Author's articles

Legend Of The Bloodstone

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

To the children born amid the blustery winds of March belong the healing bloodstone and the gracious, heaven-reflecting stone called aquamarine. Bloodstone is green chalcedony so spotted with red that it appears to be flecked ...

Motion Pictures Are Worthless Without Motion

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

The majority of the birds of prey nest early in the spring. One of the common species of North America is the red-shouldered hawk, Buteo lineatus lineatus, which builds its homes from the Atlantic to ...

The Hairy Sand Ant

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

The so-called wood-boring wasps, Trypoxylon, which are not borers at all, but merely users of holes in any convenient substance, possess very weak poison, as I well know from having had it demonstrated upon me ...

Less Inclined To Rob The Hive

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Is the toxicology of honeybee stings understood? Does the food of this bee have anything to do with the severity of the poison? It is known that summer aster yields honey that is slightly bitter; ...

Bees & Wasps: Both Social, And Solitary

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Are there any more vivid memories of childhood than those of the berry picking and swimming expeditions that were turned into swift, ragged retreats by hornets, bumble-bees and yellow-jackets? These "ladies"-for only the females have ...

The Innately Beautiful Forms Of Nature

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

In the lowly cabbage, the fragrant onion, the more aristocratic artichoke there is utility. They boast vitamins and nourishment, but are they beautiful? Offhand one would smile tolerantly and reply, "Well, hardly,"-proving the fallacy of ...

A Beauty Much Appreciated

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Of the orchids, dainty tribe of practical jokers, one of the cleverest is the magenta-flowered grass pink, Calopogon pulchellus. She invites a flying guest to dine and places before him artificial viands. She gives him ...

A True Seahorse Posture

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

If it is true that the eggs require four weeks to develop, then a fathom or two down, among the eel-grass and seaweeds of Castle Harbour, a certain seahorse was courted, married and deserted on ...

The Abandoned Cotton Plantation

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Forest devastation, and wastage by erosion is not restricted to the uplands of America. Millions of acres of formerly productive alluvial land along streams have been seriously impaired or ruined by the deposition of inert ...

Virgin Forests Ruthlessly Wasted

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

We have been in the habit of turning to other countries for examples of lands, denuded of their timber, their soil washed away by the unleashed waters. We are urged to look at the bleak ...

Mothers Hubbard & Nature

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

June is not a month so generously peppered with birthdays of individuals famous enough to cause holidays in their honor, as are many other months. It is a month, however, when a vast host of ...

The Illusive Yellow Throat

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

The Baltimore oriole is one of our birds that eat the cotton boll weevil, as well as the larvae of the click beetle, plant and wood lice, spiders, wasps and grasshoppers. It nests in eastern ...

Home-Making Time For Songbirds

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

All is bustle about the house. Keen little eyes inspect eaves and windowsills, veranda vine, and shade tree. Blithe songs and chatterings announce that June-home-making time for most of our song birds-has arrived. Mr. and ...

Spiders In The Garden

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Watching for their prey in the center of a radiating geometrical snare, we often find the garden spiders. The beauty of their vertical orb-webs and the large size of these strikingly marked creatures always attract ...

The Grapes Of John Burroughs

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

It is said of the Naturalist John Burroughs that he never had to work very hard - but then nor did he seem to work very hard in his writing: just expressing his ideas simply ...

Jack & Jill The Vulture Twins

By David Bunch · 14 years ago

Climbing up on a large log to see over the briar patches, he finally located her, but in getting off the log he stepped on a rotten spot and his foot went through to its ...