Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/372

266 they make new bodies and become whole animals again? Not usually. The severed head seems to become confused, so that it does not know what to do. If it lives it is most apt to produce another head like itself, and change into two heads placed neck to neck so that they look in opposite directions. So, too, the severed tail, equally foolish, doubles itself and becomes two useless tails growing end to end.

But is n’t this really quite impossible? A head or a tail or even a half-body cannot get food. If it cannot eat 1t cannot grow: and that is all there is about it. Well, it is true that a fragment cannot eat. But still it can make the new part out of its own tissue. So the animal keeps getting smaller as it becomes more nearly complete, until, when the new part is finished, the whole body may be no more than the tenth part of its proper size. The reconstructed animals are therefore forced to begin life over again like young worms. In time, however, they grow up to full size. When a head end makes a new head instead of a tail, or a tail makes a new tail instead of a head the little creatures must necessarily waste away and die.

snowy flower-like cluster resembling a large Japanese chrysanthemum was picked up in a frosty pasture and treasured for a winter bouquet. The late autumn winds had blown the fairy-like pompon among the brown grass-stems, where it startled its discoverer like a fresh flower after the first snow.

Tufts of pappus breaking loose like cotton balls from the dry thistle involucres scattered over the hillside suggested the source of this wind-blowntraveler. Closer examination showed that the withered flower-mass firmly adhered to  the tips of the pappus. The entire bunch was fastened as tightly as if it had been tied with a thread, so that, instead of the seeds floating singly or in star-like clusters over woods and fields, the entire mass of pappus had been freed from its prison at the one time. Sun and wind had evenly expanded each tiny balloon, making a thistle pompon of exquisite beauty.

Undoubtediy Mother Nature first suggested those duffy globes which the young people fashion from the ripening heads of the thistle and milk-weed pods. These are made, as most of