AS SNUG AS A BUG. I found a little frog in a bed of frozen leaves where he had slept all winter. He was not frozen but his joints were stiff. Young crickets and ants are found in frozen ground in the winter, but their bodies contain no frost. Young creatures have warm blood. Their winter homes are snug. The grub has a snug home in the bark of a tree. The bird raps at his door in spring. A young man told this story: "I sat at my drawing-board making a sketch when I took an apple from my pocket and cut it in two. “An apple-worm fell upon the drawingboard and started at once for the edge of the board. It crawled over and went into a hole which some other worm had eaten there long before, when the board was yet a part of a tree. "In a short time a thin silky web was spread like a veil over the door of the hole." CONVERSATION. How did the worm know that the hole was there? Cocoons. Metamorphoses of insects. Security of animals in their winter quarters. Let each pupil tell what animal he has found in its winter home under leaves, stones, in the mud, or beneath the bark of trees. THE POND LILY. See the pond lily with her golden heart open to the sun. She rocks on the water. What a queenly flower! She is the type of purity and sweetness. Its root, like a black, ugly reptile, clings to the slime, but the flower is like a star. The closed bud makes its way up through the water to meet the sun, and after its brief life it closes itself up again and slowly buries itself beneath the dark wave. One almost fancies a sad, regretful look in it as the stem draws it downward to mature its seed on the sunless bottom. The pond lily is a flower of the morning. It closes a little after noon. If you pluck it and carry it home, it still feels the call of the morning sun, and will open to him if you give it a good chance. Coil their stems up in the grass on the lawn, where the sun's rays can reach them, and sprinkle them well. By the time you are ready for your morning walk, there they sit upon the grass, almost as charmingly as upon the wave. The pond lily. Its flower. The leaf. Size. Color. Habits. CONVERSATION. From The Century Magazine. Petals how different from petals of other lilies. |