The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-05-11
Some Alleged Ways Of Fsretellins the
Weather.

can fOretell the weather is uncertain.
When the swallows are seen hawking
very high it is good indication; the in
sects upon which they feed venture up
there only in the most suspicious wealth.
err. Yet bees will continue to leave the
/ hive when storm is imminent. l am
told that one of the most reliable wealth
er signs they have down in Texas is
offered by the ants. The ants bring
their eggs up out of their underground
retreat and expose them to the warmth
| of the sun to be Matched. When they
are seen carrying them in again in
great haste, though there be not cloud
in the sky, your walk or your drive must
be postponed; a storm is at hand.
Observe the lilies of the field. Sir
John Lubbock says the dandelion low
ers itself after Towering, and lies close
to the ground while it is maturing its
seed. and then rises up. My dandelions
continue to grow after the flower has
dropped, the stalk lengthens daily,
keeping Just above the grass till the
fruit is ripened, and the little globe of
silvery down is carried many inches
higher than was the ring of golden
flowers. And the reason is obvious.
The plant depends upon the wind to
scatter its seeds, every one of these lit
tie vessels spreads sail to the breeze,
and tits necessary that they be launched
above the grass and weeds, amid which
they would be caught and held did not
the stalk continue to grow and outstrip
the rival vegetation. 1t is curious in
stance of foresight in weed,
People live in the country all their
lives without making one accurate OBJ
servation about nature. The evergreen
trees in front of their doors-what do
they know about their habits? Do the
pine and the hemlock shed their leaves?
Not in any strict sense. In the decidu-
Gus trees the new leaves takes the place
of the old; they come out in the axis
of the old leaves, and the ranch is re-
clothed each spring, even if no new
shoots appear. Not SO with the pine or
the hemlOck; they turn over new leaf
only when they turn over a new growth
of wood. The white pine usually sheds
its leaves in midsummer, though 1 have
known all the pines to delay till Octo-
Der. 1t is on with the new love before
it is off with the old. From May till
near autumn it carries two crops of
leaves, last years and the present
years. Emerson's inquiry,
how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads.
facts. 1t is to her old leaves that she
adds the new. Only the new growth,
the Outermost leaves, are carried over
till the next season, thus keeping the
trees always clothed and green. As its
molding season approaches, these old
leaves, all the rear ranks on the limbs,
begin to turn yellow. and a careless OBJ
server might think the tree was struck
with DEATH. but it is not. The decay
stops just where the growth of the
previous spring began, and presently
the tree is green and vigorous, with a
newly-laid carpet of fallen leaves be-
meath it. But the same is not true of
the hemlock, or the spruce, or the red
cedar. These trees do not shed their
leaves periodically, but outgrow them
gradually, as they do their bark, or as
person outgrOws or wears out his
clothes, here shred and there shred,
a bit to-day or bit tomorrow, and
were it not for the new growth made
each spring they would, in time, be-
come quite naked. The winds and
storms whip them off, and, as the
branches grow, the old leaves gradually
disappear, leaving naked stem. But
none of the confer9 renew their leaves
as do the deciduous trees. New leaves
come only upon new wood. If the
fran 70 70
probably Though of this am not GER
tain) cease to shed its leaves. The
pines and frs and spruces differ still
more radically from the deciduous trees.
They have less scope, less versatility,
fewer resources. They never sprout.
Cut them down and that is the end.
Cut off limb and it is never renewed
by new shoot. Trim apine or hem
lock closely and it will die; it has no
power to start branch de moro, to burst
the bark with a new shoot. A sort of
fatalism is characteristic of these trees.
The limbs of the white pine tend to re-
cur in regular intervals, like the rounds
of ladder. As it shoots upward in the
forest it pulls this ladder up after it, so
that the tallest trees are imbless for
elSnty or ninety 1eet.
When you cut off the top of a pine or
spruce, removing the central and
leading shaft, the tree does not develop
and send forth n new one to take the
place of the old, but a branch from the
next in rank; that is, from the next
whorl of limbs, is promoted to take the
lead.
The good observer of nature holds
his eye long and firmly to the point,
as one does when looking at puzzle
picture, and will not be baffied. The
cat catches the mouse, not merely be-
cause she watches for him, but because
she is armed to catch him and is quick.
So the observer finally gets the fact. not
only because he has patience. but be-
cause his eye is sharp and his inference
swift. Many a shrewd old farmer looks
upon the milky-way as kind of
weather-cock, and will tell you that the
way it points at night indicates the
direction of the wind the next day.
So also every new moon is a dry moon
or wet moon-dry if powder-horn
would hang upon the lower limb, wet
if it would not; forgetting the fact that,
as rule. when it is dry in one part of
the continent it is wet in some other
part, and vice versa. When he kills
his hogs in the fall if the pork be very
hard and solid he predicts a severe
winter; if soft and loose, the opposite;
again overlooking the fact that the
kind of food and the temperature of the
fall make the pork hard or make it
soft. So with hundred other signs,
all the result of hasty and incomplete
observations. In most of the opera
tions of nature there is one or more .Sn- |