If you want to know how good salt is

you must see a cow eat it. She gives the true saline smack.

How she dwells upon it! How she gnaws the grass and licks the stones where it has been deposited!

When the farm-boy takes a pail of salt to

the fields the eager herds follow him. They push their noses into the pail. They give him no time to divide it. We Americans are great eaters of salt. But we must drink the salt air of the sea to get it at first hand.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION.

Crystallization. Salt crystals compared with ice crystals and sugar crystals. Why the sea is salty. Salt deposits or mines. Manufacture of salt. Relation of salt to health. Preserving quality of salt. Effect of salt on ice in melting it.

Madame Ragozin says that in Texas on the ranches they give their cattle large blocks of salt and that the cows come and stand in rows to lick it. She has seen a cow teach her calf to love salt by licking the block of salt and then licking the calf's nose.

The high-hole is a drummer.

He utters his long loud spring call,

whick

whick

whick whick,

and then begins to rap with his beak.

I have seen him drum sitting on the ridge of a barn.

CONVERSATION.

The noises made by birds. What they use as drums. How they drum with their wings. (See Story of Prince Red Cap in "Stories from Plato and other Classic Writers," Ginn & Co.)

NOTE. This lesson is adapted from "Winter Neighbors," an essay in which are many stories which could hardly fail to create habits of observation in the child.

I once saw a wood-pecker at his drum. He would drum for an hour at a time. His drum was the stub of a dry limb. How fast his head would go when drumming!

When he wished to change the key, he

would shift his position an inch or two

to a knot, which gave a high shrill note. When I climbed up to see his drum, the bird was much put out.

He flew at me with a sharp note to ask what my business was with his drum. The wood-pecker was drumming for a mate. After drumming some weeks his mate came.

It is water-proof and fire-proof. The field-mouse wants no better place to nest than under a large, flat stone.

I found the nest of a lone bee

under a stone. It had four cells.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION.

Creatures that live under stones. Little David tells me that he has found a beetle under a stone which "makes smoke" when discovered. The explosive beetle. What have you found under a stone? Mice. Ants. Worms. Bugs. Bees. Lizards. Frogs. Compare with animals that live in dry places. (See A Lone Queen in "Notes by the Way," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)

for the fancy

and food for the eye.

Some buds begin to glow

as soon as they begin to swell.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION.

Spring buds. Winter buds. Have the children found any winter buds? Leaf buds. Flower buds. What is the difference between the two? Are buds green or pink? Scales. Use of bud scales. The "varnish" secreted by buds. Its use. Little David brought me some cherry, apple, and chestnut branches in January and they have blossomed out in winter. (See "A Spring Relish," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)