Early in September Chuck began to eat voraciously and soon became very fat, but in the first week in October his appetite failed; he ate at first once a day, then once in two days, and after awhile he became quite restless and stupid. He was given his liberty, and watched closely to learn his habits. He began gnawing grass, gathering dry leaves and tucking them in various corners. At length he found a place that suited him to dig, and then he began making his nest. When the excavation was complete Chuck disappeared for several days. One evening he tapped on the kitchen door. When the door was opened he ran to a basket of apples and ate one, then ate a slice of bread and sugar. He appeared crazy with haste, and as soon as he was through eating he scampered off, to be gone a long time. On the first day of February Chuck crept out of his hole, and sat for a moment in the sun. Before he could be reached, however, he had returned to it. In six weeks and three days he again came out, and what was surprising, he did not appear to have forgotten any of his friends, of whom he had many among the cats, dogs, and rabbits of the neighborhood, trotting about among them on his hind legs. A cruel boy and a savage dog ended the life of this harmless little animal.
C. C. M.
FLOWERS WITH HORNS AND CLAWS.
E. F. MOSBY.
THE milkweed is best known to most of us by its pods—long, rough cases, packed close with shining white silk attached to little brown seeds. The lightest wind that blows can carry these a stage or two on their journey with such lovely silken sails. But perhaps everyone has not noticed one rather strange thing about them. Almost always there are two pods, one vigorous of growth, large and full; the other stunted and ill-formed. They are like the two brothers or sisters of Fairy Tales, one fair and well-favored and gracious, the other ill-grown and dwarfish. But why this is so, is one of the many secrets of the milkweed.
It is quite a large family of flowers, or weeds, as you may choose to call them. There is the gorgeous orange-colored butterfly weed, always surrounded by hovering or fluttering butterflies, most of them also orange or yellow in their coloring; the fragrant, rose-colored milkweed of June, the purple milkweed and its cousin of the marsh. But it is the common milkweed that is called the horned herb. It was once thought possessed of many healing virtues when the business of gathering and drying herbs was more important than it is now. Yet one needs no idea of this kind to look with interest on this curiously formed plant which grows in such profusion by the dusty roadside or by our very doorstep. A milky juice exudes from the stem whenever a flower is gathered, and the pollen is in such sticky masses that a feeble insect is often caught and cannot escape with its fatal treasure.
The blossom cluster, reflexed so oddly, is pretty and quaint at first sight, but as we look deeper we find some unknown law of fives has ruled its structure—the recurved calyx is five-parted, so too the deeply recurved corolla; five stamens there are surrounding, like a circle of courtiers, a fairy king and queen, the two pistils in the center, above which hangs "a large five-angled disk," an awning of state. But oddest of all is the crown of five-hooded nectaries above the corolla, each nectary enclosing an incurved horn. Is not this a strange honey-cup with the horn concealed under the silky flower-hood? The insects love the banquet thus spread for their delight and no doubt they know the secrets of the blossom.
There is another family of wild flowers that abounds in horns and claws, especially the latter—the large crowfoot family. The hook-beaked crowfoot has little one-seeded fruits with long and hooked beaks, like those of birds of prey, collected into a head. The wild columbine, nodding so merrily from the high rocks, and the larkspur, have hooked spurs and claws and the larkspur hides its long spurs in its calyx. But the monk's-hood is the more interesting of all.