NATURE Everywhere are youth and joy-our most fitting companions. As Thoreau expresses it: "Willows and alders along watercourses all alive these mornings, and ringing with the trills and jingles and warbles of birds, even as the waters have lately broken loose and tinkle below-song-sparrows, blackbirds, not to mention robins, etc., etc." The shining black suit, with red epaulets, of the blackbird is very conspicuous among the white fluffiness of the willows. We may maintain that the song is o-ka-lee, or kong-quer-ree or gurgle-ee, and, in any case, it is evidently a most fitting accompaniment to the brook. Farther up the stream you see the song-sparrow, with its conspicuous black. spot on its breast. Its varied "sprayey songs" are an important part of the marsh music. Add the songs of bluebirds, robins, and the laughter of the young folks, and all is complete. WHEN shrubs and trees are bare, many interesting things may be learned from the position of the leaf-scars. Cut a hickory twig, and note how the buds are situated at the upper margin of each leaf-scar. This is the arrangement of leaf and bud on branches and twigs of many other trees and shrubs with which we are most familiar. But examine a branch of our smooth sumac and of the stag-horn sumac, which grow on rocky hillsides, and you will find that the scars which mark the places where the bases of the leafstalks were attached surround the buds. This fact shows that the bases of the sumac leaf-stalks must have completely covered the buds during their growth. Search the ground beneath the shrubs for dry leaf-stalks during the winter and early spring, and will find that each one you NS. The has a small cavity at its base just the shape of the pointed bud. If you had examined the branches late last summer or in early autumn you would have seen that there was not a single bud exposed on the new growth of sumac. bushes appear to have made no provision then for next year's growth. But this was not the case. If you had broken a green leaf-stalk from the branch and examined it carefully, even with the naked eye, you would have seen a tiny bud in its enlarged base. year's stems develop laterally so as to form branches that remind us, in both species of the THE SMOOTH SUMACS ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF AN OLD WALL. The next sumac, of the antlers of a stag, although only the rough sumac is commonly called "stag-horn." It is interesting to note that the hollow base of each leaf-stalk is lined with soft down like the nap on a fur hat, which protects the bud until it is full grown. This can easily be observed by snapping off some of the dry leaf-stalks which have clung to the branches. After the frosts of autumn the red stalks fell away and exposed the soft pointed buds. It is surprising how quickly this was effected. One day the smooth sumacs on the sunny side of an old wall were a mass of color; the next the leaves had vanished and the branches were covered with buds as if by magic. In bleak, exposed places the leaf-stalks often cling a whole month longer than in protected places. Here is an unusual case of Mother Nature's protecting the bud very carefully during the summer, until it is fully grown, and then taking off the fur-lined "hat." By reason of its warm covering of furry scales this bud can withstand the cold and storms of winter as well as other buds that never have had such special protection. I never see these stems, with their hollow and fur-lined ends, on the ground in cold weather without thinking (and sometimes expressing it audibly), "Little buds, why don't you keep on your hats during this cold weather?" W. C. KNOWLES. "BINO" AND THE BABY. THE young folks who really love their pet animals want to know how to keep them in health. Misleading books on this vital subject advocate a diet in which bread and milk flourishes, whereas there is nothing so deadly to all animals as bread and milk. All disease in pets can be traced to them. Let me take Bino and the baby as illustrations. Bino is a pinche, or cotton-head marmoset; a splendid coronet of white hair rises above her coal-black face. She dwelt in the tree loved it, and it was "ride a cock-horse" ered by the accumulating sediment. As the back to its rightful, neficent, is head nurse in my hospital; she soothes the patients, and whatever it is she says to them, they soon lose their fear of me. To cage a marmoset is like putting a fairy in a strait-jacket. I have a basket and a piece of flannel in which they curl up at night; this stands in a cage, and here they sleep fourteen good hours; after their breakfast of bananas I open the door, and off my little fairies go, to scale the walls of my room in winter, and to climb the tree-tops in summer. In the spring and summer Bino and her brothers are often frisking about in the top branches of a near-by elm-tree. Then, when I call to her she stops her play to answer, and her white topknot shines out from the leaves against the blue sky. Frequently she responds by her musical call, that seems like a clear and sweet, yet strange, song. JUSTINE INGErsoll. SOME OLD HOUSES. AT the entrance to the harbor of San Pedro, in California, lies a little island known as Isla de los Muertos, or Dead Men's Island. It is composed of layers of sand and clay full of fossil shells. Ages ago these mollusks were living on the old sea-bottom, and when they died their shells became buried in the sand and ooze, and cov. old crust gradually raised the sea bottom above water so it became dry land. At the present time, the sea in storms is undermining the island, and the fossil shells are washed out and mingled with the shells of living mollusks in the rock-pools which surround its base. |