A western writer tells me that she knew an interesting case of a rooster that was highly enraged at his own image in a looking-glass.

"A little girl had been stationed to watch a large mirror which was left in the yard previous to moving into another house.

A rooster seeing himself in the glass imagined a rival near and rushed upon him.

The little girl tried to put him to flight, but he ran about in a circle and

came back to the enemy, pouncing upon him in a new attack. The child chased him to the rear of the house when he eluded her, ran entirely around around the house, and flew at the mirror, breaking it to pieces."

The same correspondent writes me that she once put a looking-glass down on the floor in front of the canary-bird's cage. The poor canary had not had any communion with his own kind for years.

He used often to watch the ugly sparrows the little plebeians from his aristocratic gilded palace. I opened his cage and he walked up to the lookingglass and it was not long before he made up his mind.

He collected dead leaves from the house plants, twigs, bits of paper and all sorts of stray bits and began a nest

right off. lonely cage he would take bits of straw and arrange them when they were given him."

Several days after in his

I thought what different emotions this bird's reflected image awoke in its little breast from those aroused in a male bluebird last summer that so disturbed the sleep of my hired man in the early

morning.

The bird with its mate had a nest in a box near by the house, and after the manner of the blue-birds was very inquisitive and saucy about the windows. One morning it chanced to discover its reflected image in the windows of the hired man's room. The shade, of some dark stuff, was down on the inside, which aided in making a kind of looking-glass of the window.

Instantly the bird began an assault upon the supposed rival in the window and made such a clattering that there was no more sleep inside that room.

Morning after morning the bird kept this up, till the tired plowman complained. bitterly, and declared his intention to kill the bird. In a lucky moment I suggested that he leave the shade up and try the effect. He did so and his morning sleep was thenceforth undisturbed.

WHO BROKE THE EGG ?

The young bird breaks its own shell with a little drill on the top of its beak.

The drill is a small scale which falls off. The shell is composed of lime which is

decomposed by carbonic acid gas.

The gas eats the shell and makes it very brittle.

Hence the ease with which young birds

free themselves.

CONVERSATION.

The ways young animals have of helping themselves.

How little ones are pro

tected. The bird, kangaroo, mouse, bee, etc. Helpfulness. Self-helpfulness.