her
chickens. She has been kind and gentle with them ever since they came
out of their shells, and they have learned not to be at all afraid of
her. But I think I have seen you throwing sticks at your chickens and
chasing them about the yard. If you do that, they cannot help being
afraid of you, and they will never come to you and eat out of your
hand."

What the little girl's mother said was very true, and if any of you
have birds or animals which you wish to tame, you must always treat
them so kindly that they will never have any reason to be afraid to
come to you.

[Illustration]

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.

"Thirty days has September, April, June and November; all the rest have
forty-three, except February, which is leap-year every four months." I
may not repeat this correctly, but I heard a little boy saying
something of the kind. Perhaps you all know the jingle better than I
do, so I'll say no more about it.

NATURE'S PADDLE-BOATS.

A little bird has told me such a strange thing! It's about a kind of
jelly-fish which he called a "Globe-Beroe," I think; but you can find
out for yourselves, if I caught the name aright or not.

This jelly-fish looks like a tiny ball of the clearest ice. All around
it, much after the fashion of the lines of longitude on a geographical
globe, are eight bands a little less transparent than the rest of the
body. On each of these are thirty or forty small paddles, in shape like
the floats upon the paddle-wheels of a steamboat; and it is by means of
these that the little creature pushes itself along in the water. The
paddles are alive, and move either swiftly or slowly, one at a time or
all together.

Not only can this natural paddle-boat send itself along, but it can
also cast anchor. It puts forth very fine threads, which gradually
lengthen, unfolding from their sides transparent tendrils like those of
a vine. These catch hold of and twine around some fixed thing, and moor
the craft; and when the Beroe is about to be roving again, they unwind
themselves, and all slip quietly back into the little ice-ball out of
sight.

There are countless millions of Beroes in the Arctic regions, where the
sea is in some parts colored by them for miles and miles. If there were
not such immense fleets of these tiny paddle-boats there would be
little chance for us to wonder at them, because they choose for their
moorings just the places where whales love best to feed and play their
roug