es become confused
and drown before they find their way out. They have been seen frozen into
the ice by hundreds, sitting there helplessly, and fortunate if the sun,
with its thawing power, releases them before they are discovered by
marauding hawks or foxes.

In connection with their food supply the greatest enemy of birds is ice,
and when a winter rain ends with a cold snap, and every twig and seed is
encased in a transparent armour of ice, then starvation stalks close to
all the feathered kindred. Then is the time to scatter crumbs and grain
broadcast, to nail bones and suet to the tree-trunks and so awaken hope
and life in the shivering little forms. If a bird has food in abundance,
it little fears the cold. I have kept parrakeets out through the blizzards
and storms of a severe winter, seeing them play and frolic in the snow as
if their natural home were an arctic tundra, instead of a tropical
forest.

A friend of birds once planted many sprouts of wild honeysuckle about his
porch, and the following summer two pairs of hummingbirds built their
nests in near-by apple trees; he transplanted quantities of living
woodbine to the garden fences, and when the robins returned in the spring,
after having remained late the previous autumn feeding on the succulent
bunches of berries, no fewer than ten pairs nested on and about the porch
and yard.

So my text of this, as of many other weeks is,--study the food habits of
the birds and stock your waste places with their favourite berry or vine.
Your labour will be repaid a hundredfold in song and in the society of the
little winged comrades.

Worn is the winter rug of white,
And in the snow-bare spots once more,
Glimpses of faint green grass in sight,--
Spring's footprints on the floor.
Spring here--by what magician's touch?
'Twas winter scarce an hour ago.
And yet I should have guessed as much,--
Those footprints in the snow!
Frank Dempster Sherman.

DWELLERS IN THE DUST

To many of us the differences between a reptile and a batrachian are
unknown. Even if we have learned that these interesting creatures are well
worth studying and that they possess few or none of the unpleasant
characteristics usually attributed to them, still we are apt to speak of
having seen a lizard in the water at the pond's edge, or of