St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 2/Nature and Science/We Will Write
“We Will Write to St. Nicholas About It.”
Throwing Stones and Feathers.
Dear St. Nicholas: I write to ask you why you can’t throw a feather as far as you can a stone, but still you can throw a small stone farther than a larger one. Please tell me and you will greatly oblige,
The Mullen
Your interested reader,
The reason why you cannot throw a feather so far as you can a stone is because the feather meets with greater resistance than the stone in passing through the air, having, in proportion to its weight, a far greater exposed surface than the stone.
A Beautiful Weed
Dear St. Nicholas: A great manypeople call the mullen a hideous weed. I think it is just the opposite of that. It seems to me it is rather pretty with its velvety light-green leaves, pretty yellow flowers, and brown seeds, I have always liked the mullen very much because it seems so much like a person. It is so tall and straight that I imagine it is honest and straight-forward, and even though it is so tall it isn't too proud to live among the smaller plants.
Yours truly,
A Milkweed “Trap.”
Dear St. Nicholas: The pollen of the milkweed is collected in two club-shaped masses linked in pairs at their slender tips, each of which ends in a sticky disk-shaped appendage united in V shape below. This pollen is hidden inside the flowers.
There are five little raised tent-like coverings at equal distances around the flowers, under the horn-shaped nectaries, and the tent-like covering which is cleft along its entire top by a fine opening conceals the stigma. Outside of each of these, and separated from the stigma in the cavity, the pollen masses will be found.
When a bee or other insect alights on the flower to sip of the sweets in the five horn-shaped nectaries, he must hang to the bulky blossom; almost instantly one
Milkweed catching an insect. or more of the feet enter the opening of the tent-like covering, which holds the foot tight until he is ready to fly away, and while the insect is sipping the honey his feet come in contact with the pollen, and as the foot finally draws out it brings with it the pollen.
Often the flower exceeds its purpose and proves a veritable trap; when the bee tries to draw its foot out of the tent-like covering, the foot is caught so tight that the bee becomes exhausted in his effort to escape; and a search among the flowers will often show bees, wasps, flies, and also butterflies hanging by one or more legs, which will be firmly held in the grip of the fissure.
In the picture which I send with this letter I have endeavored to show how the bee is entrapped; the darkened part is the pollen cell.
Your sincere reader,
The Milkweed.
This catching of insects Ly the milkweed is evidently accidental, and of no use to the plant.
How to Feed a Small Alligator.
Dear St. Nicholas: I have always been very much interested in the Nature and Science part of your magazine. Since I have found out that you can give information on certain topics, I would like to ask you about a small alligator which I have brought from the South. it is only about eight inches long, and I do not know how to care for it.
Your loving reader,
Keep the alligator in a tank, or vivarium, the bottom of which is covered with pebbles and has some water in at least a portion of it. There should be a place out of the water on which the alligator may crawl. Thus we intitate the natural home of the alligator. You know that it does not spend all of its time in the water, but enjoys lying on the bank of the river.
Holding the alligator and feeding it bits of meat.
Ordinarily the alligator will take small bits of meat without especial urging. I have found it convenient, sometimes, to hold the alligator and feed it bits of meat placed in its opened mouth on the end of a sharp-pointed stick. My alligator readily opens its mouth when the sides of the head are rubbed.
Newts Under Stones.
Dear St. Nicholas: While out in the woods, Saturday, I came across a spring. I lifted the large stones near it, and found under them a number of newts or salamanders in company with a lot of frogs. The latter were a dark gray-green above, rather mottled, and a bright yellow underneath. The newts are about five inches long, and of a salmon-color, mottled on the back with dark brown. The coloring of some of them is so heavily marked as to be almost black above, while others are quite light. Can you tell me what their names are from these descriptions? I brought four of the newts home. Can you tell me on what to feed them? Yours truly,
These are probably the common “red” salamander or newt. They live under stones and in damp places as well as in the water. Feed them on earthworms or fresh chopped meat.
Drops of Water on the Outside of an Ice-pitcher.
Dear St. Nicholas: I noticed that when a pitcher of ice water is placed in a warm room, the pitcher will have drops of water on the outside. Will you please tell me how the drops come on the outside of the pitcher?
Your loving reader,
The drops, sometimes called “sweat,” are the water which was in the air in contact with the cold surface of the pitcher. The air in cooling was condensed and the water “squeezed” out. These beads of water are very easily seen on the surface of a silver ice-pitcher.
The House-cricket
Is the Cricket a Cannibal?
Dear St. Nicholas: The other day, as I was coming home from school, I saw a little cricket eating another, When I put my foot in front of it, it ran away. Will you please tell me if it had killed the other one, or found it dead, and commenced to eat it?
Your interested reader, Etta Coulter.
Crickets usually feed upon plants, but occasionally they eat other insects. I find no record of their killing and eating other crickets, but your observation makes me suspect an insect murder and cannibalism. What do you think yourself?
Varying mimicry in one “brood” of Chrysalides.
The home of the writer of the accompanying letter.
Showing the location of the vines (Dutchman’s-pipe) on the porch. It was on the leaes of thes vines that the brood of caterpillars fed.
Diagram of post and surroundings
Showing the various colors in the vicinity. Each member of one brood of caterpillars, in becoming chrysalides, located on or near some one or more of these various colors.
Dear St. Nicholas: On one side of our porch is an Aristolochia, or Dutchman’s-pipe, and every year a great many larva: of the blue swallowtail butterfly Laertias philenor, feed on the leaves. We usually kill all the “worms” we can find, for of coarse they spoil the looks of the vine. This summer we were away for a month, and were very much surprised, on returning home, to. find nearly everything around the porch hung with the chrysalides. A strange part is that they vary very much in color. Some are bright, some a light green, and others are of different shades of brown. Three or four are clinging to the stems of a jasmine, and are so exactly its color that
One of the chrysalides.
Showing the unique way it has of fastening itself on the wall by a thread of silky material. it is very hard to see them. With almost no exception, the brown ones are on the stone posts, dead twigs, wire which supports the vine, and such dull-colored things, while the green ones are on or very near green stems, A rose-bush is growing by one post, and a chrysalis on
the post, but very close to the bush, is light green. Another hanging on some woodwork painted a dark green is nearly the same color, and very noticeably darker than the others. I inclose several sketches. One is the post, on the upper part of which clung the dark green one (since destroyed) and also several others. The chrysalis
which I found nearest the rose-bush was light green, like two of the specimens I send you. Those which were on the under part of the stone
were brown.
The second sketch shows the place between the water-stained plaster and the water-pipe where I found the inclosed brown chrysalis. The wall is stained dull brown very much the same color.
Very truly, Your interested reader,
YoAnna D. White (age 13).
This is a marked example of protective mimicry, in that the members of the same brood went to various colors, and each “mimicked” the color of its location.
We cannot help calling especial attention to this very interesting and very well written letter from an observant young reader.
Each chrysalis became a blue swallowtail butterfly.
(Laertias philenor)