138 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



Distinguishing Male from Female 

 Canary. 



(in reply To ax inquiry.) 

 The male can usually be distinguished 

 from the female canary by the fact that 

 it only sings. The young males usually 

 begin to sing even in the November or 

 December of the year in which they have 

 been hatched. If the female sings it 

 usually does so far less perfectly than 

 the male. The only absolute criterion is 

 that the female lays eggs and the male 

 does not. — Charles B. Davenport. The 

 Biological Laboratory, Cold Spring Har- 

 bor, New York. 



The Protozoa, remarks a recent 

 writer should not be called "unicel- 

 lular" but "non-cellular." 



The Fascination of Fasciation. 



No abnormal plant growth seems to 

 attract more general attention than fasci- 

 ation. For most people fasciation has 

 a decided fascination. Fasciation occurs 

 frequently in asparagus, hyacinth, gold- 

 enrod and other strong plants. The 

 growths are hereditary in the cockscomb 

 or Celosia. The causes of this growth 

 are not known, but something goes 

 wrong, there is somewhere a kink that 

 leaves a kink in the whole stem. Profes- 



sor \\'illiam F. Ganong writes as fol- 

 lows : 



"Fasciations can also be produced, by 

 the way, by external injury, such as the 

 bites of some insects, though wdien pro- 

 duced in such manner they are not hered- 

 itary. They are of all degrees of com- 

 plexity, down to a simple forking of the 

 growing point, which may sometimes re- 

 sult in the formation of double fruits, 

 though these are more often the result 

 of the fusion of two buds in a sort of 

 natural grafting. It is obvious that such 

 fasciations come very close to the condi- 

 tion which originates the Birdseye Maple 

 or rather that the latter in reality is a 

 kind of fasciation. It is perfectly im- 

 possible to draw any sharp line between 

 these different forms of clustered abnor- 

 mal growths, or between external and 

 internal causes of their formation." 



Of all the examples that have come to 

 ArcAdiA an asparagus stem presented 

 recently by Mrs. Frederick Gotthold of 

 Cos Cob, Connecticut, a Member of The 

 Agassiz Association and close student of 

 nature, is surely entitled to first pre- 

 mium. The stem is three inches in width 

 or a tririe more in some places, and the 

 fascinated growth itself stands the length 

 of a yard stick and yet if the stem were 

 straightened out it would be fully five 

 feet long. 



ASPARAGUS FASCIATION SENT ]5Y MR. H. E. BEATS, FI.EMINGTON, NEW JERSEY. 



