84 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



previous and undesigned iinpreg:nation, the 

 autliers in tlie female parent, if they are pro- 

 duced in the same tiower with the pistils, must 

 be removed by a shaqi-pointed pair of scissors, 

 and the tiower inclosed in a gauze bag to ex- 

 clude insects, until the desired pollen is ripe. 

 Another etiectual mode of avoiding unde- 

 siiined impregnation, is bringing the femaie 

 parent into flower a little earlier than its con- 

 geners, and removing the anthers as above 

 described: the stigma will remain a long time 

 vigorous if unimpregnated. When double 

 flowers are desired, if a double flower should 

 chance to have a fertile anther or two, these 

 should be employed for fertilization, as their 

 offspring are almost sure to be very double. 



Those who make it their business to grow 

 new sorts and varieties for sale, may not thank 

 me for showing how the thing is done, but our 

 farmers' daugliters can experiment, and try 

 their canny hand as well; all know of it, but, 

 perhaps, many not exactly how it is done. 

 These may be benefited, while no one will suf- 

 fer by the knowledge.— Jacob Stauffer, 

 Lancaster, Pa. 



MUSHROOMS— MORELS--TRUFFLES. 



(^Aqaricns^ Morcheila et Tuber.) 

 In Vick's Fhral Guide for 1875, p. 170, 

 under the head of "Mushrooms," is the result 

 of a corresi)ondence on this subject, assisted 

 by a very fine illu.stiation, but which, never- 

 theless, seems to us very indeflnite and un- 

 satisfactory, notwithstanding an appeal was 

 made to one "who dispenses the great knowl- 

 edge he possesses with a generous hand." 



It is true, it is not always safe to venture a 

 specific name for a thing we have never seen, 

 even when accompanied 

 by a description and a 

 drawing, but we are some- 

 what sm'prised to learn 

 that Mr. ViCK should 

 "know of no variety of the 

 Mushroom resembling the 

 dgure," in this country^ 

 (if the figure is correct,) 

 and that Mr. Faklow con- 

 fesses that it "does not 

 look like any fungus he ever saw." 



We have lieen a citizen of Lancaster city for 

 more than twenty-six years, and during all 

 that time scarcely a summer has passed that 

 a species of Mushroom — under the " Pennsyl- 

 vania Dutch " name of " Mauricles " — has not 

 been sold in this market, and the illustration 

 above given is a tolerably good representation 

 of it. 



We have not purchased, nor, indeed, seen 

 any of them for half a dozen years, simply 

 because, in the first place, we never get into 

 market early enough to secure them; and, in 

 the second place, they are too expensive ; but, 

 so far as we can recall them, they were not as 

 wide at the base of the cone, and had a longer 

 stem than Vick's illustration, something be- 

 tween the Morchclla escidentu and the hybrida 

 of England and the continent of Europe — 

 perhaps a ditterent species only. Doubtless 

 the German name, " Mauricle," and the Eng- 

 lish name, "Morel," are corruptions of the 

 technical name Morchclla. We must not forget 

 to say, however, that our Morels or Mauricles 

 cannot be said to be yellow, but we have seen 

 analagous species, with a very long stem, that 

 were a very bright yellow in color, which, 

 without knowing positively anything about 

 their qualities, we always regarded as poison- 

 ous. Our edible species are of a dull clay 

 cohir, and get darker by cooking, but we have 

 never seen them .scientifically figured and de- 

 scribed. They may be the Lycapodon gemma- 

 tum referred to by Mr. Fallow, but in the 

 absence of a figure or deseription of that spe- 

 cies we are unalile to detei-mine. Under any 

 cu'curastanccs they are not so veiy far from 

 the illustration in Vick that we would feel 

 justified in saying we had never seen any 

 fungus like it. If we arc not very much mis- 

 taken our Mauricles are brought up to market 

 from the southern portion of Lancaster county, 

 §,nd we know that some of our citizens have 



collected them in the Conestoga valley south 

 of the city; and we also know that they are 

 finely flavored and of a very delicious and 

 edible character. 



Of course, in favorable seasons, we have the 

 common edible Mushroom (^(?arJO«,s,) in Lan- 

 caster county as jilentitully as elsewhere, but 

 no attemjit has yet been made, to our knowl- 

 edge, at their artificial culture. 



As to Truffles, [Tuber,) the assertion that 

 we have them in the United States, perhaps, 

 needs a more explicit confirmation before it 

 will be credited ; but we have a faint, perhaps 

 a very faint, recollection of having dug up, or 

 seen "dug up, something of the kind, under an 

 "acorn tree," about fifty years ago, that had 

 the intensified fragrance of a Mushroom. But 

 having had no subsequent experience, nor hav- 

 ing seen anything in print corroborating the 

 notion that it wasa truffle; and, moreover, the 

 trees having been removed, and the land under 

 cultivation these many years, we had kind of 

 concluded that it must have been the bulbous 

 root of a large mushroom — for it was larger 

 than a walnut— and we probably would not 

 have referred to the subject had not Mr. Vick's 

 aged Indiana correspondent alluded to the 

 Tw'kahoes or Truffles of North Carolina. 



If this subject illustrates any onethingmore 

 forcibly than another, it is the unsafety of re- 

 lying entirely upon the local, common names 

 of things. If the subscribers to the Farsier 

 refer to Vol. I, 1869, pp. 4, 71, 126 and 170, 

 they will find much to interest them on Edible 

 Fungi, and the modes of propagating and cul- 

 tivating them, shoidd they feel inclined to 

 embark therein. 



THE FACTS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



NO. 2. 



" And robins 'neath the barn caves low, 

 Prepare their summer home." 



When a local poetess wrote the foregoing 

 couplet, it elicited the strictures of a number of 

 critics, wlio very significantly asked — "What 

 kindofRowns?" and very confidently assert- 

 ed that although swallows and phoebe birds 

 might Iniild their nests under eaves, yet "robins 

 never do. " Such critics must certainly have 

 been mere "closet naturalists ;" and because 

 their liooks may have have recorded no in- 

 stance where robins have departed from their 

 normal habit in this respect, yet the instances 

 are very numerous in the domestic history of 

 these birds where they hai-e made such a de- 

 parture in a very marked degree, and have 

 built their nests not only in boxes, deserted 

 buildings, and elsewhere, but absolutely under 

 the caves of buildings. 



As a rule, robins usually build their nests in 

 trees, selecting a fork where two or three 

 branches diverge, from ten to twenty feet from 

 the ground, as may be most convenient. The 

 foundation is usually made of sticks and mud, 

 and the inside finished with softer and more 

 plialile material. They also seem to prefer 

 apple trees, either from their proximity to 

 human habitations, or because they aflbrd a 

 more convenient support. 



Doubtless there were robins in the county 

 of Lancaster long before there were any apple 

 trees in it, and of course all robins then were in 

 the habit of building their nests in other trees 

 than ai)ple, just as some of them still do. 

 The planting of apple trees was the beginning 

 of civilization and domestic improvement, 

 and the robin accommodated its habits to the 

 new state of things, just as the wren, the blue- 

 bird, the barn-owl, the jiigeon, and some other 

 birds have ; and there seems to be no definite 

 limit as to what some birds icotdd do or would not 

 do under certain circumstances. We recall 

 an instance of many years ago, where a pair 

 of robins "prepared their summer home" for 

 many successive seasons in a box-cornice, 

 "under the eaves," that had an opening in 

 the end, notwithstanding there was a cherry 

 tree standing near it, the upper limbs of which 

 were much higher than the cornice. ^Tow, 

 the birds may have reasoned thus: "These 

 cherries will ripen and be gathered before our 

 brood is fledged and able to take care of itself ; 



therefore we will not subject it to the inva- 

 sions of wanton boyhood, when they come to 

 gather the cherries." 



They were wise birds, although they fKf? de- 

 part from the theories laid down in books, as 

 to the nesting habits of the robin. 



A year ago we had a robin which we ob- 

 tained the previous autumn and kept all win- 

 ter. In the spring we placed his cage in the 

 garden and opened it ; and although he daily 

 left it and scavenged the garden, appropriat- 

 ing all the bugs, slugs and worms, yet he 

 always returned to it in the evening. This 

 bird had contracted the domestic habit of 

 staying out later in the evening than birds 

 usually do ; but he would invariably resort to 

 his perch in the cage for repose, whether the 

 cage was left in the garden or brought into 

 the house to save him from marauding 

 cats. . . . Some weeks ago Rev. A. B. 

 Grosh published a short but interesting paper 

 in the columns of the Marietta Register, illus- 

 trating the departure of the robin from its 

 normal habits under the influencea of human 

 civilization, in which the foregoing experiences 

 have been corroborated, to which a Middle- 

 town correspondent in the same paper approv- 

 ingly responds in the following language : 



A. B. G.'s defense of the Lancaster county girl 

 whose robin built its nest under the "barn eave* 

 low," can be substantiated by ocular demonstrationf 

 to the satisfaction of all would-be critics. A robin is 

 now brooding on her nest under the house eaves, 

 within arm-reach from an upper window of the house 

 in whicli we are now sitting. All that is required it 

 some projection under the eaves, to allow the rotiiu 

 to place its nest on, to warrant whole colonies of these 

 birds in building their nests under the house or " barn 

 eaves low." That Lancaster countj' girl evidently 

 knew what she was writing about, and her head is 

 perfectly " level " and well balanced. 



To this we may add, that a pair of robins 

 have built a nest and are novc brooding under 

 the eaves of a three-story brick house (Mrs. 

 Breneman's), on the corner of Lime and Grant) 

 streets, in the city of Lancaster. In this case 

 the nest is on the square capping of the water 

 spout under the eaves. 



If anything further were necessary, the fol- 

 lowing, from the correspondent of a local edi- 

 tor of the Lancaster Exijress, residing in Ger- 

 mantown, Pa., ought to be satisfactory : 



From the third-story gable-window of my house can 

 now be seen on the eaves a rude mud and stick nest, 

 containing three young robins. There is also .another 

 nest similarly located on a neighlior's house. 



The general impression is that robins prefer seclu- 

 sion for their nests ; and, although the season is very 

 backward, and deciduous trees are late in beiug 

 clothed with foliage, we have plenty of evergreen 

 trees here, which many birds (robins, too,) have 

 chosen for " nest-hiding." 



These two instances, however, ought to be suffi- 

 cient to verify the point of Jane Grey's poem, the only 

 dilference being the eaves of a barn and house. 



No doubt many similar cases could be re- 

 corded by those who reside in rural districts, 

 in villages, or in the suburl>s of larger towns 

 and cities, although such a thing might never 

 be witnessed by the inhabitants of the com- 

 pact, seven-storied structures of the city's cen- 

 tre, where all the apparent or real facts of 

 natural history are gathered from musty, and 

 often superannuated or obsolete, volumes. And 

 if any such observations are more worthy of 

 credit than othere, it appears to us they are 

 those made through a series of years by an in- 

 telligent woman. We may easily conceive 

 how an observant woman might take the ab- 

 normal character of a bird, whose habits she 

 had been noting for several seasons, for the 

 general characteristic of the species, and then 

 celebrate it in song, espeei;illy if it should 

 happen to be the only individual that had 

 come under her observation. Under any cir- 

 cumstances, a robin is more likely to t)uild its 

 nest under "the barn eaves low " — provided a 

 perch is there — than a swallow is. In our boy- 

 hood we tisually found more swallows' nests 

 high ui) under the comb of the roof of the 

 barn, than outside under the eaves. Birds, 

 like other animals, often adapt themselves to 

 the circumstances by which they are sur- 

 rounded, and make a wide departure fifmi 

 their normal habits. It certainly cannot be 

 classed among the normal habits of swallows, 



