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NOTE AND COMMENT 



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Wanted. — Short notes of interest to the general botanist 

 are always in demand for this department. Our readers are 

 invited to make this the place of publication for their shorter 

 botanical items. The magazine is issued as soon as possible 

 after the 15th of February, May, August and November. 



Queer Mulberry Sprout. — Sometime ago I sawed off 

 a mulberry tree about 4 or 5 inches above the ground and to 

 my surprise I noticed, a few weeks afterwards, a sprout com- 

 ing up from the center of the stump. It grew to be four or 

 five feet high and was broken off. The tree was about six 

 inches in diameter. — F. Hiiber Jr., Jennings, La. 



Grass as a Bleaching Agent. — It is often astonishing 

 to discover how very little we really know about some of the 

 commonest of time-worn processes. Take bleaching, for in- 

 stance. It will be interesting to compare the answers you get 

 from the first half dozen chemists you ask why the housewife 

 in bleaching cloth insist upon spreading it upon the grass. It is 

 well known that cloth hung out on a line will not bleach well 

 but when placed on the grass there is no difficulty. The 

 reasons given for this are almost as numerous as the persons 

 asked. The unthinking are apt to say that on the grass the 

 cloth gets the more direct rays of the sun, forgetful of the fact 

 that it might be spread on a slanting roof and receive the per- 

 pendicular rays of the sun without much effect. The scientist 

 inclines to the view that since nascent or atomic oxygen is a 

 bleaching agent, the oxygen given off by the grass in sunlight 

 is the cause of the bleaching. Others, aware that atomic 

 oxygen almost at once becomes molecular oxygen would go 

 a step farther and attribute the bleaching to ozone, formed 



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