70 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



Another peculiar circumstance of 

 this season is that the robins have 

 stayed with us so long. Easterners 

 would doubtless wonder to hear me 

 say that up to three years ago I had 

 never heard a robin sing, but our wes- 

 tern robin is not the domestic fellow 

 that his eastern cousin is. His breed- 

 ing place is high up in the mountains, 

 and he makes only the most fleeting 

 visits to the valleys in winter, spend- 

 ing most of the time in the foothills. 

 This year he has passed weeks on the 

 ranches of the Santa Clara valley, feed- 

 ing in the dooryards and even singing 

 in the pepper trees. Three years ago 

 he sang in the foothills, but this year 

 he has gone a step farther and treated 

 our valley friends to his music. It may 

 be that he knew there was to be a late 

 storm and so waited till the snow, 

 which covered the surrounding moun- 

 tains on April nth, should have come 

 and eone before leaving for his sum- 

 mer home. 



Prolonged and Regular Seed Dispersal. 



The Home of The Agassiz Associa- 

 tion is in Arcadia, in the northern part 

 of which is a marsh known as Nym- 

 phalia. Within Xymphalia are luxur- 



iant patches of the two species of cat- 

 tail known in this country, Typha lati- 

 folia and T. Angustifolia, or the broad 

 leaved and the slender leaved typha. 

 The seed bearing heads of these plants 

 begin to ripen in early autumn and on 

 every breezy day of the season the 

 tiny seeds, each with its tuft of club- 

 shaped bristles, go sailing by the AA 

 office with remarkable regularity. We 

 have recently had two severe storms, 

 during which the w r ind blew at the rate 

 of some eighty or ninety miles an hour. 

 Some people maintain that it moved 

 even faster than that. But its move- 

 ment was sufficiently active to make 

 us doubt the stability of the buildings, 

 and fear that they would be lifted from 

 their foundations. During these tem- 

 pestuous blasts, the typha seeds went 

 sailing by like the flakes in a driving 

 storm of snow, and the puzzling ques- 

 tion is. Why in such gales do not the 

 fruiting heads lose every little seed? 

 Thev do not, for the strong winds have 

 died away, and in the succeeding, gen- 

 tle, steadily blowing breezes, the seeds 

 sail by the windows in numbers nearly 

 as great as in those terrific blasts. 

 What a marvel is here manifested! 

 Nature surely has some regulation eov- 



LAST YEAR'S CAT-TAILS IN NYMPHALIA. 



