tened to the top of the box, just as they hung when found. The box should stand in a cool place and out of the sun, though in light. Butterflies, as far as my experience goes, usually emerge in the morning, and my records show more between nine and ten o'clock than at any other time.

After the wings are dry and the legs and antennæ have been exercised, the butterfly may often be made to feed by putting into the cage a few drops of honey or sugar and water. The food must be put close to the head of the butterfly however, and sometimes putting it on a bit of bright-colored paper will attract the insect's attention to it. Of course feeding gives the best chance of seeing its long tongue.

A friend and I once had a large wire cage full of butterflies which emerged from chrysalides made by caterpillars we had reared or found, and these butterflies learned to fly to our hands when we put them into the cage, perch on them or on our fingers, and eat honey which we had poured into our palms. If they have plenty of room to fly about in and flowers or honey to feed on, butterflies will sometimes mate

in captivity, but it is safer to let them fly outdoors. Cocoons of moths may be found in the same places as the chrysalides of butterflies, and also hanging from twigs, spun along twigs, and enfolded by leaves either on the tree or on the ground.

Look on any wild cherry, willow, tulip-tree, ash, sassafras, maple, plum, and if you see a leaf dangling, after the leaves have fallen in autumn, examine that leaf. More often than not you will find that it is held to the twig by a shining band of silk, and is also held together around a cocoon. You will also find that, in most cases, it is easier to cut the twig than to break the silk! These cocoons will probably be those of Attacus promethea, and you should collect many of them, for some will have "stung" pupa, and give only flies, and in others the larvæ will have failed to transform, and have died. Shake the cocoon and if it gives a thud the pupa is sound, but if the noise is slight or wanting the pupa is of no use, or the contents are dead. The weight of a

Cut

cocoon will often decide whether it is good or not. ting it open will always show, but this must be carefully done with very sharp scissors, and beginning at the looser end of the cocoon. The first attempt will be very likely to cut into the pupa.

On ailanthus and tulip-tree, magnolia and castor-bean you may find cocoons of Samia cynthia, very like those of promethea.

Attacus Cecropia spins a larger, brown cocoon against a fence or building, or more often along the stems of a shrub or sapling, or along a small branch of a tree. I have found its cocoons on oak, wild cherry, lilac, against a large stem of woodbine, and on the under side of fence rails.

Telea polyphemus and actias luna may be found among dry leaves near birch, beech, walnut, hickory, oak, willow, liquidambar, and tulip-tree. Attacus Angulifera I have never known to suspend its cocoon, like promethea, to which it is closely allied, but one writer claims to find it so on Ceanothus. Its cocoons have been found under Ceanothus and tulip-tree.

The cocoons of Attacus Ceanothi are much like those of A. Cecropia, but rounder and shorter. They are found only in the west and south.

Eacles imperialis and Citheronia regalis larvæ burrow in the ground to pupate, and their pupæ may be found by digging around hickory, walnut, maple, and sometimes pine trees, though I believe regalis never feeds on pine or maple.

Pupa of the sphingid moths may be found by digging around woodbines, grape-vines, in potato fields, about willow, elm, poplar, pine, bush honeysuckle, tomato plants, ash, catalpa, fig, azalea, viburnum, cephalanthus, plum, wild cherry, birch, apple, pear, high blueberry and whortleberry hickory, walnut, and so forth.

The best way to keep these pupæ for school use, would be to put them into cut-up sphagnum, dry, in a tin box, shutting the cover tight, and keeping the box in a cold cellar until April, or May, if the spring is late. Then bring them up and put them in a box like that for the chrysalides only covering the side which is used as the bottom of the cage with sphagnum to the depth of two inches. Sprinkle this once in a while if the room is warm, but look out for mould. In keeping pupæ guard against mice, who will eat pupæ, and larvæ too, if they can get at them.

In hunting for cocoons and pupæ you will doubtless find many which I have not mentioned, for I have given only a few specimens to show in what kinds of places they may be found. Moths may emerge at any time of day or night, in captivity. I think that outdoors they probably emerge in the day in order to be ready to fly by dusk or dark, for I have so often found in the morning moths still moist and unable to fly.

Most of the large moths - Bombycid moths at leasthave a decided odor, what one friend calls "a real menagerie smell," which varies in different species, and is a sexual attraction.

By tying a bit of worsted around the thorax of a female moth, between the two pairs of wings, and tying the other end to a twig or vine, a male may almost always be attracted, mating follows, and the female will lay fertile eggs when taken in and put into a suitable box.

Reindeer in
in the Klondike

(Tell the children about this region and the gold discoveries.- ED) Many interesting stories are being told about the animals and fish that are to be found in the Klondike regions. One particularly instructive account of the reindeer of Alaska has reached us.

Years ago, naturalists familiar with the habits of this animal thought that it could be made as useful in the northern parts of America as it is in Lapland and the northern countries of Europe and Asia.

Little Mae Carr is a Klondike girl, born in the gold region. She is only about three years old. She dresses like a little boy and goes out mining. She is washing out gold now in a frying pan.

To the dwellers in these regions the reindeer fills the place of horse, cow and sheep. It can carry a burden of 250 pounds; and, while its usual speed is about ten miles an hour, it is so fleet of foot that on occasions it has covered as much as nineteen miles an hour. It can, over, keep up its normal pace for many hours without tiring.

more

Its meat makes delicious food; its milk is excellent; its skin is valuable for leather; and, above all, it can support itselt on a moss called reindeer which moss, abounds in all cold countries. Appreciating the various good qualities possessed by the reindeer, Congress decided to pur

chase a number of these animals in Siberia, and transplant them to Alaska.

At first the experiment did not seem to be successful. The animals did not thrive; after a while it occurred to some one that the cause of this was perhaps that the keepers in charge of them were not experienced in their ways, and did not know how to treat them.

T

Justice for Tardy Pupils

E. D. K.

HE bell struck for nine o'clock. The teacher proceeded to open the school. A timid click at the latch announced that somebody was late, and that the record of tardiness, which had been kept spotless so far during the month, had lost its blank purity. As the door was opened a little girl with tearful eyes stepped slowly into the school-room, encountered the disappointed faces of her class, who were trying so hard "to go a whole month without a tardiness," and stood there the picture of The teacher, feeling that it was no ordinary case, held out her hand, and Annie was soon clasped close to her teacher-friend, as she sobbed out a perfectly satisfactory reason for the unusual lateness, and was sent to her seat with the kindest words of sympathy for the sickness at home that had made the sickness at heart of the little innocent victim who had spoiled the monthly record.

woe.

A half-hour passed, and the school looked up to see the incorrigible boy of the class saunter in, with his hands in his pockets, and a "What-are-you-going-to-doabout-it?" air that touched another side of the teacher's character, and she stood silently and LOOKED that boy into soberness and shame, if not contrition. The silence of the was oppressive. John could have borne anything better, and the teacher knew it. After the power of the voiceless reception had waned, the teacher ascertained that, as she had supposed, the lateness was but the result of thoughtless indifference to time and school rules, and she pronounced a penalty as severe as the accasion demanded.

room

A few Lapland families were therefore imported for the express purpose of caring for the animals, and in a very short space of time a great difference was noted. reindeer began to thrive, and increased so rapidly that we have now quite a fine herd.

None of the miners in the Klondike have as yet attempted to make use of these clever beasts; but it is expected that ere long reindeer sledges and reindeer trains will be as familiar in Alaska as they are in northern Asia and Europe. The Great Round World

Holding Court

The winsome lady who holds court in her modest schoolroom, her courtiers seldom forgetting that they are little ladies and gentlemen, does this only because she has their hearts; and their hearts she can have only as she can control their thoughts; and their thoughts she controls only through her own fine personality, and by constantly putting into their receptive minds suggestions pleasing and wholesome. She lives out her own beautiful and earnest life with them. By quiet example, by personal appeal, by song and story she reaches them. She knows the best in literature and in life, and she gives them of her best, and they go out from her with a wealth of treasure in heart and mind that for not of a few of her pupils, will be cumulative for a lifetime. She holds, with Froebel, that "all education not founded on religion is unproductive"; and, with Warner, that "Good literature is as necessary to the growth of the soul as good air to the growth of the body, and that it is just as bad to put weak thought into the mind of a child as to shut it up in a room that is unventilated."-J. P. McCaskey.

"I'm five,' said the little man, but with a very disgusted air. "I would have been six long ago, only my mamma keeps me in dresses!"

"How old are you now, Cyrus?" asked a visitor.

Regu

larity was unknown, and poor John's wayward fancies were not regulated by clock, or home discipline. He came and went regardless of others' wishes or convenience, and the result was an unconscious selfishness that was warping his character. The respect due to law had never entered into his home-training. The binding obligation to be in his seat by nine o'clock, in obedience to school rule, was not recognized by him. This inherent irreverence for abstract law that marks our American children under the most efficient home-training, left to itself, fills our reform schools and state prisons. Thus, if for no other reason than the training of this unfortunate boy in a correct regard for authority, should his teacher have emphasized her condemnation of this particular form of failure in duty.

She had explained these underlying reasons for punctuality to her children in her school-talks, and they had been made to feel that to be late for any requirement meant something more than a mere delay. If John wilfully disregarded the feelings of his teacher and fifty classmates by spoiling their plans for a clean monthly record, then the least puuishment that he could receive was to be excluded from their "good times." A true, warm-hearted teacher will suffer more than the boy, in thus seeing him isolated from innocent enjoyment, but her duty in character-building is as imperative as in book-teaching- nay, more.

In all the parts that go to make the whole of a symmetrical character, punctuality is one of the most important. The want of promptness in meeting requirements and engagements is the direct result of selfishness (either conscious or unconscious) in the disregard of the interest of others. It is a certain index of the weakness of a fibre that interweaves in the web of character, reappearing here and there, to mar the beauty of the texture. The business-man who advertised for an office boy, and sent away, unseen, all

who came five minutes late.

A word to those who are fortunate enough to have a mixed school of boys and girls. I say "fortunate," for it seems that the only true way to prepare the coming man and women to walk side by side through life, is to teach them to step together in the school-room. Each loses the unattractive shyness, and painful self-consciousness, which marks the first association of the boy and girl who have been educated apart. The boy needs the gentleness and inspiratory stimulus of the girl's presence, and the girl finds in the independent strength of the boy, the necessary complement to her own nature. In such a school the opportunities are countless for the proper adjustment of the life relation. Above all things let us discountenance any compulsory association between the sexes, as a penalty, and so pervert the true intention of sex association by the Creator. The boy and girl should be sent to each other for assistance in lessons, whenever desirable, and any hesitation arising on either side should be entirely ignored by the teacher.

A boy who is taught from boyhood to seek for opportunities to help his girl acquaintances, is not going to be the man to oppose a broader channel for woman; and the girl who is taught to gratefully recognize this chivalry of boyhood, will not grow to be the woman to ask for an unwomanly sphere.-E. D. K.

The formation of icicles! The snow melts on the sunny roof, then trickles down over the edge into the shade; then the trickle grows slower and slower until it stops and a little bit of ice is formed. Meanwhile all the water from that special bit of melting snow is trickling down the same path, and runs over the ice a little farther because as the snow melts more the little stream is bigger and has more force. Thus the bit of ice grows longer as it hangs from the edge of the roof, for the drops run down the ice already formed, and, in the cold shade, freeze to the end of the ice, and it grows longer and longer until it is a big icicle or until the snow is gone, or the sun no longer lies on it.

Snow Crystals

If there is a little cold "dry" snow, try a little window work. Bundle the children into hats, coats, and mittens ; give each one a slate, and open a window.

Let each child hold his slate out under the falling snow until it is lightly powdered with flakes, then look at them? Beautiful? Indeed they are! And what infinite variety of shapes ! But there is one characteristic common to all, six ways or points. That is the law for snowflakes when formed under favorable circumstances undisturbed. They are crystals and are always true to their type as are any of the gems or other durable crystals.

But there are many and most beautiful variations of the type, all keeping the six rays, but decorating them, and forming designs which will suggest to you cathedral windows, or beautiful old carvings or fretwork.

Hold a magnifying glass over each one and let the children look through it. Children always love a magnifier, and I never saw a child who did not also delight in snowflakes.

Give each one a turn at holding his slate out for more, the variety is infinite, and you will not be likely to find too many alike. Some may be broken so that the six points cannot be counted, but that is easy to explain. The question is pretty sure to come, Why don't the great big snowflakes have pretty shapes too?" and this may be answered "Because they are wetter and made up of many little snowflakes frozen together."

The room has grown too cold to keep the window open longer? Then off with the coats and hats and let the children group themselves into the shapes of some of the snowflakes, then huddle two or three snowflakes of children into one big bunch and they will easily see how the little ones lose shape in joining together to make one big one.

Let them draw snowflakes on the board or slates, (they always enjoy this,) and after occe doing all this they will never forget snowflake beauty.

Tyndall's "The Forms of Water," page 32, gives fourteen different shapes of snow crystals clearly figured.

Mosses

Go out some day in February late January will do also when snow is melting and look carefully on tree-trunks, fences, ground, and stone walls. You see the little patches of green moss? Look at them closely. There are several

kinds on one stone even! You should have a tin box and fill it with different kinds of mosses. They come off easily almost always, and a knife helps take them off in good condition.

Some mosses will seem just little masses of tiny leaves. Others will have threadlike stems surmounted by very tiny capsules, which look like seeds perhaps.

Don't stop to look at them now. It is too cold to examine mosses outdoors. Take them home and put them into a plate, or a saucer, right side up of course, and then pour on water until it stands in the plate.

Give the mosses time to settle themselves a little, and then use your magnifier !

You cannot really know mosses without a compound microscope, and such work is not suited to little children. But you can get enough, and give them enough knowledge to make them interested.

Take a pin and separate one plant from the mass. It should be one with a capsule on it, something like one of these, but very small.

You are not likely to see what answers to the flowers unless you have a compound microscope, for these antheridia and archegonia are in the axils of the leaves and very, very small.

Children always - as far as my experience goes — like watching the mosses and seeing the capsules grow and change from week to week,- almost from day to day, and mosses are so easy to find! Even in cities I have found them on buildings and walls, and in towns they abound.

Moreover they ripen their fruit- many of them in winter, needing the melting snow to supply the water which is essential to their fertilization.

Watch the tree-trunks and show the children how they grow beautiful with green and orange mosses and lichens opened into beauty by rain and melting snow. In dry weather the mosses are all shut up and almost black, hardly to be noticed and certainly not to be admired.

If you can go to rocks which have patches of moss and the thick evergreen ferns, "Christmas fern," it is often called, peel off a big piece of the moss and carry it home. Put it in a plate, wet it thoroughly, and keep it in light but not sun, in a warm school-room, and see how many different things will come up in response to the heat.

They will probably not all be plants.

You may have snails, beetles, spiders, even a sleepy bee or wasp! for many creatures spend their winter in the warm depths of the mosses.

Certainly winter offers a variety of interests for the children, if you know where to look for them.

If it is, as is quite likely, a brown, last year's capsule it will probably be somewhat shrivelled, and may have lost the little lid at its tip. If it is a fresh green, or brown one, it may have a sort of husk on the tip of, or even almost covering, the capsule. This outer husk is called the calyptra. The whole plant will look somewhat like this, though all these outlines are roughly drawn, and meant only to give an idea of what you should look for.

The capsule is full of spores when ripe. It is practically a seed-box with a cover.

Under

the cover or lid, there are usually teeth set in the rim of the capsule and all bent towards the tip of the lid. When the capsule

is ripe the lid falls and the teeth usually spring back, and are thought to help in scattering the spores. Some capsules have no lid, but split down the side, and some have no teeth.

If your magnifier is strong enough, to show the teeth clearly you have a very pretty sight to show the children.

It is hardly likely to be powerful enough to give the spores clearly, but may show them as little green balls.

comes

Shake a ripe capsule over a piece of white paper, and show the children how much - dust it looks like out. From this "dust" grow the many, many little plants. needed to make up one patch of moss as big as a silver dollar.

Keep the mosses in the sunny window and give them water every day, but not enough to stand in the plate all the time. In a few days you will probably find that the patches without capsules begin to show light green points. Watch them and you will see how the fruit comes up from the sheathing-leaves,

A Word for "Us-Teachers"

MARY C. GOODING

So much is being done these days in training the children in habits of concentration of mind, it would seem not untimely to suggest to the teacher to endeavor, herself, to acquire each day, some added force in the power of concentration.

There is such a tendency in the teacher to waste her force in minutiæ about the children, all of which might be included, perhaps, in the various forms of fault-finding or fretting.

My own experience and observation is this: the fault lies in one's self, principally. The remedy lies also in one's self. Not in fretting over the failure of our efforts, not in running hither or thither from this one to another, telling our seeming grievance, but in introspection. Make a close and continued study of one's own self. Watch yourself as closely as you watch the children. Concentrate your thoughts more on the way you do things. The way you present subjects and suggest thoughts to the children.

You will then find the improvement in them so manifest and so speedy you will never again be satisfied to do things impulsively or off-hand.

How We Observed Mother's Day

L. MABEL FREEZE, Bangor

HALL I ever forget that Mothers' Day? No, never, for it is the "red letter day" of my teaching experience.

This was the way it came about. I had been wishing for a long time that I might have a Mothers' Day and wondering how was best to go about it. One day 1 was at a stationers and saw some dainty note paper in colors buff, green, blue, white, cream and vlolet with tiny envelopes to match. A happy thought came,- just the thing! buy it for the children to write invitations upon to their mothers for Mothers' Day.

No sooner thought than done and I went home to plan for the day full of enthusiasm. When my plans were perfected I said, " Children, I want you to work better than ever before for a few days and if you do you shall hear a secret." I did not think that the word secret would stimulate them as much as it did. They were ready for the secret long before it was time to tell it, and eager with delight listened to the plans which I unfolded, lttle by little.

As a part of the secret we had a morning talk on the home followed by the finger plays relating to the family. All work for that day was to be done just as if mother were to see it.

The next day quotations were given out appropriate to the season, one to each member of the class to be taken home and learned as another part of the secret.

Then I taught them some words I had written about Mothers' Day to be sung to the tune of "Sweet Marie." By this time they were guessing the secret, so it seemed best to disclose it all.

Words cannot describe their delight when they found they were to write and invite their mothers to spend a part of an afternoon with us. So I passed the dainty paper, not without many misgivings, I own, for fear of blots or mistakes, and for the writing lesson we wrote:

POND ST. SCH., ROOM I. Dear Mother:We would like to have you come to our Exercises next Mon. P. M. from 3.30 to 4.30. Your loving daughter (or son).

and on the envelopes we wrote "Mothers' Day."

Not one blotted or soiled invitation was written, and the little individualities that crept into that writing must have touched many a parent's heart. A word perhaps begun on one line, strangely divided and finished on another line, a much too tall or a comma upside down. For the drawing lesson that day the colored crayons were passed and they were told to draw some little forget-me-nots on the invitations.

Then giving a few directions as to arrangement, I watched them as they carefully drew, doing far better than I expected. The gifts were finished but not to be taken home quite yet and the mothers were not to know until they received them. Their efforts to keep the secret that so possessed them were ludicrous in the extreme, and served to arouse the parents' interest more than any other way I could have devised.

As the day drew near a few recitations such as: "Trust Your Mother,"

"A Message to Mother."

Nobody Knows but Mother."

"Mother's Helpers," were given out to the best speakers and we learned that pretty memory gem:

"Hundreds of stars in the pretty sky;

Hundreds of shells on the shore together;

Hundreds of birds that go singing by,

Hundreds of bees in the sunny weather; Hundreds of dew drops to greet the morn, Hundreds of lambs in the crimson clover; Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn;

But only one mother the wide world over."

This was accompanied with motions, and the last line. said more emphatically while they pointed to their mothers. They gladly stayed after school to learn another song, "Hark! My Mother's Voice I Hear."

During our preparations the regular work had gone on, but better than ever before. I was surprised that we could make it a success with so little time spent upon it; if ever odd moments counted they did that week.

The Friday before the exercises were to occur Monday, they delivered the invitations, and I told them if they wished to bring flowers on Monday they might do so.

Saturday I decorated the boards with reference to the coming event and put the words "Mothers' Day" in colored letters amid clusters of apple blossoms, and an "Honor List" just below.

Although it rained Monday, the children were on hand in good season, with an abundance of beautiful flowers. At noon the room was decorated, aided by the children, who begged so hard to help that to deny them would have seemed almost cruel.

The chief feature of the decoration was the children's work arranged on tables. The drawing sheets, the number papers, the mounted specimens of flowers, and best of all, the nature books looked so pretty among the flowers. The nature books were simply their nature and language stories tied with pretty ribbons into pale green covers. But it seemed no picture book ever pleased them as did this arrangement of their own work. We went right on with our preparations as though it didn't rain, and were well rewarded, for half an hour before time for the exercises to commence the sun came out beautifully and the mothers began to come and continued until the room seemed full and the children's faces seemed like little suns.

We had our little program. Then came an unexpected part to the children and visitors; I had asked some soloists to sing for us and their selections were much enjoyed.

After this I told the parents why we had asked them to come, that each might see her child's work and compare with others, that they might know how much help they had been in the past and how they could still be more in the future and that the children might realize the close connection between home and school.

Then came the part which was most enjoyable to the children, serving their parents with refreshments. It was truly a pretty sight as the little ones moved to and fro.

But the most touching part of all was when some one said, "Look at those children!" I turned and looked; they had served their parents and taken their seats and were sitting there with folded hands and faces radiantly happy, utterly unconscious of themselves or that they were to have any refreshment. I thought of the anxious misgivings I had as to their behavior, and a faith in childhood came then that has never left me since.

The parents carefully examined and expressed appreciation of the work, and so ended a day that had not even "the little rift" to mar its success.

Ended, oh, no, for I am reaping some of the results

even now.

"Winter day! frosty day!

God a cloak on all doth lay;

On the earth the snow he sheddeth,
O'er the lamb a fleece he spreadeth,
Gives the bird a coat of feather
To protect it from the weather."

DRA