hem, pocket the money, and give you
nothing for what perhaps cost you a great deal of effort. If, however,
you observe the legal forms, and your book proves saleable, other
persons are prevented from making additional copies. Those who want
copies must buy them from you. The legal form is very simple. Before you
publish the book, paper, print, or whatever it is, you mail two copies
to the Librarian of Congress, Washington, with $1. He returns to you a
paper, duly signed, setting forth the fact that for a certain number of
years that article belongs to you. You state this fact on each copy
published, and then the profit is yours, and the law protects you in it.

Some South African Birds.

Following the example of other members of the Round Table, I
thought I would write and tell you about some of our birds.

My brothers and I have just been talking about the blue hawk. It
is not a particularly large bird, and is grayish-blue in color. It
is comparatively harmless, its chief prey being rats and mice. Its
nest looks like a pile of sticks roughly laid together, but at the
bottom of the nest it is very soft. This is the description my
little cousin gives of its eggs: "If you were to take a pure white
egg and rub it all over with blood, leaving a few white specks, it
would be just like a blue-hawk's egg." In shape it is round, and
the color is really a dirty red. The bird's call sounds very much
like that of a cross fretful baby.

Another peculiar bird here is the hammerhop. It is a large brown
bird, and has a crest upon its head which looks like a hammer,
hence the name. It preys upon the frogs. It makes a tremendous
nest in the shape of a hut on the top of a high rock. I am told
that it plasters the nest on the inside.

One of our prettiest birds is the gilded cuckoo or diedrich. The
color of its back is green, and looks as if a lot of bronze dust
had been sprinkled on it. Its breast is white spotted with brown.
Like other cuckoos, it lays its eggs in other birds' nests. The
color of the eggs is pure white. It has a very musical
call--"dee-dee-dee-diedrich."

The aasvogel is a species of vulture. It is of a dirty white
color, and has no feathers at all on its neck. Almost as soon as
an animal dies the sky is darkened by aasvogels flying to prey
upon the body. The leader or king