This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V29", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
Young peach seedlings are quite common on the rubbishy margins of the streets of Jacksonville, Florida. One of these, several inches in height, was pulled up not long since and its pale stem's base was found to possess roots above the dicotyledonous leaves. A second plant examined had three dicotyledonous leaves arranged and appearing somewhat like the wings and boat-like keel of a papilionaceous flower. A third specimen had had two stems, two attempts to grow upward, destroyed, eaten away by bird or four-footed beast, whilst a third stem had reached a height of three inches without harm.
This last and the second effort had been made from the axils of the drupe leaves and a fourth and fifth bud were starting from the axils of the first two undestroyed buds, below the budless end of stem No. 2. A plant whose dicotyledonous leaves remain buried, or frequently fail to come to the surface, certainly has many more chances for life than where the said leaves are thrust well upward into view.
*Among the published statements in regard to the sparrows attacking, driving off, and even killing other birds, I can now only lay my hand on the following from Forest and Stream, for April last. A correspondent states that while in Erie, Pa., he and a score of other people witnessed the attack of a number of sparrows on a robin, in a public park: "One afternoon while sitting there, I noticed a robin singing on a tree. Soon a sparrow stuck his head out of a box and began scolding. Finding that did not stop the song, he sounded his war cry, and soon was surrounded by others of his clan, when a pitched battle was immediately engaged in and carried on with such vigor that they drove the robin to the ground, and by picking and flying against him on all sides, soon reduced him to submission. When we drove the sparrows away, the robin was so badly used up he could neither stand or fly, and was carried off by one of the spectators." The same correspondent says: " On another occasion I heard a great commotion among the sparrows in our yard, and looking out I saw them attack one of their own species that had a broken leg, and pick it to death." This latter is perhaps only a species of heathenism that perhaps prevails among all fowls to some extent.
I have seen a number of chickens attack another of their own brood that had a broken head, and pick it to death, even swallowing its brain. The first case above, if authenticated, would constitute one of the positive evils which we should not tolerate, if the power exists to prevent it.
[The peach offers interesting studies in Cotyledons. It will be found on a close examination, that they are alternate, and not opposite, as we suppose such seed leaves to be. - Ed. G. M].
 
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