HASTY CONCLUSIONS. 153 



are fully as inviting, and they are doubly 

 profitable when Nature herself tells the story. 

 One needs practice, along with scientific 

 training, to interpret aright all the things 

 that he may see. A farmer of my acquaint- 

 ance noticed that grasshoppers appear shortly 

 after the stems of golden-rods become af- 

 fected with peculiar frothy swellings, and 

 he at once asserted that the grasshoppers 

 bred in the golden-rods ! If he had carefully 

 cut open these swellings he could have found 

 proof enough against his assertion. Another 

 friend noticed that the long-stalked and 

 therefore conspicuous flowers of his pump- 

 kins had all died : he immediately proclaimed 

 to his neighbors that his pumpkins were 

 blasted, and that the entire crop in that vi- 

 cinity would be small ! Had he known that 

 these flowers were staminate, and that when 

 they had shed their pollen their mission was 

 ended, he should have had greater wonder if 

 they had not died. Still another friend dis- 

 covered a minute insect boring into a pear- 

 tree, and as that tree happened to be blighted 

 he announced that a certain insect was the 

 cause of pear blight; nevertheless, a score 

 of other trees which had the blio-ht would 

 probably show no sign of the ominous in- 



