heir attentions to clover-fields. Each head of clover contains about
sixty separate flower-tubes, in each of which is a portion of sugar not
exceeding the five-hundredth part of a grain. Therefore, before one
grain of sugar can be got, the bee must insert its proboscis into 500
clover-tubes. Now there are 7,000 grains in a pound, so that it follows
that 3,500,000 clover-tubes must be sucked in order to obtain but one
pound of honey.

The Dwarf Trees of China.

In China, that land of curiosities, may be seen oaks, chestnuts, pines,
and cedars growing in flowerpots, and fifty years old, but not twelve
inches high! They take the young plant, cut off its tap-root, and place
it in a basin of good soil kept well watered. Should it grow too
rapidly, they dig down and shorten in several roots. Year by year the
leaves grow smaller, and in course of time the trees become little
dwarfs, and are made pets of like canaries and dogs.

What is the "Lake School"?

In reading about poets and poetry, you will sometimes find an allusion
to the "Lake School." This was the term applied by a writer in the
_Edinburgh Review_ to Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, because they
resided in the lake district of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and
because--though their works differed in many respects from each
other--they sought for inspiration in the simplicity of Nature rather
than in the study of other poets, or of the prevailing fashion.

The Cuckoo's Fag.

Tom Brown, as readers will remember, was in deep trouble at Rugby about
the fagging system in vogue during his "school-days." Many things have
happened since then, and amongst others a marked improvement in fagging.
The cruelty and insolence and selfishness of it have disappeared, and
the system itself will one day die out. As regards boys, so far so good.
Among some feathered folk, however, fagging flourishes in full vigour;
and so long as there are cuckoos so long will there be fags. Many birds
are imposed upon, one of the commonest victims being the hedge-sparrow.
For days a sparrow has been watched while it fed a hungry complaining
intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its
head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having
been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at
its tiny attendant--bidding it, as it were, fetch more food and not be
long about it. Wordsworth tells us in a famous line that "the child