52 
PLANTS AND INSECTS 
soms. If the dandelion stem was short, it now grows longer so the 
white ball can be easily caught by the wind. 
A breeze comes across the white ball and sets the seeds sailing 
through the air like tiny balloons. Each seed has a parachute of silky 
hairs over it, which causes it to float. Down, down the seed slowly comes 
and soon is ready to wriggle to> the ground. There it germinates and 
makes a new dandelion. You will not be surprized that the dandelions 
spread rapidly when I tell you that I counted on one white ball two hun¬ 
dred and twenty seeds, and the wind had blown off some before I began 
to count. 
ABOUT MOSQUITOES 
UAVE you ever examined a mosquito under a microscope? By so 
* doing you can know the male mosquito by the feather he wears in 
his cap. It is quite pretty and stands up high and smart. It branches out 
like a twig on a tree. It is thickly covered with bristling hairs; so are 
liis long feelers. But he has no lancet about his mouth like the female 
mosquito. Perhaps this is why the male mosquito never bites. 
He sips the sweet juices from the fruits and flowers, and joyously 
dances in the sunlight all the long summer day. He seems to have a 
happy, easy life. 
It is the female mosquito that sings about your ears at night. She 
sings with her wings instead of her throat. It is the flapping of her 
wings that makes the song. Three thousand times in one minute. That 
is very quick time, but it is the way she trills her deeper notes. 
The male! mosquito sings, too. He sings with those bristling hairs 
on his long feelers. He makes them vibrate very rapidly. His song 
is like the work done with a tuning fork. So he keeps his song in 
harmony with the song of his mate. 
But it is always the female mosquito who bites you. If you could 
just see her lancet under a microscope, you would not wonder that her 
bite hurts. She is after her food and she does not care much for the 
sweet juices. 
She leaves her eggs floating on a pool of warm,, stagnant water. 
You will see three hundred or more fastened together like a little canoe. 
By and by they hatch out; then the water is full of little black wrigglers. 
How fast they wiggle their little black tails! This brings the small 
