ay
drift near them. Lying prone on the ice we may see them poising with
slowly undulating fins, waiting, in their strange wide-eyed sleep, for the
warmth which will bring food and active life again.

3rd. Fish. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
1st. Fish. Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the
little ones.
Shakespeare.

TENANTS OF WINTER BIRDS' NESTS

When we realise how our lives are hedged about by butchers, bakers, and
luxury-makers, we often envy the wild creatures their independence. And
yet, although each animal is capable of finding its own food and shelter
and of avoiding all ordinary danger, there is much dependence, one upon
another, among the little creatures of fur and feathers.

The first instinct of a gray squirrel, at the approach of winter, is to
seek out a deep, warm, hollow limb, or trunk. Nowadays, however, these are
not to be found in every grove. The precepts of modern forestry decree
that all such unsightly places must be filled with cement and creosote and
well sealed against the entrance of rain and snow. When hollows are not
available, these hardy squirrels prepare their winter home in another way.
Before the leaves have begun to loosen on their stalks, the little
creatures set to work. The crows have long since deserted their rough nest
of sticks in the top of some tall tree, and now the squirrels come,
investigate, and adopt the forsaken bird's-nest as the foundation of their
home. The sticks are pressed more tightly together, all interstices filled
up, and then a superstructure of leafy twigs is woven overhead and all
around. The leaves on these twigs, killed before their time, do not fall;
and when the branches of the tree become bare, there remains in one of the
uppermost crotches a big ball of leaves,--rain and snow proof, with a tiny
entrance at one side.

On a stormy mid-winter afternoon we stand beneath the tree and, through
the snowflakes driven past by the howling gale, we catch glimpses of the
nest swaying high in air. Far over it leans, as the branches are whipped
and bent by the wind, and yet so cunningly is it wrought that never a twig
or leaf loosens. We can imagine the pair of little shadow-tails within,
sleeping fearlessly throughout all the coming night.

But the sleep of the gray squirrel is a healthy and a natural one, not the
half-dead trance of hibernation; and