6o 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
“My Window.” 
“My window” rainbow greeting gives, 
When on the Avenue we go, 
With some blooms brighter than the dawn, 
And others chaste as Winter’s snow. 
Orchids, roses, friendly rivals, 
In the floral contest there, 
Japonicas among the fairest, 
In a group where all are fair! 
Chrysanthemums in all their phases, 
“Buttons” to the queenly blooms, 
That just now in their profusion, 
Lend a grace to all our rooms. 
Cyclamen, those errant beauties, 
Reveling in brilliant tints, 
Though not outshining primrose neighbors, 
With their softer, paler glints. 
Snapdragon’s spikes of shell-like petals, 
Dipped in sunset rose and gold, 
Charming now, among exotics, 
As in grandmother’s garden old. 
Other flowers their prestige lending, 
Fragrant violets and sweet peas, 
With maiden-hair and smilax forming 
A graceful foil for all of these. 
When Wintry blasts without are raging, 
The Summer a forlorn “has-been,” 
How more than cheery to those passing, 
This sumptuous flower-warmth within! 
— Emma Peirce. 
A member of Professor J. B. Wood- 
worth’s class in geology at Harvard, 
while working in an old quarry in Attle- 
boro, had the remarkable fortune to 
discover the footprint of a creature un- 
known to science. The animal must 
have been of some size, since the front 
foot gave an impression an inch and a 
half long, and the hind foot one of 
nearly two inches and a half. Ap- 
parently the unknown beast was a rep- 
tile, of the general type of the great 
dinosaurs which made the well-known 
tracks at Turner’s Falls and elsewhere 
in the Connecticut valley. But the 
rocks in which the newly discovered 
tracks appear are much older than the 
Age of Reptiles. In fact, they probably 
belong to a time shortly before the Coal 
Period. Since the most ancient similar 
creature thus far discovered is from the 
Coal Measures of Ohio, this new find 
may prove to be the earliest known 
reptile. 
A will-o’-the-wisp is Spring, 
Ever dancing before our eyes, 
Yet ever holding aloof, 
The dearly coveted prize. 
— Emma Peirce. 
Fireflies. 
Little fairy lanterns 
Flitting here and there, 
Bearers quite invisible 
In the darkened air. 
Spangling dusky tree-tops 
Jewels on the flowers, 
Giving lightest, daintiest touch 
To the evening hours. 
Gleaming in the grasses, 
Lighting fields afar, 
Now and then one soaring high, 
And taken for a star: 
Fitful flickering, 
Flame and then eclipse, — 
’Twere hard to do you justice, quite, 
With our human lips. 
— Emma Peirce. 
Moles, whose diet is largely earth- 
worms, eat these almost continuously 
during waking hours. 
The Alaskan salmon fisheries alone 
yield yearly more than seven times the 
entire original purchase price of the 
Territory. Yet these fish, unless some- 
thing is done promptly, seem destined 
to go the way of the New England 
salmon, now almost extinct, but which 
once were abundant beyond all count- 
ing. 
The earliest mathematical work 
printed in America has been supposed 
to be that by Isaac Greenwood, first 
Hollis professor of mathematics and 
natural philosophy in Harvard College, 
which appeared at Boston in 1729. It 
now transpires that one Juan Diez pub- 
lished at Mexico City in 1556 a 
“Sumario Compendiso,” some twenty- 
four pages of which were devoted to 
arithmetic and algebra. Only four 
copies are known to survive. 
The long sought spawning ground 
of the eel seems at last to be definitely 
located in the Atlantic Ocean south- 
west of Bermuda. New-hatched eels, 
only a third of an inch long, have been 
dredged here. When they have grown 
to the length of one inch they start on 
their long migration, which finally 
carries them into the rivers of Europe 
and North America. Young eels have 
been taken in mid-Atlantic at a depth 
of two and a half miles. 
The Junior Audubon Society, at 
latest accounts, had 1,446,956 members. 
