210 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



squirrels are fast superseding them, for the squirrel is the bird'3 

 enemy, and they cannot thrive together. 



No study is more delightful!} 7 interesting than that of our native 

 birds. In the spring, every day brings with it rare strangers from 

 the south, some only for a few days, others to remain during the 

 season, and to be able to know and name them as they come is a 

 pleasure most rare and sweet. Maurice dt Guirin says : "The 

 birds come and go and make nests around our habitations ; they 

 are fellow citizens of our farms and hamlets with us ; but they take 

 their flight in a heaven which is boundless. The hand of God alone 

 measures to them their daily food, but they build their nests in 

 the heart of the thick bushes, or hang them on the height of the 

 trees. So would I too live, hovering around society, and having 

 always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky." 



THE LITTLE FOLKS OF HOUSE AND FARM. 



By Mrs. C. F. Brown, Appleton. 



Nature is a great economist. Unwilling that any of her mill- 

 ion spaces should remain unpeopled, or her vast resources unused, 

 she has filled every nook and corner of her broad domain with 

 her marvelous creations. Science, the angel of her apocalypse, 

 has loosed the seal, and the divine volume lies open, so that 

 almost he who runs may read; nay, better than this, he who 

 earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, whether on the low 

 lands of common toil, or, as a quarry man, breaking the granite 

 boulders on the rugged hillsides of Scotland, may find, "The 

 Footprints of the Creator." The mere novice adjusts his micro- 

 scope and looks down to the very rudiments of protoplasmic life? 

 learns to trace the gradations of existence from the infusoria up 

 to the close, fine fiber of highly organized animal life. He pauses 

 wonderingly before the higher orders of animals, admires the 

 swift-footed hero of the racecourse, as he stands with quivering 

 Hanks and thin, sensitive nostrils, and eyes deep and human as 

 the eyes that love him. His small head is poised on the arched 

 neck, that spreads broad and glossy into the powerful breast, and 

 shoulders which taper into the strong arms, and slender, sinewy 



