stirs the atoms; they can stir, although their band of cohesion holds them so close that they look as if they were stuck tight together. The hammer is down. You would say Force is dead. I say he has gone in among those atoms; he is carrying on the stir and jar from one atom to the other. 'Stop!' says Cohesion, trying to hold them fast. 'Go on!' cries Force. The atoms of iron can not get away from one another, but they can move. Force makes them move and struggle. When you struggle you get warm. When the

atoms of iron struggle, they make what my friend, Lord Bacon, calls the fire and fury of heat. They actually get farther away from each other; and this is why philosophers will tell you that heat makes a body larger.

"This hard, solid iron is actually a little larger than when it was cool, because the atoms have succeeded in getting farther from each other. Now all the king's horses, and all the king's men, if you could set them to tug on each side of this little bit of iron, have not strength to do that. It required a great force, stronger than all the king's horses and men. But who did pull the atoms? Heat. Then heat is force, or perhaps I should say motion; for, when we struck this iron with the hammer, and it became warmer, what had happened really? Why, the motion of the arm and hammer that struck it went in among the atoms of iron, and they moved and pulled a little way from each other. What we call Heat was really their motion; and so-"

"Stuff!" interrupted the traveler.

"When a man comes

down to atoms, he must be hard up for proofs."

"Comes down to atoms!" exclaimed my Lord High Fiddlestick, opening a window. Outside, the sill was covered with fresh-fallen snow, which my Lord High Fiddlestick scraped up in his hands. "Can any thing be softer than this snow?" he asked. "Well, the pull and strain that brought the water-atoms together to make such snow as I hold here, would pitch a ton of stone over a precipice two thousand feet deep. Come down to atoms, indeed! Pray, let me show you a few of the things that atoms can do."

"My lord," interrupted the king, in a hurry, "I observe that dinner is ready, and the beefsteak on the table. If the

steak gets cold, according to your philosophy, it will grow smaller, and then, perhaps, there will not be enough to go round. Let us go to dinner, and hear what the atoms can do another time, my Lord High Fiddlestick."

BIRDS AND THEIR WAYS.-From the Little Corporal.

About the second week of March, here in Northern Illinois, I hear somebody singing up in the air, "Ka-wet! kawet!" His back is as blue as the violets, and his breast looks as red and warm as a little red cloud at sunrise.

The trees are bare, the grass is dry, and Bluebird's voice is a little sad at first, but by the middle of April he is all over it, for he takes him a mate; then he is very busy trying to find a place for the nest that is to hold the wee ones.

One day I saw a pair of bluebirds sitting on the stakes of a rail fence. Bluebird flew down to a hole in one of the rails; he went in, examined its sides with his black bill, turned around in it, then, flying up to the top of a stake, warbled "Ka-wet! que-we-o-it!"-my dear, come look at it. Mrs. Bluebird answered "Ka-wet !"-yes, dear. They examined and consulted a long time, but it would not do to put their nest there; the room was too small, and the roof very poor. I saw them there no more. The mates sometimes choose a hole in a tree, where a busy woodpecker once made his nest. They carry in grass, wool, and feathers, and arrange a soft, warm nest. The female lays from four to six pale blue eggs. Two broods a year are raised. Bluebirds live upon worms, beetles, and other insects that would destroy our fruit and gardens.

Generally, within two weeks from the time I first hear the plaintive salutation of the bluebird, a chorus of spring voices are in my ear. The red-winged blackbirds are chatting in the tree-tops; the crow blackbird throws in an occasional note of reproof; the meadow-lark sings "E-chee-a-chirp-pa" in the richest of voices; the snowbird trills in the hazel bush; the wild ducks are quacking on the streams; the soft piping of the nuthatch sounds from the woods; the belted kingfisher darts chattering by, and the plover flies over, crying sharply "Kill-deer! kill-deer!"

But whose voice is this I hear a few days before.the coming of April? He calls from the trees, just at evening, "Quit! quit! quit !" The night is cold and frosty, but with the early morning light a rich bugle-voice breaks out in “Ka-i-a ka-e-ore quit! cho-wo que-we que-wit! tka-a-ru kawe-wa ka-we-wa tkeep!" Robin knows how to sing. I once heard four singing in one bur-oak at a time.

Look at Robin when he is on the ground. He gives a hop or two, then runs a few feet straight forward in a very careless way. He stops, turning one eye up as if he needed to keep watch of the weather, while with the other he looks sharply at the ground. Now he finds a bug or grub, now a May-beetle, and a little farther on he pulls up a cut-worm. He is very useful, for he eats up some of the worst enemies of the fruit and grain.

The first day of last May, as I passed a thorn-tree, a bright eye peered from behind a branch. A moment after, two brown wings were spread, and away went Mrs. Robin. Robin himself sat near by, on a crab-apple-tree, jerking his tail, and eying me anxiously. Here was a nest with four blue eggs.

Soon the bluejays became too inquisitive, and I often saw Robin dart out bravely and drive them off. After a few days I found the nest deserted, one egg gone, and the rest cold. I am afraid Bluejay took that egg.

But the robins were not discouraged. They built another nest on the branch of a bur-oak a short distance from the

first nest. They left this one also, and without using it

at all.

A third nest was made in a black oak, whose boughs touch our house. Mrs. Robin constructed it chiefly of dried grass, and plastered the inside with mud. When the mud was dry, she lined it smoothly with fine soft grass, and the nest was ready for use.

The eggs were laid, and for about two weeks patient Mrs. Robin kept them warm under her red breast. The sweet June days came, and the wild roses showed their bright buds. Robin, meantime, sang his richest songs on the boughs near by. He became almost as tame as a chicken,

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hopping, around us when we were out of doors, and singing, with his bill just apart, quaint little strains that could hardly be heard. The robin does not open his bill so widely as some little birds, if he sings ever so loud and clear.

One day I saw Mrs. Robin standing on the side of the nest. She peered into it, and put her bill down one, two, three times. Just then her mate alighted near by, with his beak full of worms and soft insects. The young birds were out of the shells, and the mother was feeding them. What funny babies they were, with only a small number of curious feathers, looking just like the little plumes you have seen on some seeds floating about in the air. At the least sound their hungry bills would fly open, as if they expected that it was going to rain worms. Robin did not get much time to sing then, for they kept him as busy as a bee. In less than two weeks they were pretty well feathered out, and their tails an inch and a half long.

Then there was a time of wild excitement in the oak. The old birds called loudly, and the young ones answered “Peip?"-I fly! The little robins found out then what their wings were made for. For a day or two they staid quietly in the trees, and their parents carried them food. Then they hopped on the ground after Mr. and Mrs. Robin.

About this time Mrs. Robin left her husband to provide for all three youngsters, and went off somewhere. Sometimes they tried to feed themselves. One would think he saw a worm on the ground, and, putting down his head, would nearly fall over trying to get it. I saw them pick up little sticks, and drop them. In less than three weeks from the time they left the nest they looked as large as Robin, and he thought them big enough to get their own living. They were very handsome, but they did not look just like the old robins. Their backs had a great many little black and white streaks, and the red of their breasts was full of black spots.

Robin still gathered worms, but he would not give them to these young ones. I followed him, and found Mrs. Robin, with another brood of little birds, in the very nest that was built on the branch of the bur-oak after the first one was broken up.

HANDY ANDY.

SAMUEL LOVER.

SCENE FIRST. The Dining-room.

THE first time Andy was admitted into the mysteries of the dining-room, great was his wonder. The butler took him in to give him some previous instructions, and Andy was so lost in admiration at the sight of the assembled glass and plate that he stood with his mouth and eyes wide open, and scarcely heard a word that was said to him. After the head man had been dinning his instructions into him for some time, he said he might go until his attendance was required. But Andy moved not; he stood with his eyes fixed by a sort of fascination on some object, that seemed to rivet them with the same unaccountable influence which the rattlesnake exercises over its victim.

"What are you looking at?" said the butler.

"Them things, sir," said Andy, pointing to some silver forks.

"Is it the forks ?" said the butler.

"Oh no, sir. I know what forks is very well; but I have never seen them things afore."

"What things do you mean?"

"These things, sir," said Andy, taking up one of the silver forks, and turning it round and round in his hand in utter astonishment, while the butler grinned at his ignorance, and enjoyed his own superior knowledge.

"Well!" said Andy, after a long pause, " evil be from me if ever I seen a silver spoon split that way before.”

The butler laughed a horse-laugh, and made a standing joke of Andy's split spoon; but time and experience made Andy less impressed with wonder at the show of plate and glass, and the split spoons became familiar as "household words" to him; yet still there were things in the duties of table attendance beyond Andy's comprehension: he used to hand cold plates for fish, and hot plates for jelly, etc. But one day," as Zanga says, one day" he was thrown off his centre in a remarkable degree by a bottle of soda-water. It was when that combustible was first introduced into

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