and hammers and nails and glue, could not begin to make so pretty a thing as this little creature makes out of odds and ends with only its feet and beak for tools.

Definitions. - Polar, belonging to the poles, or the extreme northern and southern points of the globe, which are covered with snow and ice most of the year. Tropics, the hottest part of the earth, where vegetation is most abundant and brilliant. Marrow, a soft, oily substance usually found in the hollows of the bones of animals.

Spell: glue, beak, plumage, excelled, canary, marrow, balance, motion, swallow, chisel, delights, color, beauty, brilliant, rough, strange.

Birds-birds, ye are beautiful things,

With your earth-treading feet and your cloud-cleaving

wings.

Where shall man wander and where shall he dwell,
Beautiful birds, that ye come not as well?

Ye have nests on the mountain, all rugged and stark;
Ye have nests in the forest, all tangled and dark;
Ye build and ye brood 'neath the cottager's eaves,
And ye sleep on the sod 'mid the bonny green leaves.

Ye hide in the heather, ye lurk in the brake;

Ye dive in the sweet-flags that shadow the lake;

Ye skim where the stream parts the orchard-decked land; Ye dance where the foam sweeps the desolate strand.

Beautiful birds, ye come thickly around

When the bud's on the branch and the snow's on the ground;

Ye come when the richest of roses flush out,

And ye come when the yellow leaf eddies about.

III-9

- Eliza Cook.

Definitions. - Brake, a thicket of coarse ferns. beautiful flower - bearing shrubs. Lurk, lie hid. in a circle. Stark, barren.

Heather, a thicket of
Eddies, flies around

Spell: dwell, eaves, lurk, cottager, tangled, desolate, cleaving, heather, eddies.

Why does an earth color best protect the ground birds? Why do bright colors best protect the birds of the tropics? Why does white best protect birds of the polar regions?

Explain to the class the climate of the tropics and polar regions, and show by map their situation.

Read to the class, if accessible, "The Return of the Birds."-Burroughs. Also, "The Birds of Killingworth."-Longfellow. "Our own Birds." Baily. "Animal Memoirs," Vol. II. - Lockwood. "The Birds about Us.". Abbott. "Birds through an Opera Glass."— - Merriam.

Two barn swallows came to our nest in springtime, and began to build over the open doorway. I was delighted and spent much time in watching them. The mother-bird was always busy and important, and the mate always kind and attentive.

When the time came to sit on the eggs within the pretty plastered nest, he would, three or four times a day, coax the mother to fly out for food; and the moment she left the eggs he would take her place. When the young swallows came forth he brought half the food for the hungry little creatures, and watched over them proudly..

When the little ones became old enough to fly, the gravest man would have had to laugh to

* See note on Lesson 46, in Supplemental Notes.

watch the actions of the family, old and youngsuch chirping and twittering; such darting down from the nest and flying up again; such wheeling round in circles, talking to the young ones all the while; such clinging to the sides of the shed with sharp claws to show the fearful little nestlings that there was no need of falling.

For three days this acting was carried on all the time. It was plainly an infant flying school. But all the coaxing and twittering came to nothing. The little downy things in the nest would look up and look down, and then, frightened at the bigness of the world, sink back into the nest again.

At length the parents grew impatient, and called their neighbors to help them teach their children.

As I was picking up chips one day I found my head encircled by a swarm of swallows. They flew up to the nest and chattered to the young; they went up and down clinging to the wall, looking back to tell how the thing was done; they dived, and wheeled, and floated in a manner beautiful to behold.

The little pupils were much pleased and encouraged. They jumped upon the edge of the nest, and twittered and shook their feathers and waved their wings, and then hopped back again, as if they would have said, “O, yes; it's pretty sport. It looks easy, too, but we can't do it. We

are afraid. It makes us dizzy. O, no; we can't go to-day."

Three times the kind neighbors came and repeated their graceful lessons. The third time two of the young swallows gave a sudden dive downward, and then fluttered and hopped till they alighted upon a small log.

O, such praises as were sounded by the whole swarm. The air was filled with their joy. Some flew around and around, some alighted upon the wood-pile, many clung to the wall, two swung from an old hoop hanging on the door, and all twittered and chirped in delight over the two swallows that had learned to fly.

Never, while memory lasts, shall I forget that summer flying school.

- Lydia Maria Child.

Spell: build, busy, coax, brought, chirp, twitter, circle, carried, neighbor, parent, wheel, frighten, swung.

Read, if accessible, Birds' - nesting," in "Locusts and Wild Honey."- Burroughs. Also, "Character in Feathers," in "Birds in

The bluejay himself pointed out his nest to me. From the ground where I was looking at him,

*See note on Lesson 47, in Supplemental Notes.

though he did not see me, he flew to a pine tree thirty feet high, and there, near the top, sat his mate on her nest.

He leaned over her tenderly; she fluttered her

wings and opened her mouth, and he dropped into it the tidbit he had brought. Then she stepped to a branch on one side, and he began to attend to the wants of the young family, too small, as yet, to appear above the edge.