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THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



THE LETTERS ARE MADE OF RATTLESNAKES' RATTLES. 



Two Indian heads were the most 

 tedious of all her work. She had 

 difficulty in finishing the mouths and 

 noses, but after cutting and splitting 

 the rattles and working for several 

 days she finally succeeded in shaping 

 them properly. She used glass eyes, 

 and the feathers on the head of the 

 squaw were made of a rattlesnake's 

 skin. The bow and arrow and the 

 border are made of rattles. 



Mrs. Friedrich's husband has at our 

 request kindly forwarded to The 

 Guide; to Nature a large number of 

 photographs of her work. From these 

 we have selected the accompanying il- 

 lustrations. They give an idea of the 

 design, but none of the time used, and 

 none of the skilled labor required. Our 

 selections show the possibilities of ar- 

 tistic expression in this novel embroid- 

 ery. "The San Antonio Express" 

 says : 



"Mrs. Friedrich is very fond of out- 

 door life and one of her favorite pas- 

 times is hunting. For this purpose she 

 had made a hunting coat of rattlesnake 

 skins. The collar is the only part of 

 the coat she could not make up her 

 mind to have of the snake skin, so she 

 has made this of cloth, as she says it 

 gave her a creepy feeling to have the 

 snake encircle her throat. She has now 

 under way a number of rattle designs 

 and expects to complete many this 

 winter. She spends many evenings and 

 days when the weather is disagreeable 

 planning and outlining her designs. 

 She expects to make a replica of the 



Alamo in rattles which she says she 

 hopes to finish by spring." 



A Degenerated Rose Blossom. 



Every horticulturist knows that the 

 floral organs of any plant, such as the 

 sepals of the calyx, the usually bright- 

 colored petals, stamens and pistils, are 

 all only so many modified leaves, and 

 that under certain conditions leaf- 

 buds can be turned into flower buds, 

 at an early stage of their existence. 

 Thus, by crippling the plants, garden- 

 ers force azaleas or camelias to pro- 

 duce flowers from the buds which the 

 plants had intended to produce only 

 leaves. The rose is a particularly good 

 plant in which to trace this develop- 

 ment, for it from time to time throws 

 out flowers that fail to attain their 

 normal development, and are nothing 

 more than modified leaves. A bush on 

 my estate has been behaving most ir- 

 regularly for two years, always send- 

 ing out freak flowers under certain 

 weather conditions. Sometimes the 

 ro^es are only half developed, just as 

 if they were cut in two. Last spring 

 it produced several twin flowers, later 

 on some flowers that were lopsided, 

 and on August 3 I noted the branch 

 here photographed, in which the sepals 

 have reverted to their original leafly 

 character, clearly showing the pinnate 

 margin characteristic of the species. 

 The petals, too, although partly 

 colored, were morphologically more 

 like leaves than like the ordinary petals 



