344 Junior Naturalist Monthly. 



you when you make your observations. Let your first interest be 

 in the comfort of the birds. 



Arbor Day is approaching and on that day trees and vines will be 

 planted on the school grounds. We hope that trees and vines will 

 also be planted on the home groimds. By doing this, boj-s and girls 

 will be makingj^plans for future bird residents. In my garden, the 

 catbirds nested in a tangle of blackberry bushes in the fence corner, 

 humming birds^ built in the lilac bushes, an oriole's nest himg from 

 the elm tree, and robins^lived in the cherry tree. All in one year we 

 had these birds and our garden was a merry place. 



Look at your own yard. Would birds come to live there? Do 

 you think an attractive yard gives pleasure to the home folks, to the 

 neighbors, to the stranger passing by? Tell Uncle John one thing 

 that you have done to improve the grounds about your home this 

 year. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH SOIL. 

 George W. Cavanaugh. 



When crops fail, there may be many reasons. The seed may be 

 poor, or there may have been too much or too little rain ; or it may be 

 that the soil needs manure or fertilizers. Sometimes there are 

 failures which do not seem to come from these causes. The soil 

 about the roots of plants sometimes becomes sour or acid. Some 

 plants will not grow well in a sour soil. If we could tell when a soil 

 is sour and knew how to sweeten it, we might sometimes improve 

 the crop. 



Perhaps the easiest way to tell whether a soil is sour is to test it 

 with a piece of blue litmus paper. This can easily be obtained at a 

 drug store. Make a small hole about five inches deep in the soil to 

 be tested, and against the side of this hole with some loose earth, 

 press a small piece of the litmus paper. This should be done when 

 the soil is moist enough to make the paper m:)ist in about two or 

 three minutes. If the paper turns a brownish red, and remains so 

 after it dries, it shows that the soil is sour. The redder the paper, 

 the more sour is the soil. 



Some soil brought in from the field may be tested in the school 

 house, if it is first moistened with water to make it damp. Rain 

 water is better than well water to moisten it. 



It will be interesting to see how the litmus paper acts with other 

 things before testing the soil. Take three drinking glasses and half 

 fill each with water. Into one put a teaspoonful of vinegar; into 

 another one-half teaspoonful of cream of tartar and stir it, and into 



