My Studio Neighbors

In this connection it is interesting to note certain developments in bird life upon the lines of which evolution might work with revolutionary effect. Most of our birds are help...

Ovid declared and the ancient Greeks believed that hornets were the direct progeny of the snorting war-horse. The phrase "mad as a hornet" has become a proverb. Think, then, of...

From this companionable point of view let us now look again at the strange curved stamen of the sage. Why this peculiar formation of the long curved arm pivoted on its stalk? Co...

In the case of a smaller bee visiting the flower, the insect would find it necessary to creep further into the opening, and thus might bring its thorax against the pollen-glands...

What startling disclosures are revealed to the inward eye within the hearts of all these strange orchidaceous flowers! Blossoms whose functions, through long eras of adaptation,...

Thanks to the new dispensation, we may indeed claim a deeper sympathy with the flower than is implied in a mere recognition of its pretty face. We know that this orchid is but t...

I have alluded to the egg of the cicada "inserted in the bark of a twig." This act is accomplished by a knife-like ovipositor, which literally gouges a deep gash into the tender...

In a moment or two the wasp had returned, and stood at the mouth of the shallow pit. Eying me intently for a space, and satisfied that there was nothing to fear, she dived into...

Just outside the door here at my country studio, almost in touch of its threshold, year after year there blooms a large clump of milkweed (_Asclepias cornuta_), and, what with t...

Solitude! Where under trees and sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the c...

Sprengel, Christian Conrad: --Inspiration from the wild geranium, 108; on the mystery of color, 112; theory of fertilization; a poser to Linnæus, 113; his wrong theory, 114; div...