THE FUN OF SEFTNG THINGS 



321 



would bur}' the food in the gravel on 

 the bottoni of the cage until night. 



They ate shelled nvits, sunflower 

 seeds, apples, peaches and apple seeds. 

 In the spring they liked to eat the 

 maple blossoms and the new leaf buds 

 as they began to burst. 



One morning Major tried to go into 

 the wheel while Colonel was running it 

 and received a blow in his nose that 

 killed him. 



We had an old cat, Ted, that liked 

 to have Colonel run over him. If Ted 

 were lying on the couch when we had 

 Colonel out, he would beg us to put 

 Colonel on him. and would then roll 

 over on his side and lift his foot like 

 an old mother cat with kittens, and 

 Colonel ran over him and pulled fur 

 for his nest. Ted did not exactly like 

 to lose his fur, as the depilation was 

 often painful, but he would only mew 

 and turn over. 



We had Colonel for five years, when 

 he met with an accident. 



that tlie grafting was the work of the 

 former Indian Inhabitants. — 11. W. S. 

 in "Science Conspectus." 



Twin Trees. 



An unusual example of grafting is 

 seen in two elms, Ulmus americanus, 

 growing near Cortland in central New 

 York. They stand upon a bluff over- 

 looking Brown's gorge and are far from 

 any dwelling. The trees are twenty 

 feet apart at their base and unite at a 

 height of twenty-five feet above the 

 ground. That the union of the trees 

 is physiologic as well as superficial is 

 shown by the enlargement of the com- 

 bined trunk immediately beyond the 

 point where they met. The smaller 

 tree is fourteen inches in diameter at 

 its base, the larger eighteen inches, 

 both normally decrease in diameter to 

 the point of itnion, immediately above 

 which the trunk enlarges to a diameter 

 considerably greater than immediately 

 beneath, from which it again tapers 

 normally. This tree reaches a height 

 of about seventy feet. The roots of 

 the smaller tree are partially uprooted 

 on the side farthest from the larger one 

 and the uppermost of these roots have 

 been rotted away leaving mere stimips. 

 This early uprooting, and hence prob- 

 ably also the grafting, was evidently 

 the work of a wind storm, though it is 

 a common belief of the countryside 



AN UNUSUAL EXAMPLE OF GRAFTING. 



Grading from Bad Boy's Point of View. 



On the eighteenth of January I lec- 

 tured at Public School Forty-six, the 

 Edgar Allan Poe School, of New York 

 City. While I was talking with the 

 superintendent of that center, a judge 

 of a local court came in, or perhaps he 

 was a lawyer, who said that a bad boy 

 had been taken into court that day, and 

 his mother had complained that she 

 could not induce him to attend school, 

 yet the boy tried to prove to her that 

 his markings were correct. He was rat- 

 ed, it appeared, at D, and he explained 

 to his mother that the significance of 

 the ratings. A, B, C, D, etc., is: "A, 

 awful; B, bad; C, corking; D, dandy. "^ 



A man at a horticultural meeting quot- 

 ed the adag^e "An apple a day keeps the 

 doctor away." A physician arose and 

 said "I question somewhat the statement 

 just made, but if the gentleman will make 

 it two apples I will withdraw my objec- 

 tion. Apples are healthy food." 



Less, it is said, is now known about 

 the natural history of the Malayan Is- 

 lands than of any equal area anywhere 

 else on the globe. 



