xist in a wild state only
from some adaptation to their surroundings. A bird which is white simply
because its need of protection has temporarily ceased, would become the
prey of the first stray hawk which crossed its path. We cannot hope to
exterminate the English sparrow even by the most wholesale slaughter, but
if some species of small hawk or butcher bird could ever become as
fearless an inhabitant of our cities as these birds, their reduction to
reasonable numbers would be a matter of only a few months.

So dainty in plumage and hue,
A study in gray and brown,
How little, how little we knew
The pest he would prove to the town!

From dawn until daylight grows dim,
Perpetual chatter and scold.
No winter migration for him,
Not even afraid of the cold!

Scarce a song-bird he fails to molest,
Belligerent, meddlesome thing!
Wherever he goes as a guest
He is sure to remain as a King.
Mary Isabella Forsyth.

THE PERSONALITY OF TREES

How many of us think of trees almost as we do of the rocks and stones
about us,--as all but inanimate objects, standing in the same relation to
our earth as does the furry covering of an animal to its owner. The simile
might be carried out more in detail, the forests protecting the continents
from drought and flood, even as the coat of fur protects its owner from
extremes of heat and cold.

When we come to consider the tree as a living individual, a form of life
contemporaneous with our own, and to realise that it has its birth and
death, its struggles for life and its periods of peace and abundance, we
will soon feel for it a keener sympathy and interest and withal a
veneration greater than it has ever aroused in us before.

Of all living things on earth, a tree binds us most closely to the past.
Some of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands are thought to be
four hundred years old and are probably the oldest animals on the earth.
There is, however, nothing to compare with the majesty and grandeur of the
Sequoias--the giant redwoods of California--the largest of which, still
living, reach upward more than one hundred yards above the ground, and
show, by the number of their rings, that their life began from three to
five tho