SHAM NESTS.

(The teacher's page.)

MANY people have seen the marsh wren, without suspecting at all its cunning

habits of nest-building. Last summer while rowing with some friends on the Calumet River near the southern end of Lake Michigan, my attention was attracted by numbers of these birds in the marshes on either side; a little russet bird with a harsh song sometimes delivered on the wing as it hovered for a moment above the dense marsh grass, or else uttered while at rest amid the sedges. Let us find the nest, I said, for it has a curious habit of building a little village of nests only one of which it occupies. As we rowed slowly along near the edge of the marsh we scanned the tall grass for the signs. Several times we thought we had discovered it, but were disappointed till finally, some denser spots than usual attracting our attention, we pushed the boat a few yards into the marsh, and there were the cunning little structures woven into the grass a foot or more above the sluggish water; not one merely, but five or six of them, only a few feet apart.

Only one of the nests was real, all the rest were sham nests, the result apparently of the mere bubbling over and superabundance of the domestic instinct on the part of the male. He was such a happy and whole-hearted husband and father that he would doubtless have filled all these structures with his progeny. Or was it a rude attempt at concealing the genuine nest, by surrounding it with so many sham nests? The first, second, and third we tried were counterfeits; then a structure a little more elaborate than the others, with a little dry grass showing in it, was examined, and found to hold the eggs. One could just feel them by pressing the finger into the little opening at the side. The sham nests were all built by pulling down the blades of the grass that grew on the spot and weaving them together; the genuine nest was made in the same way with a little extra material in the way of dry grass, added.

NOTE TO THE TEACHER.

I have repeatedly tried the experiment with children of reading along from such essays as the one given, allowing the pupils to do the reading when we came to easy lines. In this way they would do most of the work.

EDITOR.

The marsh wren has a cunning habit. He builds five or six nests a few feet

apart. Only one of the nests is real.

All the rest are sham nests.

How are the sham nests built?

CONVERSATION.

Different methods of building nests.

Instinct of self-protection.

THE SONG-BIRD AND THE COW-BIRD.

"The little bird sits at his door in the sun.". LOWELL.

The song-birds nearly all build low.
Their cradle is not in the tree-top.

The cow-bird finds a song-bird's nest and drops her own egg

The young of
of the COW-
bird is large and hog-
gish.

CONVERSATION.

Why the cow-bird is so called. Comparison between parisitical birds and plants. Why the cow-bird steals into other birds' nests. Greediness and laziness. Why the cow-bird is shunned by other birds. (See "Tragedies of the Nest," from which this lesson is adapted, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)

THE COW.

(Adapted from "Farm Life.")

There is virtue in the cow.

She is full

of goodness. The cow is the true pathfinder and pathmaker.

Follow her through the woods and you have the best road. How she beats down the brush and wears away even the roots of the trees.

My grandfather went out one night to look up a missing cow when he heard something in the brush and out stepped a bear into the path before him. The cow is one of the most delightful feeders among animals.

It makes one's mouth water to see her eat

pumpkins, and to see her at a pile of apples is distracting.

CONVERSATION.

The cow as a pathfinder. Story of Boston and its streets. (See "A Farm Life.”)

When the pine tree goes the birch comes. A giant goes but a man comes in his

place.

The birch is a stay-at-home tree.

It is a tent, a roof, a boat, a cup, a plate; it gives you spoons, paper for letters, candles and fuel.

Ask it for a coat and it gives you a waistcoat also.

When it rained we had a birch-bark

umbrella. When we came to a stream

we drank from a birch-bark

Water never tasted so sweet.

just fits the mouth.

cup.

The cup

It makes me

thirsty now to think of it.

CONVERSATION.

Hiawatha and his birch canoe. See Longfellow's "Hiawatha." "Give me of your bark, Oh Birch-Tree." Why the birch is so useful. Birch-bark is so common that the pupils can easily make a nature study from the object and compare with the bark of other trees. (See A Taste of Maine Birch in “Signs and Seasons," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)