If the watcher be very patient and still, he will presently hear the pattering of tiny feet on the leaves, and see the brown birds come running in from every direction. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, he may see them gather in a close 5 circle-tails together, heads out, like the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for the night. Their soft whistlings and chirpings at such times form the most delightful sound one ever hears in the woods.

This call of the male bird is not difficult to imitate. 10 Hunters use it occasionally to call the scattered covey together, or to locate the male birds, which generally answer to the leader's call. I have frequently called a flock of the birds into a thicket at sunset, and caught running glimpses of them as they hurried about, looking for 15 the bugler who called taps.

All this occurred to me, late one afternoon, in the great Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. I was watching a yard of birds, three or four hundred representatives of the pheasant family, from all over the earth, that were run20 ning about among the rocks and artificial copses. Some were almost as wild as if in their native woods; others had grown tame from being constantly fed by visitors.

It was rather confusing to a bird lover, familiar only with home birds, to see all the strange forms and colors 25 in the grass, and to hear a chorus of unknown notes from trees and underbrush. But suddenly there was a touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown bird with the

shapely body and the quick, nervous run, no one could mistake him; it was Bob White. And with him came a flash of the dear-New England landscape three thousand miles away. Another and another showed himself and was gone. Then I thought of the woods at sunset, and 5 began to call softly.

The carnivora were being fed not far away; a frightful uproar came from the cages. male lion made the air shiver. parrots squawked hideously. shouting near by. In the yard ing or crying strange notes. I had seen had been hatched far from home, under a strange mother. So I had little hope of success.

The coughing roar of a Cockatoos screamed; noisy Children were playing and 10 itself fifty birds were singBesides all this, the quail

But as the call grew louder and louder, a liquid yodel 15 came like an electric shock from a clump of bushes on the left. There he was, looking, listening. Another call,

and he came running toward me. Others appeared from every direction, and soon a score of quail were running about, just inside the screen, with soft gurglings like a 20 hidden brook, doubly delightful to an ear that had longed to hear them.

City, gardens, beasts, strangers, all vanished in an instant. I was a boy in the fields again. The rough New England hillside grew tender and beautiful in the sunset 25 light; the hollows were rich in autumn glory. The pasture brook sang on its way to the river; a robin called from a

crimson maple; and all around was the low, thrilling whistle and the patter of welcome feet on the leaves, as Bob White came running again to meet his countryman.

One touch of nature: "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. This quotation is taken from Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida.". yo'deling the warbling call of the Swiss mountaineers. - taps: the military signal, often played upon the bugle, for extinguishing lights and going to rest. carniv ́ora: flesh-eating animals.

A SEINE MAKER

ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK

MRS. ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK is an American writer whose studies 5 of insect life are particularly interesting and instructive.

There is a certain stream I know that begins as a brook, traversing a high meadow sweet with clover and white with daisies. It then forsakes sunny heights and glides down a pine-covered hill where great roots interlace and 10 hold firm its banks; thence it tumbles down a slope beset with birch and sumac, and finally under some furry young hemlocks it takes a wild plunge to wider levels below.

This brook, fed from living springs, is the theater of myriad life, and it was

15 Down the golden-braided center of its current swift and strong

that I first saw a quaint little fisherman who spreads his nets for fry too small for our coarse eyes to see. Well is he named Hydropsyche, "the water sprite."

Most skillfully he makes his snare. It is formed like a dip net and fastened with silk to a frame of leaves or pebbles, so that its distended mouth is directed upstream. Near the frame it consists of fragments of vegetation woven into a silken tapestry,

and it is finished at the end with a bag of coarse, even mesh. The regularity of this bit of netting is beautiful to behold, and its use shows the

cleverness of the builder. This large mesh allows the water to flow through freely, thereby leaving entangled in the seine any little creature not small enough to pass through. The mechanism of the structure is simple and self-regulating.

5

On the side of this tiny seine toward the current of the stream is a little passage which leads to the seine builder's house. This is a rather crudely constructed tube made of sticks and stones fastened to the surface of the stone with silk, and just large enough to fit its occupant. Lying in 20 his house, his alert head reaching out into the passageway, our small fisherman needs only to take a step or two to examine his haul and sate his appetite.

This clever little artisan is a caterpillar hardly more than a half inch in length when fully grown. In color he 25 is brownish or olive green, and he has three pairs of true legs, which are longer than the legs usually vouchsafed to

caterpillars. He has black eyes, which give him a keen, alert expression of countenance. Along the lower sur

face of his body are tiny tassels of thread, which are his tracheal gills and enable him to breathe the oxygen mixed 5 with the swift-flowing water, so that he does not have to rise to the surface to take breath. His body also bears a pair of stout hooks. It is by means of these that he

grasps his silken ropes and is not swept away downstream by the swift current. He loves to spread his nets on the very 10 brink of waterfalls, and there they remain long after he has abandoned them, making the rock dark with the refuse caught in their cunning meshes.

When the fisherman has found in his nets day after day sufficient sustenance to complete his growth, he asks 15 no more of the kindly waters, but retires to his shabby house, patching it up, mayhap, to make it stronger and more torrent proof. Here he builds a grating of silk at either end which allows the water to pass through freely, but carefully excludes small enemies that might find their 20 way in through an unbarred door. Thus protected, he changes to a pupa. After a time he bursts the pupa skin, tears down the bars at the door, and shoots like an arrow to the surface of the stream. In this upward course he swims with his long legs and holds his wings folded tightly 25 upon his back. The instant he reaches the surface the wings unfold like magic and bear him away into a new and unknown medium.