Stránka:tales 1921.djvu/139
Pokračování textu ze strany 138
… seven. “See, see, that’s the lady. See seven fingers on that hand and five on this. Now follow her feet down and dig in the ground.”
They dug and found strings of lovely brown nuts as big as walnuts.
“See, see”, chuckled the wood-witch. “See the cocoanuts in the cellar.”
Go forth and look for it, ye Woodcrafters. You will find it throughout Eastern America on the edge of every wood. Its flower is like a purple-brown sweet-pea, and is in bloom all summer long. Follow down its vine, dig out a few of the potatoes or nuts, and try them, raw, boiled, or if ye wish to eat them as Indian Cake, clean them, cut them in slices, dry till hard, pound them up into meal, and make a cake the same as you would of oatmeal.
The wild things love them, the Indians love them, and this was the bread of the wood-witch. The books call it Bog Potato and Ground Nuts. It is the third secret of the woods.
The Mud-dauber Wasp
If you look under the roof of any wooden bam in Eastern America you are likely to see the nest of the common Mud-wasp.
If you look on warm sunny days along the edge of some mud puddle you are sure to see a curious steel-blue wasp, with a very thin waist, working away at a lump of mud. She seems to be breathing hard with her body, as she works with her yellow legs, but she finally goes off laden with a gob of mud. This is the Mud-wasp at work, building a strong mud-nest for her family. The nest is the one we ..text pokračuje
