“We Will Write to St. Nicholas About It.”
Throwing Stones and Feathers.
Averill Park, N.Y.
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,
Your inSarah McCarthy.
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,
YoursMargaret Twitchell (age 14.)
A Milkweed “Trap.”
New York City.
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,
Your sincerIrene Kelvoe (age 12.)
The Milkweed.
