THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION 



313 



say the least astonishing. And yet 

 Christ preached His most impressive 

 sermon, not in a church but on the top 

 of a mountain, where He was sur- 

 rounded by nature, and where lie and 

 His disciples had only to lift their eyes, 

 to see nature as He Himself had made 

 it. He drew lessons from the birds, 

 from agricultural operations, and gave 

 positive command to, "Consider the 

 lilies." 



Have the Christian Endeavorers for- 

 gotten these : 



"Jesus. .. .went. .. . over the brook 

 Cedron, where was a garden .... for 

 Jesus oftimes resorted thither with his 

 disciples." (John 18: 1, 2.) 



"And he said unto them, Come ye 

 yourselves apart into a desert place, 

 and rest a while." (Mark 6: 31.) 



"When Jesus heard of it, he departed 

 thence. .. .into a desert place apart." 

 (Matthew 14: 13.) 



"And when it was day, he departed 

 and went into a desert place." (Luke 

 4: 42.) 



"And he took them, and went aside 

 privately into a desert place." (Luke 

 9: 10.)* 



It is not necessary to tell the Chris- 

 tian Endeavorers that a desert place is 

 not a dreary Sahara of hot sand and 

 burning blasts of wind, but only an 

 uncultivated field where there are noth- 

 ing but weeds and caterpillars, but the 

 weeds bloom and the caterpillars be- 

 come butterflies or moths, the blue sky 

 bends above the desert place, the sun- 

 light floods it, the soft breezes float 

 gently across it. The Christian En- 

 deavorers should not forget that Christ 

 loved the desert places, and "oftimes 

 resorted thither with his disciples." 

 The Christian Endeavorers, as well as 

 all other readers, have only to open 

 their Concordance to discover how full 

 the Bible is of nature. When "the 

 heavens and the earth were finished," 

 about the first thing that God did after 

 he had created man, was to plant a gar- 

 den. 



And yet the official organ of the 

 Christian Endeavorer Society writes as 

 if absolutely nothing in all this line has 

 been done, and urges the members to 

 "begin.' : 



Is there anything more puzzling in 



all this world than the indifference to 

 Nature, to the desert places, by those 

 who, one would reasonably suppose, 

 have every reason to be the least indif- 

 ferent? 



Play or Practice of Flying Squirrels. 



BY WILBUR F. SMITH, SOUTH NORWALK, 

 CONN. 



Across from my home there is a row 

 of old maple trees. Some of the limbs 

 are old and decayed and furnish homes 

 for birds and an occasional squirrel. 

 This year a pair of flying squirrels 

 raised tneir young in one of the cavi- 

 ties, and on one evening gave a re- 

 markable exhibition of their power of 

 flight to an admiring group in the 

 street. 



It would be hard to tell whether the 

 old ones were giving the young a les- 

 son in the use of their "wings" or 

 whether they were out for an evening 

 of fun and frolic. They chased one an- 

 other up the trees, going round and 

 round till they reached the top, when 

 without a moment's pause they would 

 launch into the air and "sail" to a 

 neighboring tree. 



At times all four would follow one 

 after another to the same tree, and 

 then they would fly to different trees. 



It seemed as if at least one of them 

 was in the air all of the time. There 

 was a degree of graceful curves in their 

 flight that I had never seen before. 

 Instead of flying from high to the base 

 of the next tree as is usually their cus- 

 tom, they would launch out and with 

 a graceful curve rise and alight at least 

 fifteen feet above the lowest part of 

 their flight. The distance between 

 some of the trees was over one hun- 

 dred feet. 



Never for a moment did they pause 

 and look for food, and the gambol con- 

 tinued till the evening shadows began 

 to fall, when I saw them gather back 

 in the old nest tree. 



When I think of the twelve grand 

 banquets which you serve each year, I 

 feel that you must regard many of your 

 subscribers as extremely selfish for not 

 giving something of themselves in re- 

 turn. — G. W . Johnson, Jackson, Ohio. 



