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THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



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A Good Study of a Robin Feeding 

 Young. 



Portland, Maine. 

 To the Editor : 



The accompanying photograph of a 

 robin feeding her young is one pic- 

 ture from a series which I obtained 

 last June to illustrate the bird's home 

 life. 



The nest, which was one of the lar- 

 gest robin's nests that I have ever 

 seen, was placed on the first limb of a 

 small elm tree, directly against the 

 trunk and eight feet from the ground. 



Placing my camera on the top of an 

 eight-foot stepladder, I carefully fo- 



\ MOTHER ROBIN AND YOUNG. 



cused on the nest, attached a fifty- 

 foot tubing to the shutter and, con- 

 cealing myself among some alder 

 bushes, waited. The bird soon re- 

 turned with a worm, and while she 

 was engaged in feeding the young I 

 secured the study here given. 



Edwin L. Jack. 



Very Long, Slender Worms. 



Sound Beach. Connecticut.. 

 To the Editor : 



As my little friend and I were playing by 

 the brook, we saw what looked like a slender- 

 blade of yellow grass, but upon looking more 

 closely we saw a worm swimming in the wa- 

 ter. 



It was so interesting that we got a glass and 

 put a few in it and to our surprise they 

 knotted themselves all up. We brought some- 

 down to you, and it was a hard piece of work: 

 getting them unknotted. 



Sincerely, 



Happy Potter. 



Horsehairs do not "turn into"" 

 worms. In fact no form of life comes 

 from a dead thing. A horsehair sep- 

 arated from a horse is a dead thing. 

 No form of life "turns into" something 

 else, but each form of life takes its own 

 course, though often through varied 

 forms and many different situations. 

 In this respect even human life is no 

 exception. 



Separately in water these worms 

 look, as you say, like very slender fila- 

 ments of grass, but together they give 

 the suggestion of a mass of horse- 

 hairs. 



Professor H. W. Conn, of Wesleyan 

 University, Middletown, Connecticut, 

 writes : 



"They come from eggs of other 

 worms of like type with themselves. 

 They pass their early stage in the 

 body of some insect, and there grow 

 to a large size, indeed, reaching a prac- 

 tical adult size, stored away inside the- 

 insect's body. Sometimes they are so- 

 large as to completely fill up the abdo- 

 men of the animal. Then they take 

 occasion, when the insect in question 

 is near a body of water, to emerge from 

 the abdomen of the insect and assume 

 a free life. Sometimes they accumu- 

 late in enormous quantities, hundreds 

 of thousands of them being found to- 

 gether in certain ponds and pools 

 under some circumstances. They then 



