VI 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



Mrs. Harold Close, 



Mrs. Albert Buckhout, 



Conrad Lund, 



Fred Berg, 



Mrs. Herbert S. Ogden, 



Win. Munford Baker, 



Wm. P. Davis, 



Miss Elizabeth W. Goodwin. 



Mrs. Charles M. Slater. 



Mr. Root is also doing good work 

 in popularizing the study of bees 

 throughout the world by means of his 

 book, "Quinby's New Bee-Keeping or 

 The Mysteries of Bee-Keeping Ex- 

 plained." The late Mrs. Root was 

 Quinby's daughter, and Mr. Root was 

 in personal touch with him in all his 

 wonderful apicultural accomplish- 

 ments. In this book is embodied all 

 of Mr. Quinby's ideas, with careful 

 revision and additions by Mr. Root. 

 The work has been so largely rewrit- 

 ten by Mr. Root, that he might in jus- 

 tice claim to be its author, but with 

 rare modesty, and in a spirit of rever- 

 ence to the memory of one who devoted 

 his life to the advancement and the 

 popularizing of bee-culture, he prefer- 

 red to retain the title of "Quinby's New 

 Bee-Keeping." 



A Red Squirrel Attacked by Robins. 



Mr. John Phillips, our well-known 

 shoe dealer, who resides on Forest 

 Street, Stamford, Connecticut, just op- 

 posite the High School, reports that he 

 has seen a large number of robins 

 chasing and even attacking a red squir- 

 rel that had evidently been robbing 

 birds' nests. Mr. Phillips is very 

 much interested in the study of birds, 

 and rightly regards the red squirrel as 

 one of their worst enemies. One nat- 

 uralist says that the red squirrel lias 

 all the snirit of a weasel when the lit- 

 tle rascal has his mind set on young 

 birds in their nests. 



Mr. Weed of The Diamond Ice Com- 

 pany, Stamford, Connecticut, reports 

 that he saw, as he expresses it, "count- 

 less thousands" of winged ants come 

 from the ground and take flight. At 

 the mating time ants are winged. We 

 shall be glad to have telephone reports 

 of any observations of such swarms of 

 winged ants. 



"Flytraps are Old-Fashioned." 



Readers of The Guide to Nature 

 are familiar with the editor's personal 

 interest in the great work carried on 

 by Professor Clifton E. Hodge, of 

 Worcester, Massachusetts, as explain- 

 ed and illustrated in the article on page 

 403 and 404 of the April, 1912, issue. 

 Filled with enthusiasm to see a some- 

 what similar work carried out locally, 

 I called at several stores in the last 

 part of May to obtain a quantity of fly- 

 traps. At two of the stores I was told, 

 'There is no call for fly-traps nowa- 

 days." At one other store the clerk 

 laughed and said, "Why, don't you 

 know that flytraps are old-fashioned 

 nowadays. Nobody uses them." At 

 another store, the largest and finest 

 in which one would expect to find fly- 

 traps, I was told in the first week in 

 June, for the second time, that, "We 

 have just ordered a few ; they will be 

 here probably in a week or two." Here 

 we are in the middle of June and nor a 

 flytrap obtainable. Why? Prooam , 

 not because the stores are at fault, but 

 because the public is indifferent to 

 these filth-carrying insects. 



In several places in Sound Beach, 

 Stamford and Greenwich I have ob- 

 served large piles of horse manure, yet 

 each of these communities relies for 

 much of its prosperity upon summer 

 visitors and boarders. Stamford espec- 

 ially prides itself upon being "busy 

 and beautiful." The streets are clean, 

 it is true, and well cared for, but the 

 beauty should extend to back yards 

 and especially to the stable yards, be- 

 cause there are generated millions of 

 flies whose chief business in life seems 

 to be to travel over the teacups, or the 

 cake, or the nursing bottle, and yet 

 will you believe it, the suoply of fly- 

 traps will arrive in the last oart of 

 June at one store, and at the others tbe 

 clerks will laugh at you, and say that 

 flytrans are old-fashioned? Perhaps 

 it is because the people prefer to nut 

 sticky fly paper in their homes after 

 offerinQ" every attraction for the flies to 

 enter, honing that when the dirty in- 

 sects have done all the injury they 

 possibly can, and have distributed as 

 much filth and as many tvohoid-fever 

 germs as possible, they will finally and 

 accidentally land on the paper, pro- 



