er feathers on each side. The sharp chirps of juncos are heard
before the ice begins to form, and they stay with us all winter.

We have called the junco a snowbird, but this name should really be
confined to a black and white bunting which comes south only with a
mid-winter's rush of snowflakes. Their warm little bodies nestle close to
the white crystals, and they seek cheerfully for the seeds which nature
has provided for them. Then a thaw comes, and they disappear as silently
and mysteriously as if they had melted with the flakes; but doubtless they
are far to the northward, hanging on the outskirts of the Arctic storms,
and giving way only when every particle of food is frozen tight, the
ground covered deep with snow, and the panicled seed clusters locked in
crystal frames of ice.

The feathers of these Arctic wanderers are perfect non-conductors of heat
and of cold, and never a chill reaches their little frames until hunger
presses. Then they must find food and quickly, or they die. When these
snowflakes first come to us they are tinged with gray and brown, but
gradually through the winter their colours become more clear-cut and
brilliant, until, when spring comes, they are garbed in contrasting black
and white. With all this change, however, they leave never a feather with
us, but only the minute brown tips of the feather vanes, which, by wearing
away, leave exposed the clean new colours beneath.

Thus we find that there are problems innumerable to verify and to solve,
even when the tide of the year's life is at its lowest ebb.

From out the white and pulsing storm
I hear the snowbirds calling;
The sheeted winds stalk o'er the hills,
And fast the snow is falling.

On twinkling wings they eddy past,
At home amid the drifting,
Or seek the hills and weedy fields
Where fast the snow is sifting.

Their coats are dappled white and brown
Like fields in winter weather,
But on the azure sky they float
Like snowflakes knit together.

I've heard them on the spotless hills
Where fox and hound were playing,
The while I stood with eager ear
Bent on the distant baying.

The unmown fields are their preserves,
Where wee