsters, to whom each week thereafter she tells a story of the 

 bird year, following their life in migration and their return in the spring. 



NATURE-STUDY AND SCIENCE NOTES 



[Editor's Xote. This department will be conducted by Chester A. 

 Mathewson, of the High School of Commerce, New York City. Notes 

 and suggestions maybe sent to him in care ot the editor of The Review.] 



Plants that Seldom Fruit. The knowledge that the common white 

 potato seldom produces fruit, is so widely diffused that the barrenness of 

 the plant causes no comment. Indeed, since the tubers in a measure 

 function as seeds we have partially transferred the name to them. It is 

 usual to speak of potatoes intended for planting as "seed potatoes." Real 

 potato seeds may be found, however, if one searches the potato-fields long 

 enough, and from such seeds new strains of potatoes may be raised. The 

 potato is not alone in its strange ways. Many other plants, of which the 

 ground-nut and lily-of-the- valley are good examples, rarely produce seeds. 

 It is noticeable that all such plants have other excellent and efficient means 

 of propagation and it may be assumed that finding one method requiring 

 less effort than the other they have gradually adopted it. When plants 

 have more than one means of multiplying, as for instance, seeds above 

 ground and tubers or runners below ground, they usually subserve two 

 distinct uses : those below ground serving to multiply the plant in its 

 own locality, and those above giving it a chance of gaining a foot-hold in 

 distant lands. {American Botanist.] 



Animals Frozen to Ice. Ernest Thompson-Seton thus comments in the 

 Ottawa Naturalist concerning a ruffled grouse, apparently in sound health, 

 found with its tail feathers frozen into the ice crust, under a bush. "In the 

 winter they commonly sleep on the ground, entering snowdrifts only in the 

 coldest weather. It is absolutely certain that its tail could not have been 

 frozen down, had there not been at the place some liquid. This may have 

 been produced by a certain condition of the bird's bowels, or the sun's heat 

 in such a sheltered spot may have melted the snow, so that it was wet when 

 the bird went in, or finally, the bird's tail may have been wet when it went 

 to bed, and a frosty night completed the dilemma. 



"This you will remember is an accident of a class which happen every year 

 to the foxes in Alaska. They sit down on the wet ice, thereby casting a 

 shadow over it. In fifteen or twenty minutes the wet in the shadow has 

 congealed, and the fox would be made prisoner but that he tears himself 

 violently away, leaving much of his fur in the ice. The consequence is 

 that in the spring of the year all the blue foxes have their buttocks more or 

 less denuded of fur." 



