NATURE STUDY 
PUBI^rSHKD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 
Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences- 
Vou. V. 
June, 1904 . 
No. I. 
An Adventitious Bud. 
BY EDWARD J. BURNHAM. 
The unusual combination of leaf and cucumber shown 
in the frontispiece of this month’s Nature Study was not 
a “ fake,” as many people thought when shown the pho¬ 
tograph. The leaf actually grew from the cucumber, as 
it appears in the picture. 
It was not ” a made-up thing,” as one little girl declared, 
but rather a sort of recalling of a long-ago time in cucumber 
history ; for the cucumber, like all other plants and flow¬ 
ers and fruits, has passed through many changes, and 
there was a time, long ago, when it no more resembled the 
familiar vine that grows in our kitchen and market gar¬ 
dens than the flat, dry lichen on a rock looks like the big, 
green pumpkin-vine in a farmer’s field. 
Nature stories differ from fairy stories in being true, but 
they are quite as wonderful, and maii}^ of them may prop- 
erl}^ l)egin, as fairy stories used to do, with ‘‘Once upon 
a time.” Once upon a time, then, it was with the cucuni- 
